Hello everyone and welcome back to another lesson. Today we're looking at super-advanced
and clever English phrases now I know you guys are a clever and sophisticated bunch
so you need some phrases that you can easily have up your sleeve that you can produce at
work or at a dinner party that will make you sound impressive now some of these are
a little bit longer so they might take a little bit more effort to learn but trust
me the result will be good right everybody put your witty hat on and let's get started!
number one is it is all part of life's rich tapestry now a tapestry is a very large woven
painting and a kind of ancient sort of painting very famous tapestry was the bayer tapestry
now it's something which depicts scenes or depicts life and would be woven together now
we use this phrase when we have a difficult experience or an experience which has been
mixed in terms of whether it's been good and bad now imagine i don't have a great day now
i could say oh what a difficult day that was but i suppose it's all part of life's rich tapestry
so all part of the good the bad and the ugly of life so when you have mixed experiences or
perhaps you've had a more negative experience you can comment on someone else's experience by saying
oh well it's all part of life's rich tapestry and in this case you're hoping to kind of make
them feel that it's character building and that you know life is good and bad it can be
like that sometimes or you can say about your own experiences it's all part of life's rich
tapestry the second one is something is peppered with something is peppered with now this is an
idiomatic phrase and it means that something is covered in something think about pepper
pepper goes everywhere and it's kind of sprinkled on so if you think about saying that something is
sprinkled with it's actually very similar so if we say india is a country which is peppered with
culture and history we mean it's covered in it's found everywhere the english language is peppered
with idioms and expressions so if you want a replacement to phrases like it features a lot
or there's a lot of or sprinkled with or covered with you could actually say it is
peppered with now if you want to make a joke about the uncertainty of life
a fantastic phrase to use would be only two things are certain in life death and taxes now this
obviously is quite ironic but in some ways it is quite true those are two definite certainties now
if people are saying we don't know what's going to happen and oh well we're speculating about this
you could say well only two things are certain in this life death and taxes next one this is another
phrase which is in the same vein which means to be very similar to or on the level of the
previous one and this includes some good sarcastic british humor us brits do love a bit of sarcasm we
love to be ironic if you want to watch my full video on british humor and learn more about
it then you can click up here however if people are getting a little bit negative and they're
getting a bit down and you want to cheer them up you don't want them to take life too seriously
if they're feeling a bit down you could always say to them cheer up the worst is yet to come
cheer up the worst is yet to come and hopefully this will produce a little bit of a laugh can be
used at work can be used socially good one to have up your sleeve if you want to cheer someone up in
the right context number five is to scrape the barrel to scrape the barrel now this is an idiom
and this means to have the worst of something to have only found the poorest quality of something
or the only using the porous quality of something so of course a barrel is where beer is stored
and the bottom of the barrel the last of the barrel was the lowest quality beer
of course because it's the final part it's not like the good quality part of beer that comes from
the top so if we say wow they're really scraping the barrel with these interviewees i really
thought we'd produce some better candidates or you could say this year's x factor is really scraping
the barrel in terms of the contestants none of them seem very good number six again a little bit
of a sarcastic one very british and this is the road to success is always under construction the
road to success is always under construction how true is that statement now if somebody is worrying
about the fact that they're not successful or for example something is not as straightforward as
they thought they're having a bit of a bumpy time in terms of their success you could say to them
don't worry the road to success is always under construction this phrase is likely to get to laugh
or at the very least a smile number seven this is a verb this is to hobnob to hobnob quite a classy
word to use to hobnot and it means to mix socially with people who are of a high status high social
standing so if we say well tonight i'm hobnobbing with the great and good i mean important people
at my company or in my particular group whatever it is i'm doing but i'm mixing with the important
people and socially mixing with them networking if you like so to hognob so we might say well
she's hobnobbing with the great and the good or she's hobnobbing with the key players this evening
number eight is to outfox somebody now you may know that we often use animals and idioms and
expressions as many languages do and i wonder what a fox is associated with in your language
but in english a fox is associated with cunning with cleverness there's something about a fox's
face which looks clever now if we say that we have been outfoxed it means that somebody has
been cleverer than us and has beat us at something so they've outsmarted us synonym for outsmart or
to have bested somebody at something so if we say when we were playing snooker she outfoxed me
or my competitor at work outfoxed me and he got chosen for the project instead of me
he came up with something more impressive at the last minute he outfoxed me next one this is
another animal related one this is to weasel your way in or out of something now a weasel is this
animal here a weasel now a weasel is associated with untrustworthy or underhand behavior
so if we say that person's a weasel we mean we don't trust them we think they're
up to no good a little bit like saying somebody is a snake so if we say she weaseled her way into the
boss's affections we mean she was very clever and very sneaky about how she got into his affections
you can also weasel your way out of something if you weasel your way out of something again
you do it in a clever or sneaky way a way which is not really fair or right so if we say how did
he weasel his way out of the extra work activities we're like how did he manage to do that we think
there's something not trustworthy about that number 10 fantastic one this is in a conundrum
a conundrum well this is quite the conundrum so a conundrum is something which you can't fix or
solve a difficult situation something which has you scratching your head now layla talked about
this in her video on 10 phrases to sound smart in english if you want to see that that is up here
so we can say well it's quite a conundrum knowing what to do in this situation for example
in businesses it's a conundrum whether to spend more money on marketing or on product development
or it's a conundrum how to discipline my teenage daughter number 11 is to rub
shoulders this is an idiom it's not literal to rub shoulders and this means very similar
to hobnob so if you're rubbing shoulders with people it means you're mixing socially
and we will often say that we rub shoulders with people who are impressive so we might say well i'm
rubbing shoulders with the great and the good now or look who i'm rubbing shoulders with tomorrow
so it can mean i'm mixing with impressive people to rub shoulders with to be in close contact with
people and usually you regard them as impressive number 12 again another idiom this one is to be a
happy camper to be a happy camper to be a happy camper just means that the person is happy and
satisfied so i might say well if you get me on a beach with a cocktail i'm a happy camper
which is very true not possible at the moment i'm afraid we're in winter in the uk
but i would definitely be a happy camper if i was on a beach with a cocktail for sure
now we might also say that somebody isn't a happy camper we might say the boss won't be a happy
camper if she hasn't had her morning coffee so if somebody doesn't seem that happy we can also say
she's not a happy camper today number 13 we can describe something as being difficult by saying
it is like pulling teeth like pulling teeth it's very difficult to remove teeth if you've ever had
to have a tooth removed thankfully i haven't but i know from other people that it's very very painful
and difficult to have your tooth removed so if we describe a situation as being like pulling teeth
we mean that it is very very difficult we usually mean that it's very difficult to get information
out of the person so we might say trying to get honest information out of that politician is like
pulling teeth number 14 is to rack your brains to rack your brains and this is where you're trying
to think very carefully about something or think a lot about it it's difficult to remember it or
difficult to solve it so you could say i'm racking my brains about how many u.s presidents they've
been so we might say i'm racking my brains about how we can solve this a good example for you guys
might be i'm racking my brains here about whether i should use the past continuous or the past
perfect i'm going to have to refresh my grammar because i'm racking my brains about it number
15 the last one is to put a pin in something to put a pin in something and this means to stop
something and put it aside for later i know in american english you can say to table it meaning
like to shell it to put it aside for now so we might say let's let's put a pin in this let's
come back to this after lunch or let's put a pin in this project for now i think we've got other
things that are more important right now let's put a pin in it for now and we'll come back to it
as soon as we have the time the pin looks like this so you would imagine that you're getting a
piece of paper your metaphorical project has been pinning on your board but until you have time to
do it right guys i hope these super advanced and a little bit witty phrases are going to elevate
your english to the next level and help you to sound a little bit more witty and clever perhaps
at a dinner party or at the right social occasion please try to use any of them in a sentence below
and i will take a look at that and also if you can think of any other clever or witty phrases
please do leave them for me in the comments below see you in the next video everyone bye-bye