250 Important English Vocabulary Words with pictures

What is the number one skill that you need  to be able to express yourself clearly in  

English? It's vocabulary. If you don't have the  right words that you want to say when you speak,  

well, you're not going to be able to express  yourself. But I have some good news. Today,  

you are going to learn 250 new  English expressions with pictures.

Hi, I'm Vanessa from speakenglishwithvanessa.com.  And like always, I have created an amazingly huge,  

important PDF worksheet, more like an E-book  for today's lesson with all 250 expressions,  

definitions, sample sentences. And  at the bottom of this worksheet,  

you can answer Vanessa's challenge  question so that you never forget what  

you've learned. You don't want to miss  this free PDF worksheet. It has so much  

valuable vocabulary and information for you  to help you express yourself. And it's free.  

You can click on the link in the description  to download that free PDF worksheet today.

Today, we're going to take a look at pictures  in five different categories. Some of these  

pictures are the pictures that I took in my  life. So I'm excited to share them with you  

and give you a little window into Vanessa's life.  Let's get started with our first category, which  

is meals and food, a very integral part of our  lives. Are you ready to get started? Let's do it.

For our first food picture, I'd like to show you  comfort food. This picture is comfort food to most  

Americans because it is a typical Thanksgiving  meal. It is a home-cooked meal and we usually  

have a roasted turkey for Thanksgiving. It's  very familiar, so it makes you feel like you're  

back home, experiencing some special part of  childhood and it's a really traditional meal.  

So I hope that someday you have the chance  to experience Thanksgiving dinner in the US.

This picture is fine dining. For fine dining,  sometimes we say, "We are going to wine and  

dine." You can see the wine here. Usually the  portions are kind of small in this type of gourmet  

restaurant. Sometimes we call this a high-end  restaurant. And because the portion size is small,  

it doesn't mean that it's cheaper. Usually it  is more expensive, but that's just the way it  

goes. Usually you only go to these type of  high-end restaurants on special occasions.

The next food picture is very different,  it is a fast food picture. Unfortunately,  

this is really common all around the world now,  but junk food is becoming more and more common.  

Here you can see a burger and fries. Oftentimes  people purchase this through the drive-thru. So  

they will drive through the drive-thru and  pick it up and eat it in the car. This is a  

very unhealthy experience. Sometimes we say  that if you purchase something and it's fast  

food and it comes in a brown bag, that's  a brown bag special. Well, in my opinion,  

this type of food is not very special,  but it is something that's really common.

Here you can see the opposite, some snacks.  

And these snacks are healthy snacks. In my house,  if you want to grab a snack, I always recommend  

to my kids that they can grab some fruit, some  nuts, some dried fruit. These things are really  

healthy and they're not just junk food like we  saw in the previous picture. But sometimes it's  

nice to have a treat for a snack. You might have  chips or something like this as a special treat.

It's a fun expression to say you get the munchies.  Sometimes I get the munchies at night and when  

I do, I try to eat something healthy like  some berries, some nuts, maybe some yogurt,  

kind of healthy snack. This type of snack  here is called trail mix. In this type of box,  

someone is not taking it on a trail,  but we mix all of those items together,  

dried fruit and nuts, sometimes pretzels,  sometimes a little bit of chocolate. And  

you mix it all together and you take it on a  hike. This is a favorite snack in my household.

Now this food is generally considered  healthy food. If you are on a diet,  

these types of foods might be something that  you eat. So you might eat more vegetables,  

more high quality fats like avocado or salmon.  If you are on a diet, you're usually trying to  

cut out unhealthy foods. This here, I think, I'm  not a professional, but it seems like a balanced  

diet. There are nuts and vegetables and meat and  just quality ingredients. This is a balanced diet.

Generally that's what you try to  eat every day is a balanced diet,  

but sometimes people are allergic to  certain items and they might have what  

we call dietary restrictions. So I know some  people who cannot eat the nuts in this picture.  

They are allergic to cashews, almonds, and  walnuts. Unfortunate, I love those things,  

so I hope that they're not missing out too  much. But if you have dietary restrictions,  

it's usually because you have an allergy or your  doctor said you're not allowed to eat those items.

All right, let's go to the next category, which  is very different from food, it is scenery and  

places. This is a city that is close to my heart.  This is the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You  

can see some skyscrapers in this skyline.  The skyline is usually that beautiful image  

that you see at night when you can see all of the  outline of the buildings. These are skyscrapers.

Sometimes if you live in an apartment  building that is as tall as those buildings,  

we call that a high-rise. So you might  live in a high-rise apartment, but here  

these are mostly office buildings, so we call  them skyscrapers. This is the downtown area  

of Pittsburgh. It's very unique because it's  surrounded by three rivers and there's this  

cool red incline that you can go up and get  a great view of the city with its distinct,  

recognizable skyline with all of  the wonderful bridges as well.

The next picture is a big city. In fact, I think  it is one of the biggest cities in the world,  

Tokyo, Japan. The metropolitan  area of this city encompasses so  

many people. Maybe you don't live in the  downtown area, but the metropolitan area,  

so the extended area of the city is huge.  So many people live in Tokyo. It is highly  

densely populated. That means there's a  lot of people who live in a small area.

A kind of negative term that we use for big  cities is a concrete jungle. You can get the  

image here. It's not full of trees and greenery.  There are lots of parks in Tokyo I imagine, but we  

still call this a concrete jungle. There's so much  concrete, that's just what it is. It's a big city.

And oftentimes when you live in a  big city, at night what do you do?  

You might go out on the town. This  is a lovely expression that means  

you do things that happen at night. You might  go to bars, you might go dancing. There are  

lots of things that you can do at night in  a big city. You might go out on the town.

Another characteristic of big cities is that they  are extremely busy. So here this is New York City,  

just a busy street. You can see the Flatiron  Building at the top of this. That little pointed  

building is the Flatiron Building. There's a ton  of traffic and a lot of pedestrians. Pedestrians  

are people who are walking. It is  really crowded in New York City.  

I don't think it's as crowded as  Tokyo, but it's extremely crowded.

And when you live in a big city, you often  have a fast pace of life, a fast pace of  

life. Maybe you have to have a long commute,  you have to take lots of public transport,  

you're always around people, there's  always noise. This is a fast pace of life,  

which is the opposite of our  next picture, the mountains.

This is a picture of my husband and my son  several years ago on one of our favorite  

hikes. There's a lovely rock here. It looks  like a cliff, but it's not a cliff. It goes  

down gently. But here you can see wonderful  mountains. This is one of our favorite  

mountains to climb. It's not a very difficult  hike, but it has a great view at the top.

I want to tell you about a fun idiom. When  you say you can move mountains to someone,  

that means that you are encouraging them that they  can do impossible things. You can move mountains,  

lovely encouragement. And sometimes we say also  as encouragement, the best view comes after  

the hardest climb. This hike was not extremely  difficult, but for my children, they have short  

legs, they're small children, it's a hard climb.  And we get the best view after a hard climb.

But we can also use this metaphorically, if  you've been struggling a lot to learn English,  

you've been working hard, and then you  finally get to go to the US and you can  

speak English with people, it feels so  satisfying because the best view comes  

after the hardest climb. You can  see where that metaphor plays in.

Another mountain metaphor  that I want to tell you about  

is when we're talking about someone who is really  influential, you might say, "My grandfather was a  

mountain of a man." It doesn't mean his body was  big, but it means he was really influential and  

important in my life. He was a mountain of a man.  He had strong values, he was really influential.

The opposite of the mountains is the beach. Here  we have a coastal picture. You can see the coast  

of California in this picture and all of these  people here, they live on the coast. We generally  

don't say, "I live on the beach." We say, "I live  on the coast." These houses here are on the coast  

and they have great ocean views. They may even get  a salty ocean breeze wafting over their houses.

And you can see here the waves. You might  not be able to see very well in this picture,  

but at the bottom, maybe you can see here,  this little area down here is where the tide  

has come up. The tide is when the ocean rises  and the ocean falls several times a day. And  

here we're talking about the coming and going  of something. We can use this metaphorically to  

talk about the things in your life going  from bad to good, the tide has changed.

Finally, it looks like I'm going to get  a promotion. If you thought you weren't  

going to get a promotion for a long  time and then you get a meeting with  

your boss and he hints that you're going  to get a promotion, you might think, "Oh,  

finally, the tide has changed and I'm going to get  recognized for all my hard work and I'm going to  

get a promotion." So these are some metaphorical  ways we can talk about the tide and the coast.

This picture is not at the beach. Instead, it is  a wide open space, a totally different type of  

landscape. This is a field in the middle of the  US. Really, we might even say it's in the middle  

of nowhere. It's not exactly a polite thing  to say. If you live in the middle of nowhere,  

in the middle of the countryside, you can  say this, I think about where you live,  

but it's not really polite to say about where  someone else lives because it implies where you  

live is not important, it's nowhere.  But if you live somewhere like this,  

you live in the middle of the  countryside, you might say,  

"I live in the middle of nowhere," and  it can be kind of like a little joke.

This place is also extremely remote.  Remote means it's in the middle of nowhere,  

it's difficult to get to. You have to drive for  a long distance. Maybe there's not good roads,  

or good transport. It's extremely remote.  Sometimes the most remote places though  

are the most interesting to visit, in my opinion.

Here in this wide open space, you can see for  miles and miles. I don't know what people would  

say in English-speaking countries who don't use  miles, but in the US, we use miles. It means long  

distances, kilometers, and we say you can see for  miles and miles, which is kind of cool, I think.  

This type of countryside we call farmland  because it's a farm, but if you live in  

the middle of nowhere surrounded by farms, you  could say there's a lot of farmland around me.

This little town is Black Mountain, North  Carolina. It's about 30 minutes from where  

I live and it is a relaxed town. We might even  call it a sleepy town, a sleepy mountain village.  

This is extremely different from that previous  image we saw of Tokyo, very different. It's a  

sleepy town. It's very peaceful and there is a  slowed-down way of life in this type of town.

A word that I like to use to describe towns  like this is charming. It's a charming place.  

When you walk into little shops, you can see  the real people who live in those places. The  

people who greet you in those shops or in  the restaurants, they live in that town and  

they're probably really friendly and excited  that you're visiting their slow, relaxed,  

sleepy town. So if you get the chance to visit  a small town in the US, I highly recommend it.

This is another small town. It is a rural town  in the middle of nowhere. This is where I went  

to college. This is Erskine College. You can see  some of the buildings here. Do you think that this  

college is in the middle of nowhere or in a big  city? This town is called Due West, and we had a  

little slogan in college, Due West of what? Nobody  knows because it's in the middle of nowhere.

It's a really rural town and it was a  one-stop-light town, but this stoplight did not  

come until much later. There was no stoplight in  this town when I went to college here, just stop  

signs. It was one square mile, very small. You  can see the tennis courts take up more space than  

many things. It's just a very small town where  everyone knows everyone. Or sometimes we even say  

everybody knows everybody, and this means that  word passes fast. So often in college we said,  

"A little bird told me that you missed your  class this morning. A little bird told me that  

he's dating this girl. Oh, a little bird told  me ..." These are the rumors that fly around.

Another very similar expression that  we use in small towns is I heard it  

through the grapevine. You're not going to say,  "Susan told me this. Sarah told me this." No,  

it's a little more indirect, "I heard it  through the grapevine that you are engaged." Oh,  

it's a secret, but it's not really because  in a small town, everyone knows everyone.

All right, let's go to our next category,  which is vacation. Here is a vacation picture  

at the beach where I went to Costa Rica  with my family when I was pregnant with  

my daughter. You can see my little pregnant  belly there. And here we are at the beach. So  

we might say we enjoyed the sand and sea at  the beach. My kids love collecting seashells  

and playing in the waves and building sand  castles. They could really just sit in the  

sand all day. It was a wonderful vacation.  As you can see, a beautiful place to be.

Another place you might go on vacation is the  mountains. This is a mountain lake. In my opinion,  

it's the best of both worlds. You can enjoy the  mountains and the lake at the same time. This  

looks like someone might have rented a cabin.  There's a little white cabin in the distance.  

But when you rent a cabin, it's a great way  to have a relaxing nature-filled vacation,  

sitting around the campfire, listening to stories,  telling stories, maybe scary, spooky stories.  

You might even be able to go out on a boat on the  lake, another fun activity that is quite relaxing.

For this next picture, you might  wonder, "What in the world is  

happening?" This is a staycation. This is  the opposite of vacation. For vacation,  

you go somewhere usually far away, Costa  Rica or you drive three hours away to go  

to the beach. You're going on vacation  to a different destination. But here,  

this lovely circle window was in a cabin that  Dan and I rented for a little staycation.

Our kids went to stay with their grandparents and  we didn't want to go far away. But we rented this  

cute little cabin and it had a nice circle  window with a lovely little pond out front.  

There's Dan waving at me through the window. And  I think that something about COVID helped us to  

want to visit places near us, visit local  places, visit places in our own country,  

and sometimes I like to just visit places nearby.  It can be interesting and it's not too much to  

plan. You just can get an Airbnb. That's what we  did. We rented an Airbnb, that's really common  

in the US to do that, and enjoyed a local stay.  This was about 20 minutes from where we live.

We did not take a day trip. So a day trip  is when you don't spend the night somewhere,  

you just go for the day and then you come back  and you sleep at home. But this could also be  

a staycation if you're trying to do things  locally without too much planning or go too  

far away. But even if you have a staycation,  you can still see the sights. So here in this  

little town where we visited, we stayed  at this Airbnb. We saw some local sites,  

we went to some local restaurants, we hiked some  local trails and it was still a great staycation.

The opposite of that is a resort. Sometimes  we call this an all-inclusive resort if they  

have food, entertainment. I see here swimming  pools, there's playgrounds, there's things to  

do. This is an all-inclusive resort. It is also  a beach resort. You can see the ocean there.

I have never been to this type of resort  before. Generally, I do something like this,  

a staycation or maybe renting a little Airbnb,  but an all-inclusive resort could probably be fun.  

Some all-inclusive resorts are adults only, and  this just depends on the atmosphere of the place,  

and some are more family-friendly. I'm curious  for you, have you ever been to an all-inclusive  

resort? Let me know in the comments if you  have. Generally, when we travel, we try to  

stay at local people's houses like an Airbnb or  a local farm or these type of small experiences,  

but I'm very curious what this might be like. So  let me know in the comments if you recommend it.

The next type of vacation is not a slow, lazy  type of vacation, it is active backpacking.  

Have you ever been on a backpacking adventure? I  have, and it is very fun. Not since having kids,  

but I did this before having kids. You  can go hiking and camping, put everything  

in your backpack and just go into the woods.  Feels very refreshing and freeing, very wild.

We sometimes use a fun expression to talk about  this, this is rugged. This is a rugged adventure.  

You can even say a person is rugged. He is  rugged, and it generally means someone who  

can handle tough situations. Maybe they can  sleep on the ground outside or if it's raining,  

they don't feel bothered, they are rugged.  So this is a type of rugged vacation.

This person, even though they have a big backpack,  I imagine they are still traveling light. Have  

you ever packed for a weekend trip and you had  two full suitcases and you realized, "Why do I  

have so much stuff?" You are not packing light.  This person fit everything in their backpack,  

all their food, all their water, all their  clothing. Their bed, their sleeping bag,  

their tent, everything is in that pack. They  had to pack light in order to go backpacking.

Some people say that spending time in nature  is a low budget activity. It is true if you  

go on a hike, it is not expensive, but if  you go camping, especially backpacking,  

it can become very expensive because  these types of light sleeping bags,  

light tents, light everything, the  little camping devices that you buy,  

those are pretty expensive. So you could  go low-budget for your camping experience  

or you could go quite high-budget depending  on the type of equipment that you purchase.

The final type of vacation that we're going to  talk about is a road trip. This is something  

that is pretty essential in the US. To get  anywhere you have to drive and most vacations,  

even if you're going to the beach or you're going  to the mountains, involve some kind of road trip,  

which means pretty much at least one full  day is in the car, part of your experience.

The biggest type of road trip that you can take  in the US is called a cross-country road trip,  

going from one coast to the other coast. I  have never taken a cross-country road trip.  

I've flown across the country. I've gone from  the South to the North about a 10-hour drive,  

but I've never gone on a cross-country road  trip. Maybe someday, I think that would be cool.

Whenever you go on a road trip,  it's essential that you make some  

stops along the way. For my family, we  usually plan at least one big stop if  

we're going on a eight-hour road trip.  So when we went to Pittsburgh recently,  

we made one big stop about halfway through  and we stopped for an hour, ran around,  

went to a park, got some good views, enjoyed the  time, and the other stops were just quick views.

We want to make sure that everyone feels good,  nobody gets carsick. That's the worst when you  

feel nauseous and you want to throw up in the  car. We want to take these quicker stops and then  

longer stops maybe at some points of interest  possibly. We usually stop at a nice park. They  

have a nice bridge and there's some mountains  that you can see, so it feels like an experience.

There is one fun expression,  it's in a famous song as well,  

which is life is a highway. You get the  idea here that the journey of your life  

is what is the most important. It's not the  destination, it's not getting that big job,  

getting that amazing vacation. It's the  journey, life is a highway. It's just a journey.

Our next category are plants and animals  and some idioms related to these wonderful  

pictures. So here we see some bees. Are you  as busy as a bee? This just means that you're  

busy. I've been as busy as a bee all week. It's  possible that you are the queen bee. We might say,  

"My boss is the queen bee and she always tells us  what needs to be done." This isn't necessarily a  

negative thing, it just means that she's the one  who's in control. You might often say, "We are  

the worker bees. We just do what we need to do  every day." The worker bees and the queen bees.

If you are bothered, if you are annoyed by  something but you don't want to be annoyed,  

you want to just let it go, you might say,  "Ugh, I don't want to have bees in my bonnet".  

A bonnet is an old-fashioned hat that women used  to wear. Don't get some bees in your bonnet,  

just let it go. Of course you don't want  bees in your bonnet, that would be really  

uncomfortable. But that's the idea, don't let  it be a bee in your bonnet, just let it go.

Another wonderful bee expression is to make  a beeline for something. Have you ever seen  

a bee just fly straight ahead? It  just zooms super fast, probably  

after pollinating a flower, it just is  going back to the nest. Well, you might say,  

"I made a beeline for the ice cream shop. I didn't  look to the left. I didn't look to the right.  

I made a beeline," which just means you went  straight. I made a beeline for the ice cream shop.

The next animal picture is a fun one, birds  with some eggs or baby chicks in a nest.  

There's a lot of great bird expressions.  One of them I briefly mentioned before,  

a little bird told me something. This means  an anonymous source told me some kind of news,  

usually a secret. And here you can see that this  bird, probably this bird and this bird's mate as  

well because usually birds work together in  pairs, they were busy building their nest.

We can use this as humans by adding  one word to this, building a nest  

egg. This refers to having some money  saved. So if you are about to retire and  

you don't want to be extremely poor,  you might say, "I am trying to build  

a nest egg so that I can retire and have a  good life." So you're building a nest egg.

On the other hand, if we talk about  killing birds, we use the expression  

to kill two birds with one stone.  Please don't kill birds with stones,  

it's not a good idea. But when we use this  metaphorically, we're talking about doing  

two good things at the same time. Why is it  killing birds? Poor birds. But we might say,  

"I like to listen to English podcasts while I  drive to work. I'm killing two birds with one  

stone." You're learning English and you're going  to work. Cool. Two good things, not killing birds.

Another fun expression with birds is the  early bird catches the worm. This means  

if you're the first one to do something, you're  the one who's going to succeed. In my opinion,  

this is not always true, but it sometimes is true,  right? So if you are a new business and you're a  

business who sells coffee, if you are the first  coffee shop open in your town, maybe you will  

get the most customers because people want coffee  in the morning. And when your friend says, "Hey,  

why are you opening your coffee shop at 5:00  AM? That is too early, you need to sleep." You  

might say, "Oh, well, the early bird catches the  worm. We are going to get more customers." Cool.

The next picture here is about cats. This is my  son and my cat Pippin. Last year or two years ago,  

in our garden, we planted some catnip, some  little plants that cats love in the garden  

and it was so sweet, our cat would always go  in the garden and lay there. In my opinion,  

there's nothing more beautiful than a cat  just happily laying in the sun in the garden.

But a little negative expression about cats,  killing cats, why killing animals, why,  

is curiosity killed the cat. So this expression we  often use when someone is being too curious maybe  

in a negative way, prying into your business. So  if you are planning a surprise birthday party for  

your friend and your friend is asking you too  many questions, they are asking you, "Wait,  

why were you calling that person? Where were  you yesterday? Hey, why aren't you available  

on Saturday?" You might say, "Hey, hey, hey,  curiosity killed the cat." And it means stop  

asking questions, I don't want to tell you the  answer. Curiosity killed the cat, don't ask.

I personally like the follow-up phrase with this,  

curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought  him back. So whenever someone says curiosity  

killed the cat to me to get me to stop asking  questions, I always say with a little joke, "Well,  

satisfaction brought him back. So satisfy me, give  me some answers." But it's just a little joke.

Another fun cat expression is to  let the cat out of the bag. This  

means that you're divulging some  kind of secret. If I say, "Oh yeah,  

on Saturday we're having a surprise birthday for  my friend. Oh no, I let the cat out of the bag."  

Why is a cat in the bag? I don't know. Come on  guys, stop killing birds, stop killing cats,  

stop putting cats in a bag. But these  expressions exist, so you're welcome to use them.

Another one that is very interesting.  Have you ever seen a cat fall? A cat  

always lands on its feet. This is  something that I think is incredible,  

always very interesting. In fact, one of my  cats, not this cat but my other cat, Luna,  

she jumped out of a second-story window when  we used to live in an apartment when she was  

just a kitten and she lived. It was amazing.  She was not hurt, she had no problems. She  

landed on her feet and was totally fine. I  could not believe it. Thankfully she's okay.

But a cat always lands on its feet, and we  can even use this metaphorically to talk  

about ourselves. If you're having a rough time  in your life, you might say, "Well, I think it's  

all going to be okay. A cat always lands on  its feet. In the end it's going to be okay."

The final cat expression is, cat got your tongue?  Why does a cat have your tongue? This is talking  

about when you don't know what to say, maybe  you're uncomfortable talking about something.  

So if someone says, "Well, what were you doing  yesterday?" And you don't want to tell them,  

you don't want to tell them what you were doing  yesterday, you might stumble around and say,  

"Oh, well, it was rainy. So I was just relaxing."  And your friend might say, "Cat got your tongue?  

What did you really do?" They can tell  that you're trying to evade the question.

All right, our next picture is about dogs.  This is a very special picture to me. These  

two dogs are not mine. We were fostering these  dogs. That means that before they got adopted,  

before they got a home, they needed to  live somewhere and the animal shelter  

didn't have enough space. So we said we will  temporarily keep these dogs at our house and  

teach them how to live in a house, how  to live with children, how to be good.

And my son, Theo is very scared of dogs.  He has always been scared of dogs and it  

was really hard for him anytime he saw a  dog. So we thought that this experience  

would help him to feel more comfortable with  dogs. And you can see it was a success. He  

loved those puppies so much and it really  helped him to get over his fear of dogs.

I've been always trying to tell him that  most dogs, their bark is worse than their  

bite. This is the expression that means, well,  they're really loud, they bark really loud,  

but usually they're not dangerous. Yes, some  dogs are dangerous, but usually their bark  

is worse than their bite. And this can be true  for people too. Maybe someone is really rough,  

the way that they speak is really direct, but  actually they're a kind person. You might say,  

"Ah, don't worry, his bark is worse than  his bite." We can use that for people too.

Or we could say someone is all bark and no bite.  This idea that if your boss is yelling at you,  

"If you don't do this, you're going to get  fired and this bad thing's going to happen  

and this bad thing's going to happen."  Your coworker might tell you later,  

"Hey, he's all bark and no  bite. He's always threatening,  

but he never really does anything bad."  Okay, that's always good to know, right?

A really fun dog expression is to be an  underdog. That means that, listen to this phrase,  

everyone loves to cheer for an underdog.  Everyone loves when the underdog wins,  

and this is just the person who's  not expected to win. If there are two  

basketball teams and one basketball team  wins 20 games, one basketball team wins  

4 games and then they play against each  other, well, this team is the underdog.  

And if they win, it's really exciting, right?  Everyone always wants the underdog to win.

Our final dog expression is it's hard to teach  an old dog new tricks. Have you ever tried to  

help your parents with technology? This is the  perfect example, I think, for this expression. If  

you try to help your mother or your grandmother  or your grandfather with their phone, it can be  

really frustrating because it's hard to teach  an old dog, your mother is not a dog, I know,  

it's just a metaphor, an old dog new tricks. It's  true, but you know what? It's still possible.

And I know a lot of my students  are retired, they're older,  

but you know what? You can learn English. It's  going to be difficult. It's going to be tricky,  

and you're probably going to learn in different  ways, have different expectations on yourself.  

You might even think it's hard to teach an old  dog new tricks, like English, but it's still  

important for your mind to continue learning  new things so that you can always be active.

All right, the next picture is about  horses. I have several wonderful horse  

idioms to share with you. This picture is on  Cumberland Island in the south of Georgia,  

the state in the US. This is a picture that I took  there. These horses are actually wild horses. Now,  

technically they're not wild horses like Mongolian  wild horses originally were. These horses were on  

this island in the early 1800s, and then  people stopped living here and all of the  

horses continued to live here successfully.  So they have rewilded themselves. They have  

returned back to the wild and you can't touch  them. You can't get near them. They will hurt  

you if you get too close to them, but it  was really cool to see these wild horses.

The first idiom I want to tell you about with  horses is straight from the horse's mouth. And  

this means you want to hear the news directly  from the source. You need to know exactly the  

truth from the first person who experienced it.  So let's imagine that you hear that your neighbor  

is moving. One of your other neighbors tells you,  "They're moving and this is what's happening." You  

might say, "Uh-uh, I want to hear this straight  from the horse's mouth." So you go to your  

neighbor and you ask them if they're moving. This  is a good way to actually get the truth, right?

The next expression with a horse is to look a gift  horse in the mouth. It's a little bit of an odd  

expression, but this is used often when someone  gives you something for free that's maybe not  

really good. Like if someone gives you an old  car, the old car maybe has a lot of problems,  

maybe it's slow, maybe it's rusted and  broken a little bit, you might say, "Well,  

this car was free, so I don't want  to look a gift horse in the mouth."

I think this expression came from a  time when horses were much more common,  

and when you purchased a horse, the best way  to know if the horse was really old and going  

to die soon was to look at its teeth. So if  someone gave you an old horse for free and  

you're inspecting their teeth like, "Oh, this  is not a good horse, I don't want it," it's  

kind of rude because it's a free horse. You  should take it, at least back then. So here  

we're saying don't inspect or criticize something  that was given to you as a gift, just accept it.

The next expression with horses is a fun one, hold  your horses. So whenever my son asks me questions,  

it's not just one question, it's like 500  questions, what's that? Where are you going?  

How did he say that? What did you say to Dad?  When are we going to do this? I might say,  

"Hold your horses. Hold your horses. One question  at a time." When someone is going so quickly,  

usually with their words and their questions  and their ideas, you might say, "Okay,  

hold your horses. Let's start at the very  beginning and think this through." Great.

All right, let's go to our next animal and  we're going to talk about some fish idioms.  

This is at an aquarium, the Atlanta Aquarium.  You can see my husband Dan and my son here,  

and look at this amazing aquarium. This is one of  two aquariums in the whole world that has whale  

sharks. That's that big fish. It's actually  not a shark, it's a fish. But this aquarium,  

and I believe the Okinawa, Japan  Aquarium has whale sharks. So this  

is a really unusual fish to see in  an aquarium. Isn't it beautiful?

And this tank was so big. It was so cool  that the whale shark, there were two of them,  

they could swim in the tank and they could  be so far back that you couldn't even see  

them. The tank was so big you couldn't  even see this fish sometimes. It was  

amazing. So if you get the chance to go to  the Atlanta Aquarium, I highly recommend it.

But let's talk about some fish idioms. The  first one is I've got bigger fish to fry.  

So if your neighbors are talking about  just some petty arguments and problems,  

some drama in the neighborhood, you might say,  "I've got bigger fish to fry. I don't want to  

think about this petty drama. I've got my job and  my family and I need to take care of my parents.  

I've got bigger fish to fry. I don't have time  to worry about just little drama that's happening  

amongst friends. I've got bigger fish to fry."  Sorry, fish, you're being cooked in this idiom.

The next one is a fish out of water. The first  time that you go to a new job, you definitely,  

I would say most likely, feel like a fish out  of water. You feel uncomfortable. That's not  

where you belong yet. Hopefully you will  be become more comfortable over time,  

but on your first day at the job, you might  feel like a fish out of water. I just felt  

like a fish out of water. Hopefully after  a few weeks, I'll feel more comfortable.

The next expression about fish and our last one  for this section is a big fish in a small pond.  

If you went to a small college or university like  I did, and you are the top of your class, okay,  

you are a big fish in a small pond. The college  is small, but you are the top of your class,  

you are a big fish in a small pond. If you went to  a huge university and you were top of your class,  

well, you can't use this expression. You can't  say I was a big fish in a big pond. But here  

we're talking about being the top, the best,  the most important in a small environment.

I think this is a good way to be humble as  well. So if you were the top of your class  

and someone says, "Whoa, you were the top of  your class, that's amazing," you might say,  

"Yeah, I was a big fish in a small pond."  Maybe if you'd gone to a bigger university,  

you wouldn't have been the top of your  class. So you're trying to be humble,  

maybe diminishing the compliment,  I was a big fish in a small pond.

All right, let's go to our final category,  which is hobbies. The first hobby is art. This  

is a picture of my children's art. They create  lots and lots and lots of art. So occasionally  

we lay it all on the floor. I take a picture  of it and they can save a few items to put in  

a little notebook to save, but I can't save  everything they make. I mean, you see here,  

one of these pieces of art is just a couple  circles. One of these pieces of art is a picture  

of bones that they drew. One has some beads that  they glued to a paper. I can't save all of that.

But these drawings are still really  special and I want to save some of  

them because they're keepsakes. So each of  my children has a folder with little slots  

and they can put those special pieces of art,  those keepsakes in those slots to save them  

for the future. Sometimes we hang them on the  refrigerator, sometimes we hang them on the wall,  

and sometimes we give them to grandparents  because these types of homemade gifts,  

we sometimes say handmade gifts, those  are the most special, right? So when  

I fold that and send it in the mail to  their grandparents, it's really special.

The next type of hobby is gaming. Some people are  really into gaming. You might play video games  

occasionally, maybe on the weekends, maybe after  school or work or maybe never. For me, I've never  

been into gaming, but I know that a lot of people  are. If you are really into gaming, you might say,  

"I'm a gamer." That means you're someone who  really likes to play video games. We're not  

talking about board games or card games, this  is specifically for video games to be a gamer.

You might play on a console, you might play  on a PC, you might play on a TV like this.  

And usually when you play video games, you  are trying to level up to become better and  

to have a better level. I like using this  expression to talk about English, that you  

are trying to level up your English skills  by watching this lesson. I hope that you are.

The next hobby is sports. You might play organized  sports like basketball, soccer, football, tennis,  

these types of organized sports. They are also  team sports. Sometimes tennis is a team sport,  

sometimes not, but basketball is definitely a  team sport. A fun casual expression that we use  

when you don't want to play a basketball  game, but you want to get some exercise,  

you might say, "Want to shoot  some hoops?" Shoot some hoops.

So my neighbor has a basketball hoop on their  driveway and they let us go shoot some hoops on  

their driveway. We don't have a basketball  hoop, but it's okay because we can use our  

neighbors and go shoot some hoops. It's good  exercise, it's fun, and it's just like a casual  

hobby activity. When you play basketball or  other sports, there is offense and defense.  

Notice the pronunciation of these words. I'm  on offense or I'm on defense. This is great.

The next hobby is to do outdoorsy  things. For me, I love spending time  

in nature. This is a little creek near  my house. You can see me and my two sons  

just sitting here. They were splashing in the  freezing cold water, but they don't care. They  

loved it. It was a beautiful day. We have a  little picnic, enjoy our time because I would  

say we are nature-lovers. This is my preferred  weekend activity, just enjoying some fresh air  

in the great outdoors. We oftentimes link  the word great with outdoors. I love to go  

to the great outdoors, get some fresh air  and sunshine and you just feel refreshed.

The next hobby that a lot of people have  is dancing. I love the slang expression  

to cut a rug. Sometimes we use this for  older people. So if your grandma goes to  

your wedding and she's dancing a lot at your  wedding, you might say, "Wow, look at Grandma  

cutting a rug." We don't really use this for  younger people, at least I haven't heard that,  

but it's often associated with older people  or like a older generation, cutting a rug.

If you are not good at dancing, you  might say, "I have two left feet,  

but I'll try to dance anyway." I have two left  feet. Or we can use an idiom about dancing,  

when you say it takes two to tango. So tango is  a type of dance, a type of South American dance,  

but when we use it takes two to tango,  we're often using this as a metaphor.

If you are in a relationship with someone,  

you have a boyfriend or girlfriend or a  husband or wife, and you're arguing a lot,  

and for example, if your wife says to you, "You  are always the problem," your husband might say,  

"You know what? It takes two to tango." That means  it takes two people to have relationship problems.

In my opinion, this is not always  true. Sometimes it is someone's fault,  

but we often use this in relationships to  say, you know what? It takes two people to  

have problems. It also takes two people to  fix the relationship. You both have to be  

willing to do that. It takes two to tango,  so we both have to work at it together.

Well, congratulations, you just learned  250 important vocabulary expressions  

with pictures. I highly recommend  downloading the free PDF worksheet  

so that you never forget all of  these phrases, the definitions,  

the sample sentences. All of this will give  you extra input to help you never forget it.

And use these expressions when you speak,  that's so important to be able to express  

yourself completely. You can click on  the link in the description to download  

that free PDF worksheet today. Well, thank  you so much for learning English with me,  

and I'll see you again next Friday for a  new lesson here on my YouTube channel. Bye.

But wait, do you want more? I recommend watching  this video next, 250 more important English  

vocabulary words with pictures. You'll learn  why it's rude to say that someone is cheap, but  

it's polite to say that they're frugal. Watch that  video with me to find out, and I'll see you there.