Mastering English: Idioms, Metaphors, Conditionals, and Vocabulary

Posted on Feb 5, 2025 in English

Common English Idioms and Metaphors

  • Follow your bent: Follow your direction.
  • Time flies
  • Slaving away: Work hard.
  • To be a bit snowed under: A lot of work to do.
  • Tighten our belts: Make economy.
  • Bitten off more than we can chew: Do more than you can do.

Metaphors About the Body

  • Point the finger at
  • Have a few hiccups: Some problems.
  • Break someone’s heart
  • Scarred: Fear of something.

Metaphors with Light

  • Something came to me in a flash
  • Glowing with pride
  • Spark my interest in
  • Be overshadowed by someone
  • Dawned on me: Realize.

Metaphors with Nature

  • Stormy relationship
  • His career blossomed
  • To be in floods of tears
  • The root of all my problems
  • Don’t have the foggiest idea of something.

Metaphors with Movement

  • Reach a crossroad
  • Follow someone’s footsteps
  • Rambling speech: Don’t have an idea of what is being said.
  • Go round in circles
  • Great strides: Improvements.

Other Common Idioms

  • Out of the blue: Complete surprise.
  • Over the moon
  • In deep water: Real trouble.
  • Got cold feet: Lost courage.
  • Put his socks up: Change his attitude, try harder.
  • On the tip of my tongue
  • Waste of space: Useless.
  • Row a lot: Blazing rows.
  • Take someone’s breath away
  • Traipse: Vagar.
  • Stern: Severo.
  • Brunt: Choque, embate.
  • Airbrushed: Editado como una imagen.
  • Rave: Alabar con entusiasmo.

Understanding Conditionals and Unreal Tenses

Would

  • Past habit: He would sneak into an alley.
  • Refusal on a past occasion: Walt wouldn’t listen.
  • The future in the past: He would devote the rest of his life.
  • Stressed would to show irritation: He would use my shoes, it really annoyed me.
  • Past tense to express unreality: Conditionals would and if.

Conditional Sentences

  • Second conditional (unreal): I would sleep at home if the baby didn’t make so much noise. (Refers to now, would + if + simple past)
  • Third conditional (unreal): None of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for a mouse. (Refers to the past, would + if + past participle)

Past Tenses

  • Past simple: Real past time: He’d become nostalgic when he told stories about… I couldn’t swim until I was 14.
  • Past perfect: Real past: I knew I had seen her before. She apologized, saying she hadn’t had time to phone me.

Unreal Tense – Wishes

  • I wish I had a lot of money. If I had a lot of money, I would open my own restaurant.

Conditional Types

  • Conditional 1 (real): If + simple present + will: If it rains, I will get wet. If you smoke, you will get a cough.
  • Conditional 2 (unreal): If + simple past + would: If I were taller, I would join the police force. If you saw a ghost, what would you do?

Will vs. Would

  • Will: Something is going to happen: If there is a nuclear war, we will die.
  • Would: Something is unlikely to happen: If there was a nuclear war, we would die (but I don’t think there will be).
  • Conditional 3 (unreal): If I had known his background, I would have never hired him.
  • Type 2 and 3 mixed: If I didn’t love her (but I do love her), I wouldn’t have married her (but I married her). If we had brought the map (but we didn’t), we would know (but we don’t) where we are.

Hypothesizing

  • Present state: I wish you lived nearer. If only I had a car. I wish you were here.
  • Present action or event: I wish you would help me more in the house. If only she wouldn’t wash her socks in the bath.

Vocabulary

Unit 5 Vocabulary

  • Bashfully: Shyly.
  • Dumbstruck: Striking (pasmado).
  • Retrieve: Recuperar, fetch.
  • Haphazard: Random.
  • Boastfulness: Jactancia, fanfarroneria.
  • Hectic: Busy.
  • Breathe a word to someone.
  • Getting at somebody (in front of others).
  • Thrilled to bits.
  • Keep up the good work.
  • Graze: Raspadura, apenas una herida.
  • Get hitched: To get married.
  • Couch potato: Someone who sits on a couch the whole day.

Grammar: Emphasis

  • Lucy moved to London.
  • What Lucy did was move to London.
  • Where Lucy moved to was London.
  • Why Lucy moved to London was because…
  • It was Lucy who moved to London.

Negative Inversion

After negative adverbials (never, nowhere, nothing, not until, rarely):

  • Never had he eaten a huge meal.
  • Only in Chile do you see…
  • Nothing do they appreciate more than… (The verb behaves like a question)
  • Nothing do I love more than pets.

You lend me, I borrow from you.