Learn Idioms and Speak Like a Local

Idioms are regularly used by native speakers.
- You see idioms in newspapers and hear them on the radio and television.
- They are used in a wide range of social and business contexts.
- Failure to understand idioms can create a lot of confusion and can hinder your ability to understand what others are saying or doing.
Idioms are great ice-breakers
- They help make people who have not met before feel more relaxed with each other.
- This is particularly important when you are trying build new business relationships.

An idiom is an expression which has a meaning that is not obvious from the individual words.
For example, if someone tells you "how to suck eggs", they are not teaching you how to remove the insides of an egg and preserve its shell! What they are in fact doing, is offering you advice about something that you already know extremely well. The best way to understand an idiom like this is to see it in context -

I don’t want to tell you how to suck eggs, but you could try doing it like this.
Some of the entries in our Idiom Dictionary are not strictly speaking idioms, but rather similes and metaphors. However we have included them, because like idioms, their meaning is often difficult to determine from the words alone.