Hi, Bob the Canadian here,
as I continue to teach English online, I like to listen
to all the English speakers around me
to identify what makes English kind of strange sometimes.
One of the things I've noticed
is that English speakers like to exaggerate.
When you exaggerate,
it means you kind of don't tell the truth
or you add to something to make it sound bigger
or worse than it actually was.
A good example would be something like, oh,
I went to the store and there was a million people there
and it took forever.
I just exaggerated twice there,
there probably wasn't a million people there
and it obviously didn't take forever.
Anyways, in this English lesson,
I'm going to go over 10 different ways
that English speakers exaggerate when they talk,
some common phrases we use when we talk about time
or how hot it is outside and other things as well.
(upbeat music)
Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson
where I'm going to teach you some common English phrases
that English speakers use
and phrases they use to exaggerate a situation.
Before we get started though,
if this is your first time here,
don't forget to click that red subscribe button over there
and gimme a thumbs up
if this video helps you learn a little bit more English.
Well, I'm outside today.
It's a summer day.
It's hot out here.
That would be the normal way to describe this day.
But later today, it's going to go over 30 degrees.
It's going to be very hot outside
and a common English expression
or phrase to talk about a really hot day is to say,
I'm melting.
It's really hot outside, I'm melting,
melting like an ice cube would melt.
That's kind of the thing that we're referring to.
It's so hot outside that I'm melting.
Now, of course, I'm exaggerating.
People don't actually melt.
But one of the first ways we exaggerate when talking
is when we're talking about a hot day
and we'll say something like I'm melting.
Now, of course, sometimes it's the middle of winter
and it's really cold outside.
And you would say it's cold outside,
but if you wanted to exaggerate a common English phrase
and it's a bit of a funny one
because it has the word butt in
it is to say, I'm freezing my butt off.
It's so cold outside, I'm freezing my butt off.
If you don't know what your butt is,
it's the where your back joins your legs
on the back of your body there.
I'm not going to stand up and point to it.
So we're definitely exaggerating.
When you say I'm freezing my butt off,
your butt isn't actually freezing
and it's not going to actually fall off,
but it's definitely a way English speakers will exaggerate
when talking about really cold weather,
I'm freezing my butt off.
So I wanna move this picnic table, but I can't lift it.
My muscles aren't big enough.
This table is really heavy.
In fact, if I was to describe how heavy it is
and if I wanted to exaggerate,
I would say this table weighs a ton.
Often when we're talking about things
that are really, really heavy,
we will say that they weigh a ton.
They don't actually weigh a ton.
Obviously they don't weigh a ton.
There's no way a picnic table could weigh a ton,
but because I can't lift it
and because I think it's heavy,
that's how I would describe it.
This picnic table weighs a ton.
Boo,
I think I've told this story a number of times.
Once when I was a kid I hid behind a tree
and when my sister walked by, I jumped out and said, boo.
And it was at night,
it was in the dark and my sister was scared.
But if you want to exaggerate,
when you're talking about someone who's scared,
you say they're scared stiff.
My sister was scared stiff after I said, boo, it scared her.
She didn't, however, go like this.
She didn't freeze and she wasn't stiff as a board,
she actually was just really, really mad at me.
But if you wanna describe someone in English
as being really, really scared
you can exaggerate by saying that they were scared stiff.
So I haven't eaten for a few hours and now I'm hungry.
I really want to eat because I'm hungry.
That would be the normal way
to describe that feeling in English.
But as I've said, English speakers like to exaggerate.
So you will often hear people say,
I'm starving to describe the fact that they are hungry.
They'll say things like let's eat lunch now, I'm starving.
When's supper, dad?
I'm starving.
So instead of saying something simple and normal
like I'm hungry, English speakers like to exaggerate
and they'll say I'm starving.
When you're thirsty, though,
you might say I'm dying of thirst.
When you've been outside working on a hot day
and you just really want a drink of water.
Instead of saying, I'm thirsty,
I'm going to go have a drink of water.
You might say, I'm dying of thirst,
I'm going to go have a drink of water.
Now, of course, you're not actually dying.
You're just exaggerating,
it's kind of a silly way to say it in a sense,
but often you'll hear an English speaker say that
they'll say, hey, let's stop working for a bit.
Let's have a drink because I'm dying of thirst.
So one of the joys of being human
is that sometimes you need to wait.
Maybe you need to wait in line at the grocery store.
Maybe you need to wait in the waiting room
at the doctor's office.
Sometimes you need to wait
and then afterwards you might say to someone,
it took a long time or it took 10 minutes
before I could check out at the grocery store.
But, of course, if you wanted to exaggerate
you would use the word forever.
You would say, I went to the doctor's office
and I waited forever in the waiting room.
Or you might say, I went to the grocery store
and I waited forever in line.
Of course, you didn't actually wait forever.
If you had waited forever,
you would still be in that line
because forever never actually ends.
But if you wanted to express yourself
and emphasize just how long you waited,
you would say I waited forever.
So there are times in life
when you really want to do something,
maybe you've worked for months on end
and you really want to go on a holiday.
You would say, I want to go on a holiday
or if you wanted to exaggerate, you would say,
I'm dying to go on a holiday.
You're not actually dying,
but for some reason as English speakers,
we like to use that word to talk about things
we really want to do.
I'm dying to go on a holiday,
I'm dying to have a day off.
It just means that you really, really want something.
I'm dying to get this video done
because it's really hot out here and I'm melting.
So there I've used two different phrases
where I've exaggerated at the same time.
When you describe someone who's old,
you might say they're old.
Maybe you use that phrase to describe me.
You might say Bob the Canadian is old,
but if you wanted to exaggerate a bit,
you would say Bob the Canadian is as old as the hills.
This is a phrase that it's a bit of an older phrase,
the phrase itself is old as the hills, I guess.
But it's a phrase we use to describe someone
who's really, really old.
You might say, ah, that guy's old as the hills
meaning that they're almost as old as the earth itself.
You can use this to describe things as well.
You could say, oh, I need to buy a new car
because my old car it's as old as the hills,
basically meaning that it's really, really old.
So when I woke up this morning
I realized I had a lot of things to do today.
I could count the number of things
and I could say I have seven things to do today
or I have 14 things to do today.
But in English we like to exaggerate sometimes
when we're talking about the number of things.
So I could say I have a million things to do today,
I could even say I have a zillion things to do.
By the way, million is a real number.
Zillion is just a word we use to mean a lot of things.
When I went to the grocery store the other day
there were a million people in the store,
I had to wait forever in line.
There, I just used two exaggerations again.
So sometimes when you're counting things
instead of being precise, we just exaggerate.
And we'll just say, I have a million things to do
or I have a zillion things to do.
Lucky for me,
I'm almost done all of the things I have to do today.
So I don't have a zillion things to do anymore.
Well, thank you so much for watching this English lesson
where I hope you learned some common phrases
that English speakers use
when they want to exaggerate a little bit
when they're talking about different things.
Remember if this is your first time here,
don't forget to click that red subscribe button over there
and gimme a thumbs up
if this video helped you learn
just a little bit more English
and I'll see you next week with another English lesson.
Bye.
(upbeat music)