Lingo Mastery - The Great Book of American Idioms: A Dictionary of American Idioms, Sayings, Expressions & Phrases

If we go out on a limb, it must be a piece of cake to study a new tongue, right? Surely it cant be like pulling teeth to become fluent in a language. We think that you can bet your bottom dollar that youll be an expert if you dont cut corners. Wait what?

Learning a language that is, navigating around the basic terms, tools, and vocabulary, as well as learning to speak with others can be a pretty straightforward experience if you have the right resources.

But what about learning to speak like a native? Thats definitely not a simple task that you can accomplish overnight. Being able to communicate with a fluency that would put you on the same level as the people who have been speaking the language all their lives is a true challenge that many struggle to achieve.

More importantly, however, there are many big obstacles that can keep you from rising up the ranks to the highest level of fluency and vocabulary when learning English.

Spoken by around two billion people across the world and with native English-speaking nations on all six continents (seven, if you count the scientists housed on Antarctica!), as well as owning the title of the most widely learned second language in the world, you can be sure that possessing the ability to speak a native level of English will prove invaluable in both your personal life and your professional career.

In the first paragraph, we discreetly introduced you to some of the most typical expressions used in English across the globe, and most commonly in the United States of America (home to over 230 million speakers): idioms. Idioms are phrases that add value to sentences through figurative or literal meanings, allowing the speaker to express their emotions or thoughts in an interesting and occasionally amusing manner that adds very specific meaning to their words.

As you may imagine, idioms can be complicated both to understand and to use, due to the fact that they commonly have a different meaning than what they literally express. For example, someone being a dark horse has literally nothing to do with running on four legs with a rider on their back!

What makes idioms so special is that they give you an immense new range to express your thoughts, and they allow you to develop vocabulary for your learning; this means that you will have additional tools when speaking or writing, and youll be able to approach a native level of English at a greater rate. Its a win-win, so to speak.

All of these reasons are why we have created this book for you!

• Do you want to discover how to tell somebody theyre not behaving as they should?

• Do you need to explain that you have no idea what somebody is saying, but are not sure how to say it amusingly?

• What about using the most curious and unique expressions to describe a situation?

Once you have studied this book in depth, you will learn all of these things and more, and you will be able to shock your peers with your new knowledge of important expressions in English!

What this book is about and how it has been structured

As teachers and other professionals of the language-learning industry, we have discovered that some of the most important tools for expanding a students grasp of any language are the learning of idioms, expressions, and sayings. With these, a student will find that they possess a much better ability to communicate their ideas in conversations, and their integration into English-speaking cultures will be easier.

For this reason, we have produced The Great Book of American Idioms . This book will allow English students to learn these otherwise complicated and often overlooked concepts. Possessing such a resource can help them achieve a better understanding of a language as widely spoken as English, which is a skill as crucial at a personal level as it is at a professional one.

In this book, weve researched and put together a vast list of more than 1300 idioms, expressions, and sayings; these entries reflect an astonishing variety of origins, meanings, and uses, with many of them representing complicated phrases that would otherwise be difficult for the student to compile and study.

To ensure the student will enjoy a highly enriching experience, we have presented these idioms, expressions, and sayings in the following way:

• Over 1300 idioms listed alphabetically from A to Z, covering hundreds of different subjects and uses.

• The definition for each idiom, followed by an example that illustrates how the expression might be used.

• An easy-to-read example of the idiom in a sentence or short paragraph, intended to enhance the readers understanding of the individual expression.

These idioms do not represent a theme; they cover countless subjects that the student may encounter at a personal, academic, or professional level. Most have American origins and usage, but others are used in Britain, Australia, and other native English-speaking nations.

This book will enable you to study each group of idioms by each letter in the alphabet, in turn, allowing you to rapidly gain the vocabulary you will surely need as you work toward becoming a native-level English speaker.

How to make the most out of this book

As with any other language-learning resource, this book for all the hard work and effort put into its creation is only as good as the student who is using it to learn. Were good at what we do, but only you, the learner, can ensure that adequate results are achieved by continuously studying and implementing proper strategies.

But what type of tactics can you apply to improve your learning? What do we recommend as English teachers? What works and what doesnt? Thats where the true questions lie, and where many students end up failing.

It might be tempting to pick up this book, breeze through it, and never touch it again, checking it off an imaginary list like the groceries youve just bought at the supermarket, but these types of resources dont work that way. You actually need to establish a system for what youre doing.

Do not despair, however, as we have produced tried and tested methods for getting the most possible out of this book. Please apply these strategies if you want your learning to be at its best and most effective:

1. Dont rush. The idea of learning is mastering the curve, improving your abilities, and working toward your goals. This can take place in days, weeks, months, or years the choice is truly yours, and each student varies from one to the next. There is no sense in plowing through this book in a hurry; if you do, you wont really absorb what you set out to learn. Rushing is just one big, bad idea.

1. Take note of your progress for motivation. As we already mentioned, all of our resources are designed for progressive learning and gradual improvement, so be prepared to concentrate on long-term results. For this reason, it will be better if you take note of your progress and allow yourself to celebrate small victories as you go, instead of waiting until you reach the end to cheer and give yourself a pat on the back.

1. Carry this book when you can it makes for good reading material and an even better travel partner. You can pull out this book when you travel and have time to kill; you can read it when theres some time off at work or school and you feel like its the best moment; you can even take it out when at an airport or on a train, so that it can accompany you along the way and provide you with valuable lessons.