Stop Saying, 'It Hurts' | Better Ways to Describe Aches and Pains in English

I'm not going to reveal my age, but I will say this as the years go by,

I am noticing more and more of those aches and pains creeping in,

especially after a long day at work sitting at my desk.

Maybe you've experienced that same stiffness when standing up after sitting

for too long,

and then there are those unexpected pains like when you hit your elbow in just

the right spot on the kitchen counter and your whole arm tingles.

Whether you're sharing a laugh with your friends about these increasing aches

and pains,

talking about the realities of getting older or describing symptoms to

a doctor,

I want you to have the English phrases that allow you to express yourself

confidently and clearly. So in this Confident English lesson today,

we're going to explore a wealth of phrases so that you can talk about your

health and these increasing aches and pains that we all

experience.

Before we go any further, if this is your first time here, welcome.

I'm Annemarie, an English confidence and fluency coach.

If you'd love to discover years of lessons just like this one or get some

of my in-depth fluency trainings,

you can find all of that and more at my Speak Confident English website.

Even better,

if you'd love to get speaking practice with expressions just like the ones in

this lesson today, I would love to invite you to my Confident Women Community.

It's a safe online learning space where you can practice speaking English with

women from around the world who share your English goals and have conversations

on a variety of topics like how you're feeling emotionally and physically.

Along the way, you'll also advance your vocabulary, increase your fluency,

and develop overall confidence.

You can find out more at speakconfidentenglish.com/community.

For the phrases we're going to focus on today,

I've divided them up into four distinct categories.

We'll start with some very general descriptions of aches and pains we all

experience.

Then we'll move on specifically to aches and pains we have in our limbs and

joints. Then our head and neck,

and finally we'll finish up with those hard to describe painful

sensations along the way,

I am going to sprinkle in a few quizzes to test your know-how and make sure

you're getting these phrases right. So first,

these general aches and pains.

These phrases are perfect for describing those general

discomforts that you experience but can't really pinpoint where they're coming

from or why you don't feel. Well.

First on our list is to be aching all over.

This means to experience a dull pain throughout your body. Now,

a dull pain is a continuous ache that is persistent

over time, like a long headache or muscle soreness,

and we can contrast this with a sharp pain, which is more intense,

but less persistent.

Kind of like getting a paper cut or experiencing some tooth

sensitivity when you eat something cold like ice cream.

And here's how you might use this phrase in a sentence.

I definitely don't wanna do any house tours today.

I am aching all over from that intense workout I did yesterday.

Number two in this category is to feel under the weather,

which means to feel unwell and slightly sick,

usually with symptoms such as a sore throat or a runny nose and

some general body aches. For example,

Lisa is feeling under the weather,

so I'll be taking the client calls for the rest of the week. Number three,

to feel or to be out of sorts.

This means to feel unwell and slightly achy,

but to also be unhappy or even annoyed and you don't really know why.

Consider situations when you've gone several days without very much sleep.

Think about how easy it is to get irritated and frustrated and to just

feel unwell and to be in a bad mood.

That is to be out of sorts when you're feeling that way.

You might say something like this, and I'm feeling a little out of sorts today.

Maybe I just need to take a walk to clear my head. Number four,

to have a nagging pain.

This means to experience a mild but persistent recurring

pain that doesn't really go away. For example,

if you sit at your desk all day long, day after day after day,

you might start to experience some recurring pain in your shoulders. In fact,

you might even say, I've got this nagging pain in my shoulders.

I think I need to work on my posture. And finally,

number five in this category is to have a gnawing pain.

This is very similar to a nagging pain except that it's more

intense. It's a pain that you cannot ignore. It's recurring,

it's persistent, and you may need to seek some medical attention.

In fact,

quite often this phrase is used to describe persistent

pain that feels a little bit like burning specifically in your abdomen or

stomach. If for example,

you wanted to use this phrase when describing this pain to a medical

professional, you might say,

my daughter's been experiencing some gnawing pain in her stomach for the last

few days and she hasn't been able to eat anything. Okay,

before we go on to the next section, I want to do a quick quiz.

I'm going to share a scenario with you and I want you to choose from these three

options, which one best describes this scenario?

Lisa doesn't feel like herself today.

It's not a deep pain and she's not getting sick.

It's just feeling a little bit off.

Which phrase best describes that situation?

If you selected B to be out of sorts, you're exactly right.

She's not feeling deep or sharp pain. She's not really sick.

It's just this general sense of being unwell and maybe a little

unhappy or irritated.

Now let's move on to our second section with aches and pains we experience in

our limbs. For example,

our arms and legs and our joints where two bones meet like elbows,

wrists, and knees.

These expressions are particularly useful when you need to explain an injury

or if you need to describe that a body part just isn't working quite

right, perhaps due to an accident,

some physical activity or sitting for too long.

The first one is to say that something a limb like your arm or your leg

fell asleep. If your arm falls asleep,

it means that you experience some numbness or lack of feeling in

your arm usually because it's been in the same position without movement for too

long. For example,

let's say you and your friends have been sitting around chatting and then

everyone stands up to walk into another room and you say, oh, hold on a minute.

My leg fell asleep from sitting on the floor for too long.

Next is to pull a muscle.

This means that you've injured a muscle due to stretching too far,

resulting in pain in that muscle. For example,

the doctor told Carrie to rest for a few days after she pulled her

calf muscle during a morning run.

Number three in this section is to get a charlie horse.

This means to get a sudden painful cramp in a muscle.

For example, an arm or a leg muscle.

A cramp is when your muscles painfully tighten.

And if we were to use this in a sentence, we could say,

some people get a charlie horse in their leg while sleeping and the pain wakes

them up. Number four is going to take us back to the beginning of this video.

When I talked about hitting your elbow in just the right spot to hit your

funny bone,

this means to accidentally hit a nerve on the outside of your elbow that

results in a tingling or burning sensation throughout your arm.

And quite often we use this expression in the moment that we

hit our elbow and experience that pain. For example,

if I hit my elbow on the doorframe, I might say, oh,

I just hit my funny bone on the doorframe and now my arm is tingling.

Number five is to have a glass arm,

which means to have an arm that has become stiff and sore after

repeated use. For example,

after years of repetitive tasks at the factory,

she developed a glass arm that often ached Number six

on our list might take you back to some memories of learning to ride a bike when

you were a child to skin one's elbow or to skin one's

knee.

This means to scrape off some of the skin that may result in some bleeding.

For example, my son skinned his knees when he fell off his bike at the park.

Number seven is very similar, but rather than focusing on elbows and knees,

we're focused more on our limbs, our arms,

and our leg to scrape one's arm or to scrape one's leg.

This means to create a shallow wound due to removing or

tearing some of the skin. For example,

I could say I scraped my arm against a rough brick wall while

carrying some heavy boxes.

And now number eight to stub one's toe.

This means to accidentally hurt your toe by hitting it against

something. For example, this morning,

my husband stubbed his toe on the coffee table while rushing out the door to

work. And the last one for this category is to twist one's ankle.

This means to hurt your ankle by suddenly twisting it or

pulling it awkwardly. For example,

Ella twisted her ankle during her basketball game and had to sit out for the

rest of the week.

Now it's time for section three where we'll talk about the discomforts and pains

we feel in our head, neck, and throat.

These expressions are helpful.

We need to describe a headache or a sore throat to a friend, coworker,

or a physician,

and the first one is to say that something your head or your neck is

throbbing. This means to experience a strong,

intense pulsating pain in a part of your body,

particularly the head or neck. For example,

if you've ever experienced a migraine, you might say,

my head is throbbing. Can you please turn off the lights?

Number two on our list is to bump one's head,

which means to accidentally hit your head on something. For example,

I bumped my head while cleaning the windows this weekend. Now,

if you've bumped your head particularly hard,

you might use this next expression to see stars.

We use this to say that you're seeing flashes of light before your eyes

after hitting your head. For example, if I were to describe this to a doctor,

I might say I slipped down some stairs, hit my head,

and immediately began seeing stars.

Next on our list is to have a kink in one's neck.

This means to have some discomfort in the muscle or joint in your neck,

often resulting in stiffness or limited mobility. For example,

we might say Jean has a kink in her neck and had to turn her whole

body to see the screen.

Number five is the room or my head is spinning.

What this means is that you feel dizzy or you feel like everything around you is

spinning. If you're experiencing some dizziness, you might tell someone,

my head is spinning. I need to sit down for a moment,

or the room started spinning when I stood up too fast.

Number six is to have a splitting headache.

We use this to describe an intense,

painful headache that makes it difficult to focus. For example,

Ana had to close the curtains and turn off the lights due to her splitting

headache. Number seven is to have a frog in one's throat.

This means that you have a difficult time speaking because your throat is dry or

hoarse. For example,

Dylan tried to present in the meaning but had a difficult time because he had a

frog in his throat.

Number eight on our list is one you might already be familiar with.

We use this often anytime we have the common cold to have a sore throat.

We use this to describe the experience of having a painful scratchy feeling

in your throat.

That is often worse when you try to swallow and in a

sentence, we might use it like this.

I've been drinking some honey lemon tea to help soothe my sore

throat.

And our final one for this category is to sleep wrong or to have slept wrong.

We use this to describe that sore stiff neck feeling we have

after sleeping for a long time in an awkward position. For example,

you might say to a coworker, I must have slept wrong last night.

My neck is so stiff today. Before we go on to our final section,

I've got another quiz for you.

This time I'm going to start a sentence and I want you to finish it with the

correct phrase.

Janet's throat felt dry due to the medication and she could barely speak.

She had a,

which one do you think is right if you said See a frog in her throat?

You're exactly right. Again,

to have a frog in your throat means an inability to speak because your throat

is dry. All right, it's time for category number four,

painful sensations.

All of the phrases that we'll learn here will help you describe general

discomfort that is also somewhat unusual or hard to

describe. For example, number one, to have pins and needles.

We use this expression to describe that tingling feeling we experience as we

start to regain some feeling in a limb after it has been numb.

Think again for a moment about hitting your funny bone and you feel that

tingling like little pins and needles or pricking all over your arm.

We can also use this expression when a limb like our leg,

our arm has been asleep and we're moving it around trying to regain some

feeling. It's not necessarily painful,

but it's very uncomfortable and you might use it like this.

I've got pins and needles in my leg from sitting for too long.

The next one in this category is to say that something is killing you.

As you can imagine,

this expression is quite strong and we use it to indicate that you're

experiencing very strong intense pain. For example,

let's say that you've been experiencing some back pain and it's so severe that

you may need to go to a physician. You might tell someone,

my back is killing me. I think I need to go to the doctor.

Number three is to break out into a cold sweat. Now,

sweat is that moisture we have when we've been outside on a hot day for

a long time, or if you've been doing some intense exercise.

If you break out into a cold sweat,

it means that you start sweating while feeling really cold.

This often happens in an illness or when experiencing intense

stress, anxiety, or fear. For example,

if your kids have been sick and you need to call into work,

you might tell someone the kids broke out into a cold sweat last night due to

their high fever. And number four, feeling woozy.

Woozy describes a feeling of lightheadedness.

This means to feel a bit dizzy and unsteady on your

feet. You might feel woozy, for example,

if you stand up too quickly after sitting for too long or if you haven't

eaten for a long time, and here's how you might use it in a sentence.

I often feel a bit woozy after my spinning classes,

so I make sure to sit down and drink water afterward. And here's a quick quiz.

Once again,

I've got a sentence for you and I want you to choose the phrase that fits into

this sentence.

The kids were down with a flu and had a high fever in the middle of the night.

They and the sheets were soaked.

What's the best choice here? They broke out into a cold sweat.

Now I've got a question for you.

When was the last time you experienced one of these aches and pains?

How would you now describe it using some of these phrases that you've learned in

English? If you want, you can share your examples with me in the comments below.

Thank you so much for joining me today, and if you found this lesson helpful,

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Thanks again, and I look forward to seeing you next time.