IDIOMS AND PHRASES for IELTS
Big Cheese: An important person in a company or organization.
Sentence – Jacob thinks he’s a big cheese now that he’s been promoted to assistant manager.
Big Deal: An important event or accomplishment.
Sentence – Being the first in her family to graduate college was a big deal to Katie.
Big Fish: An important person.
Sentence – Meeting a big fish like the company’s CEO can be quite an intimidating experience for an intern.
Big Picture: A wide perspective; a broad view of something.
Sentence – You need to focus on the big picture here, and stop getting bogged down in the day-to-day operations. That’s what we’re paying you for as a high-level manager.
Big time: If you do something big time, you do it to a great degree.
Sentence – Though she’d been acting for years, it was after her role in last summer’s blockbuster that she finally hit the big time.
Birds of a Feather: People having similar characters, backgrounds, interests, or beliefs.
Sentence – I’m not surprised these two are such friends; they are birds of a feather flock together.
Bird’s-Eye View: A view from above; a broad perspective on something.
Sentence – In order to determine why the company was headed towards a fiscal disaster, the CFO had to take a step back and get a bird’s eye view of the situation so he could locate the cause of the problem.
Bite Off More Than You Can Chew: Try to do more than one is capable of doing.
Sentence – I bit off more than I could chew when I volunteered to manage three little league teams in one season.
Bite the Bullet: To do something even though it involves pain, discomfort, or difficulty.
Sentence – I don’t actually enjoy cleaning, but I bite the bullet and do it so that everything in my house isn’t covered in a thick layer of dust.
Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Act badly toward someone who has helped you.
Sentence – You might not agree with your parents’ rules, but be careful about biting the hand that feeds you, because you owe everything you have to them.
Bitter Pill to Swallow: An unpleasant fact that one must accept.
Sentence – When Brett’s parents stopped giving him money to pay his bills and told him to get a job, it was a bitter pill for him to swallow.
Black and White: A clear distinction between good and bad, positive and negative.
Sentence – In what decade did color movies start to replace black and white ones?
Black Eye: A mark of shame.
Sentence – He had a pretty bad black eye after the bully punched him in the face.
Black Sheep: A person who does not fit into a group, especially a family.
Sentence – The studio is proving to be quite the black sheep of the movie industry, making big-budget films that fly in the face of Hollywood’s conventions.
Black-and-Blue: Bruised, showing signs of having been physically harmed.
Sentence – I’m probably going to be black and blue after falling down the steps this morning.
Blank Check: Permission to spend or do whatever one wishes; carte blanche.
Sentence – The company was having a difficult time retaining good employees so the manager was given a blank check to increase salaries and restructure his department.
Blinded by Love: When a person is so madly in love with somebody that they can’t see the person’s faults or negative characteristics.
Sentence – People are often blinded by love, making bad judgments and wrong choices, or doing stupid and foolish things, under the influence of love.
