Learn English - 6 common idioms about TIME

To take your time, do time, be ahead of your time... what do these mean? Improve your English by learning to understand 6 common idioms about time. I’ll teach you what it means to have the time of your life, to run out of time, to give someone a hard time, and more. Take your English to a higher level by learning more idioms today. Then take the quiz: TRANSCRIPT: Hi. My name is Rebecca from . In today’s lesson, you’ll have a chance to learn six idioms related to time. Now, just to remind you: an idiom is a combination of words which have a specific meaning which is different from when those words are used individually. So let’s look at these idioms, and I’m sure you’ll be able to start using them very soon after watching this lesson. So, the first one is this... Now, what I’ve done is actually I’ve written each of them in a... in a sentence. Right? So I’m going to read the sentence to you, try to see what you think it means, and then I’ll explain to you what it means. First one: “I had the time of my life.“ Okay. Do you understand what that means? Let me try to give you a clue. “I had the time of my life when I went on my vacation.“ So: “the time of my life“ actually means a very, very good time; the best time ever. I had the time of my life, I had a wonderful time, an excellent time, an extraordinary time. Okay? So that’s the expression: “the time of my life.“ Now, you could also say: “He had the time of his life.“, “She had the time of her life.“, “We had the time of our life.“ So these idioms can be used in that way, remember that, and that applies to all of them. Next one: “Take your time.“ What does it mean if I say to someone: “It’s okay, take your time“? All right. “Take your time“ means don’t rush, do things as quietly and slowly as you need to do them in order to do them calmly and properly. Don’t feel under pressure. Don’t hurry. Take your time. Okay? Next one: “He did time in the past.“ What does that mean? Any idea? What does it mean: “to do time“? Well, “to do time“ actually means to spend time in jail, to spend time in prison. So, this expression is important; you need to understand it. It has a completely different meaning from what you might think and really the words: “to do time“ doesn’t tell you anything at all, so you really need to know the idiom. Okay, next one. You might be able to figure this one out. “She ran out of time on the exam.“ Because that tends to happen to some of us. Right? We are working and working, and then before you know it, the time is up. So what happened? Well, you ran out of time like this lady here. “She ran out of time on the exam.“ Which means that you didn’t have enough time to finish something. All right? You didn’t have sufficient time before the deadline. Now, it doesn’t have to mean just in hours; it could mean in days, in months, whatever. We ran out of time on the project. The project might have taken three years. All right? But to run out of time means to not have sufficient time to complete something that you were supposed to finish. Next one: “Why are you giving her such a hard time?“ So the idiom here is: “to give someone a hard time“. Any idea what it means? Might be able to figure this one out. It means to give someone difficulty. Okay? Because maybe it’s a new employee and the boss is getting angry at this person and he’s giving... He’s shouting or he’s correcting her all the time. So someone else says: “Why are you giving her such a hard time? Why are you treating her so harshly or so roughly?“ Okay? So to give somebody a hard time means that. Last one: “She was ahead of her time.“ What does it mean? Again, from the sentence, I don’t give you too many clues. If we say that a woman was ahead of her time, it means that she had thoughts, ideas or actions that were not normal for the period... People who lived during that period of history. Okay? So, this could refer to someone who was a scientist, it could refer to a philosopher. Right? Anybody like that. A mathematician. Their ideas, their knowledge was not really in keeping with what people knew at that time or thought; it was way ahead of that. Now, it usually refers... Or it’s usually used in connection with famous people, but it doesn’t have to be. It could be that you had a great-grandmother or a grandmother who did some things in her lifetime which most women didn’t do at that time. So you could also use it in that situation to say that: “My grandmother was ahead of her time.“ Let’s say she finished her... Her BA and her MA or she became a doctor at a time when women didn’t do that or in places where people... Women didn’t do that. Okay? And of course, it can be used about men as well.