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Transcript
Richard: Spill the beans or spill the tea? Two phrases, very similar ideas. To spill secrets or to share gossip. But one is over a century old, while the other only became really popular in the last decade. From ancient Greece to TikTok, the English language is full of these quirky phrases that either stand the test of time or get a glow up. I'm here in London to find out who really 'understands the assignment' when it comes to knowing their idioms, proverbs and phrases.
Richard: Do you know what it means and where it might come from?
Person 1: No.
Person 2: Don't be fooled by appearances because it won't necessarily be as bright as you might think it'd be.
Richard: Any idea where that might come from?
Person 3: Um, Manchester.
Person 4: I'm going to say, it's a cockney phrase.
Richard: It actually dates back to 1229, Middle English.
Person 5: I think it's like 'chin up'.
Person 6: That's got to be at the pub, innit?
Person 3: Like 'chin-chin', like 'cheers'.
Richard: When would we say 'chin-chin'?
Person 7: All the time.
Person 8: We know that one.
Richard: Any idea where it might come from?
Person 4: Chin-chin …
Person 9: It's just like the sound that the glasses make when they, like, collide.
Person 10: China?
Richard: Yeah. It's a Chinese phrase, meaning 'please'.
Person 3: They ate all their dinner.
Person 8: They didn't pay the bill.
Person 11: They ate. Tens across the board, you know?
Person 6: You ate and left no crumbs.
Person 1: Girl, you ate and left no crumbs.
Richard: It means someone did something flawlessly. More, sort of, social media, Gen Z.
Person 2: Oh well, I wouldn't know it, would I? That explains that then.
Person 3: Saying someone's said something that they haven't.
Person 9: I have not heard it.
Person 4: You're, like, saying what they're saying, but you're, kind of, like, pre-empting what they're saying, but it's, like, they haven't said that.
Person 6: When you're looking bad and then you're looking 'bad'.
Person 2: Glow up. Presumably this is new.
Person 1: When you get really hot.
Person 4: You've had a transformation.
Richard: Exactly.
Person 11: No one's talking about it but it's all there. We all know it's there.
Richard: And any idea where it might come from? This is tricky.
Person 4: The circus?
Person 10: India?
Richard: Why am I doing this? Well, the British Council has put together a list of a hundred phrases, spanning generations, to explore how the English language is evolving and also to celebrate its rich history. We've also measured which generations are using which phrases. For example, some classics are falling off the radar with younger generations. Phrases like 'below the belt' and 'step up to the plate' barely show up on online platforms like YouTube and Twitch. Newer phrases like YOLO and 'red flag' are being picked up by older generations. To see the full list of a hundred phrases, check out the Phrase-ology collection.
© British Council
To kill two birds with one stone
To achieve two goals with a single action or effort. It’s often used when someone completes two tasks efficiently at the same time.
Example: “I had to go to the library, and since it’s next to the grocery store, I killed two birds with one stone.”
My favourite English idiom or phrase is "Like a horse". The phrase means to work very hard. A horse is a hardy animal. A horse can do a lot of difficult work. A horse works hard and hard. The phrase "like a horse" is hard work.
"Better late than never." A phrase I often use, such as: when I want to achieve my goals, to complete something I really wanted to do, but for some reason I couldn't, like learning English.
Another: I'm dead. When I'm tired and very exhausted
or I made a mistake in something, I screwed up as a human being, I lost, I was left on the sidelines.
- I don't know if I understand it correctly-.