50 Common Idioms & Their Meanings: FREE Printable
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Get a FREE printable pdf list of 50 common idioms in English and their meanings. Use it to start conversations and enhance lessons about idioms, semantics, and literal vs. figurative meanings.
What Are Idioms?
Idioms are phrases or expressions that do not express the literal meaning its words, but instead, convey a figurative (or idiomatic) meaning.
Examples of Idioms:
- It’s raining cats and dogs” means heavy rain, not actual animals falling from the clouds.
- “Break a leg” means “good luck” and has nothing to do with physically breaking a leg.
- “Piece of cake” means simple or easy, not a literal slice of birthday cake.
- “On cloud nine” means very happy, not something that’s sitting on top of nine clouds.
There are thousands of idioms in the English language, and knowing them is important to fluent communication and comprehension.
You must rely on prior knowledge, context, and have cultural understanding in order to understand idioms, which is what makes them so tricky!
All students benefit from explicit instruction when it comes to idioms, but some students, especially ELLs or those with language processing difficulties like dyslexia, often have trouble understanding figurative meanings.
For these students, it’s especially important that to provide explicit instruction and repeat, varied exposures to practice with idioms.
List of Common Idioms & Meanings
➡️ Get this list as a FREE printable pdf in the “Download & Print” section below!
- Break a leg: Good luck
- Piece of cake: Easy
- On cloud nine: Very happy
- Out of the blue: Unexpected
- Hit the books: Study hard
- Eat crow/your words: Admit wrong
- Heart of gold: Kind, good
- Lend a hand: Help someone
- Spill the beans: Tell a secret
- In a pickle: A tricky situation
- On the fence: Undecided
- Hold your horses: Hold on, wait
- Ants in your pants: Excited, Fidgety
- Green thumb: Good at gardening
- The last straw: The final in a series of difficulties
- Throw in the towel: Give up
- Hit the nail on the head: Get it exactly right
- Cat’s out of the bag: A secret revealed
- In the same boat: In a similar situation
- Water under the bridge: Something in the past that’s been forgiven
- Bite the bullet: Do something unpleasant
- Call it a day: End things for now
- Out of hand: Not under control
- Hang in there: Don’t give up
- Off the hook: Free of an obligation
- Pulling your leg: Joking with you
- Speak of the devil: When a person appears right after being mentioned
- Elephant in the room: The obvious thing being ignored
- Drop the ball: Fail, make a mistake
- Bee in your bonnet: Talking and thinking mostly about one thing
- Cop to it: Admit, confess
- Could eat a horse: Very hungry
- Under the weather: Sick, ill
- All ears: Listening intently
- Fish out of water: Out of place
- Tongue in cheek: Ironic, joking, insincere
- Icing on the cake: A bonus, the best part
- Splitting hairs: Focusing on small distinctions
- When pigs fly: Never, impossible
- Night owl: A person who stays up late
- Fly on the wall: Someone who listens and watches, but doesn’t participate
- Get off my back: Leave me alone
- Butter up: Flatter or be overly kind
- On thin ice: Close to being in trouble
- Cream of the crop: The very best
- Drop in the bucket: Insignificant compared to what’s needed
- Egg on your face: Be embarrassed
- In the doghouse: In trouble, out of favor
- Play it by ear: Act without a plan
- Dig it: Understand or agree
👩🏫 Teaching Tips
⭐️ Make learning collaborative: As a group, go over common idioms one-by-one to discover what your students already know, and discuss them.
I like to have students highlight in one color if they’ve heard the idiom before and another if it’s a new phrase.
⭐️ Encourage visualization: Draw pictures or imagine the what the literal meaning of idioms mean, then connect them to the actual meaning.
- For example: Draw a slice of cake for the idiom “Piece of cake,” and discuss how it actually means “Easy or simple.”
⭐️ Creative writing topics: Have students choose 1-2 idioms and write a short story that includes them.
⭐️ Further reading: “What Does THAT Mean? for students to better grasp idioms. My students absolutely love this book!
⭐️ Gamify Learning: Make the learning multi-sensory and engaging with our Idioms bundle (seen above) on TPT or in the LL Unlimited library. Kids can play a matching idioms game, idioms in context puzzle, use our idioms reproducible book, and more!
⭐️ Move from comprehension to production: Challenge students to create their own idioms using common or relatable situations.
⭐️ Continue Discovering: You’ll find that once you start discussing idioms, students become more and more tuned to hearing them in everyday conversation.
They’ll often come to me and say, “I have another one for your list!“ We’ve kept a running list that continues to grow!
Download & Print
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➡️ More FREEBIES: Idioms Worksheet (coming soon).