Speak Better English with Harry | Episode 567

In this podcast episode, we explain the meaning of English idioms related to movement and show how native speakers use them in real situations. Each idiom is broken down in simple English, with clear examples that help you understand both the meaning and the context.

This lesson is ideal for intermediate and advanced English learners who want to expand vocabulary, improve listening skills, and sound more natural in everyday conversations. It is also useful for learners preparing for IELTS, TOEFL, or Cambridge English exams, where idiomatic language is often tested.

By the end of the episode, you will be able to recognise and understand movement-related idioms more easily and use them with greater confidence in spoken English.

Transcript

0:09

Hi there, this is Harry. Welcome back to Advanced English Lessons with Harry, where I try to help you to get a better understanding of the English language, to help you with your conversational skills, your business English skills, interview skills, whatever your goals are, we're here to help. And for those of you and your friends or family who want one-to-one lessons, well, you know what to do. Just get in touch, www.englishlessonviaskype.com and you can apply for a free trial lesson and we'll be very happy to hear from you and very happy to help you. So without delaying you any further, let's get into this. So we're going to talk about idioms and today, as I said, it's idioms connected with movement. Okay, so I'll go through them and I'll list them out for you and then we'll go through them individually and give you some examples. So here they are. Idioms to do with movement. A stone's throw either away or a stone's throw from. You can use either preposition. As the crow flies. Follow your nose. In the middle of nowhere. Lose your bearings. Make a beeline for something or somebody. Off the beaten track. Stop dead in your tracks. Take a shortcut to. And take the scenic route. Okay, so let's go through them one by one. So start with the first one, a stone's throw. And as I said, you can have it as a stone's throw away or a stone's throw from. Generally, what it means is you are very close to something. Okay, so in terms of position or location. So, you know, if somebody's asking you, where's your new apartment? Ah, it's only a stone's throw from the motorway. You take the first or the second or the third exit, and then you just go down and you'll see the direction to my estate, Idiots Avenue. Okay, so it's a stone's throw away from the motorway. Or it's a stone's throw from the shopping center, which suits my wife because she can walk and she can go there and shop every day if she wishes. So when something is a stone's throw away or from something, we mean very close to. Okay, so literally a stone's throw is how you could pick up a stone and throw it. So if it's a small stone, you can throw it quite far, but usually a stone, you can't throw it so far. So it does mean generally that something is very close, very close to. Okay, second, as the crow flies. Now, what this means as the crow flies, when you look at a crow, it means in a straight line. They don't always fly in straight lines, of course, but as the crow flies generally means in a straight line. So if you were asking me for directions or how long is it from point A to point B, I might say to you, well, as the crow flies, it's about one kilometer. So if you take a straight line from here to the shopping center and you measured the distance, then it would be one kilometer. Of course, you can't go in a straight line because you have to go out of the developments, onto the motorway, around the shopping center, blah, blah, blah. And it's going to take you about three kilometers to travel the one kilometer. But as the crow flies means if you could get there directly from A to B. So we use this to describe, again, how close we are to something or how far we are away from something. You know, where's the football stadium? Well, as the crow flies, and if you look down there, you can just see the top of the football stadium. So as the crow flies, it's about two or three kilometers, but it usually takes me 40 minutes because we have to go through the city, we have to go over the bridge, you've got all those traffic lights, so it takes a little bit longer. But as the crow flies, it's only about three kilometers. Next, follow your nose. So to follow your nose means to get a sense of direction. Usually when we say follow your nose, it means you'll get a general idea of where you're going by looking around you, look at the buildings, and you'll get an understanding that you're heading perhaps for the city centre. So if you have some guests staying with you and they ask you, how do we get to the city center? Well, just go down the end of the street here, turn right and then follow your nose. Meaning you'll see signs as the streets become a little more busy, they'll become busier, the shops become more obvious and there is less residential area. Then you're beginning to come into the city centre. So just follow your nose. So if you wanted to give somebody some actual directions, you could tell them just go straight down this street without turning. You know, when you get to the bottom of the street, you can see generally where the flow of the traffic is. So just go in that direction and you'll be generally in that particular area. Or if somebody says to you, well, how did you get on yesterday? Did you go for your hike? And you say, yes. You said, but you didn't take your mobile phone or you didn't take a compass. Ah, I just followed my nose. So I generally went in the direction that I thought was pretty safe or judging by the terrain, judging by the way the road was rising. I felt that it was going to lead me to the top of the hill. And sure enough, it did. So I just followed my nose. Okay, now literally, when people follow the nose, they usually do it by scent because the nose is how we smell something. So we sniff and we smell something. So a dog who is a sniffer dog, as they call them, they follow their nose. They follow a scent to lead them to somebody who's lost or to sniff out contraband tobacco in the airport or narcotic drugs, whatever it happens to be. But when we say follow your nose, it generally means just go in the direction that you think is reasonable because you're probably going to be fairly accurate. And then when you get to the bottom of the street, you'll probably see a signpost anyway, and that will give you a lead or an indication as to where you should be going. So follow your nose. Next, in the middle of nowhere. Well, metaphorically, we can all be in the middle of nowhere at times when we are completely lost, lost in our work, lost in our thoughts, lost in paperwork, whatever it might be. But when we say in the middle of nowhere in terms of location, it usually means that we are a long way from civilization or we are a long way from any town or city or we're a long way from the, for example, the shopping center. Oh, we moved out of town. My wife wanted a garden or I wanted a garden and we've moved quite a long distance out. Literally, we are in the middle of nowhere. There are no other houses around us, only very, very few. There's one road in, one road out. There are no shops. It's really quiet and it's very peaceful at the weekend, but quite literally, it's in the middle of nowhere. Or if you take the wrong direction and you're driving and you go on for several kilometers and you realize that you are lost, so you stop the car, your phone friend or a colleague and they ask you, where are you? And you say, well, I don't know. I took a wrong turning. There was a diversion sign and I think I got it wrong because I'm in the middle of nowhere. I'm not actually sure where I am and I'm not sure I can get a position on my mobile phone. So being in the middle of nowhere can be fun if you don't mind being lost. But if you're trying to get to a meeting or trying to find somebody, then being in the middle of nowhere can be a little bit problematic. Okay, so we can move in the middle of nowhere. We can have our holiday and when we find the hotel, you know, the description of the hotel in the brochure or on the internet said, short distance from the beach, wonderful views of the sea, a short taxi ride to the center of the city. And when you actually get to the hotel, it's actually miles away. If you stand on your tippy toes on the roof of the hotel, you might be able to see the sea. You certainly can't see it from your balcony. It's a long, long distance to the beach. There's a motorway in between. And the city center is nowhere to be seen. So he said, oh, this is a great choice. I think we've ended up in the middle of nowhere. Next, to lose your bearings. Well, when we lose something, it means we can't find it. The car keys or the classic things or the wallet or the mobile phone, we put it down somewhere and we don't know where we've left it. So we can lose those items. When you lose your bearings, it usually means that you have become confused about exactly where you are and where everything is relative to your position. So if you're walking in the countryside, you take a few turnings and when you look around, everything looks the same. Hills, trees, rocks, fields, and you're not quite sure which direction you came from. You backtrack a little bit, meaning you follow your path that you came up, which you thought you came up, and when you look around, all the trees look the same. So you've lost your bearings slightly, so you're a little bit confused. So what do you do in those situations? Well, what might be a good idea is to try and get to a little bit of higher ground where you can look down on where you came from. And that might give you an indication as to where you should be going or where you came from. Okay, so you can give this idiom or use this idiom when you're giving somebody a warning. Well, when you go on your hikes, make sure you don't lose your bearings, meaning keep an eye open for something unusual, a signpost, a broken gate post, a dead tree. So when you retrace your steps later on, you'll see these and you'll know that you're on the right path, on the right way back. So be careful not to lose your bearings. You could lose your bearings generally if somebody interrupts you when you are reading a document and they keep you talking for a few minutes and then when you get back to reading the document you can't remember where you left off so you have to open it again and try and find out where you left off. So you could lose your bearings in that way. If you're a sailor, which I'm not, and you're in the open sea, well, very, very easy to lose your bearings if you have no idea where the land is. So if you go out in the water, sometimes best to keep your line of vision between the coast and some point on the coast that you can spot easily enough so you don't lose your bearings and get completely lost. Okay, next, to make a beeline for somebody or something. So a beeline is the line that a bee makes. So bees fly straight and they're very quick and very fast. So when we talk about making a beeline or to make a beeline for something, it means to go towards someone or something in the quickest way or the fastest way possible or the most direct way. Okay, so somebody comes into a reception of a party or some presentation and they make a B line for the snacks and coffee and tea area because they haven't had their lunch and they're really dying for a bite to eat or a cup of coffee. So they make a B line for the snack area. Or they've been driving for a long way and they've been in a bit of a rush. When they get into the conference hall, they make a B line for the toilets because they're in need of a P yeah, okay, so they head straight in. So excuse me, boom, and off they go and they go on to the loo or to the toilets. So to make a B line for somewhere. Or when you make a B line for someone, so you get to the wedding reception or the party and you're looking around for somebody you recognize or somebody you know and you see your friend in the corner and you make a B line for him or her because there's somebody there that you can talk to because you look around the room and it's a sea of unfriendly faces, people that you have never met before. Okay, so to make a B line for someone or something to go in the quickest way possible or the most direct way you can possibly think of. Okay, next, off the beaten track. Well, this is a great way to spend holidays. If you're fed up with the hotel surrounded by other hotels surrounded by other hotels and crowded beaches where you have no room to move, well then perhaps your next holiday is going to be one that is off the beaten track. The beaten track is the track or the pathway most popular with everybody else. So literally it means everybody has walked that way and no grass is growing underfoot because so many people have walked it. So if your partner, boyfriend, girlfriend says, why don't we do something different this year? Why don't we go to somewhere off the beaten track, somewhere a little bit remote? So you look up destinations that are remote and perhaps it's one of these eco-type holidays where the accommodation is a little bit more rustic or a little bit more basic, but you're definitely not going to be surrounded by people. You're definitely not going to have massive swimming pools and you're definitely not going to have barbecues on the beach. So it's a little bit off the beaten track, but it's close to nature. It's very peaceful. You wake up to the sound of birds or animals or whatever it might be. So you enjoy your venture, your adventure, your journey away from populated areas or areas that have been made popular or have become popular with tourists. So to be off the beaten track. Next has another connection with tracks, but slightly different. Stop dead in your tracks. Okay, so when you stop dead in your tracks, it means you stop very suddenly, either because you're surprised or because something happened very quickly. Somebody ran out in front of you, some car pulled up in front of you, or you were stopped dead in your tracks by somebody calling your name and it was a voice familiar to you, but you hadn't heard the voice for many, many years. So you're stopped dead in your tracks. Literally, you came to a sudden stop. Okay, so that sudden stop is generally a surprise and usually it's not a good surprise. In my experience, it's usually something you didn't, the voice you didn't like to hear, the sound you didn't like to hear, you stopped dead in your tracks when you heard the sound of a particular animal and you know it's not a friendly cat or dog, so that might stop you dead in your tracks. Okay, so lots of ways in which you come to a sudden stop. From fear, you just don't want to go any further. And when it says stop dead in your tracks, means whatever route you're taking, vom, you stop very, very quickly and very, very suddenly. And that cold chill runs up and down your spine. Okay, next, to take a shortcut to something. Okay, well, a shortcut is to go somewhere other than the normal way or the longest way around. So when you take a shortcut, it means you want to save time. So you're usually going to follow a path that is quicker and shorter than usual and hopefully will get you there in very quick time. Often, in my experience, when you take a shortcut, it turns out to be much longer because when you get to the end or the middle of the shortcut, you find that the traffic has backed up or there's been an accident and you say, oh, I should have gone the way I normally go. This shortcut actually is going to take me twice as long. Okay, so we can take a shortcut literally and physically when we're driving the car or when we're cycling or when we're walking. Often it's easier when you're walking or cycling because you can go down a lane or you can go up or down a one-way street or walk up or down a one-way street much more easily than you can if you have your car with you. So you're able to take a shortcut down through a lane, an alleyway and you get to where you want to go quite quickly. We can also take a shortcut when we're reading a document. You know, if the document is very, very lengthy and we really haven't time or the energy or the inspiration to read the whole lot, well, perhaps we will try and find a summary of the document. We can read that and that will give us a pretty accurate account of what's in the document. So that can be a shortcut. But generally in life, there are usually no shortcuts to success. That's an expression you'll hear a lot. There is no shortcut to success. You have to go through the different steps. You get yourself qualified, you get your job, you work through the company, you prove yourself, you get promoted, and then you get the job of your dreams. Rarely do we get the opportunity to take a shortcut unless somebody really, really likes us or we know somebody in the company and a little bit of nepotism, some friendly family will interject and you will get the job of your dreams that way. But for most of us, shortcuts in that way don't really exist. Okay, and then the last one, take the scenic route. Well, when you take the scenic route, it means that you probably thought it was going to be quicker, but it turns out not to be, and therefore it's a longer path or route than you had thought, but it could be quite attractive. So scenic, as in nice scenery or nice to look at. So you took the scenic route and it was more attractive, but a lot longer. So you'll always see it on tourist destinations. If you're driving around, you'll get the sign for the motorway, which will take you from town A to city B or city A to town B in the quickest time. Or there'll be a signpost will say scenic route. And the scenic route will be a less important road, a narrower road, but it'll probably take you through the forest, around the mountain or along the cliff, and you'll get the most beautiful views that way. But it's certainly going to take you a longer time. Often when people say, oh, did you take the scenic route? They are being a little sarcastic because you had a meeting set up for 10 o'clock and you get there at 10.45 and you say, oh, look, I'm really, really sorry. And they say, what happened? Did you take the scenic route? No, no, there was a traffic accident on the main road and the traffic was blocked in both directions. I couldn't get a signal, so I couldn't call you to let you know I was late. I'm really sorry. So to take the scenic route literally means to enjoy the view, to enjoy the road. But if somebody's being a little sarcastic, it generally means that you're supposed to be there much sooner, much quicker, but it's taking you a long time and people were getting a little bit annoyed, anxious, waiting for you. So they may say, have you taken the scenic route? Or make sure you get here as quickly as possible. Don't take the scenic route. Okay, so there's our idioms of movement. Okay, let me give them to you one more time. A stone's throw away or a stone's throw from something. As the crow flies, follow your nose in the middle of nowhere. Lose your bearings. Make a B line for something. Make a B line for something. To be off the beaten track, so something out of the way. Stop dead in your tracks. Take a shortcut to something or from something. And take the scenic route. And you can either use that, as I said, literally, take the scenic route, or somebody could be a little bit sarcastic. Okay, so there's our ideals, and I hope you've enjoyed them. And as always, thank you for listening. And if you want to contact me, well, then, of course, you can do so on www.englishlessonviaskype.com. Very happy to hear from you and very happy to include any of your suggestions. If you want lessons on a one-to-one basis and you think we can help you, well, why not contact us? We can help you to prepare for job interviews, for jobs with international companies. We can help you to prepare presentations and we can help you to prepare PowerPoint issues, whatever it might be, wherever you're having problems, or maybe it's just simple conversation English. You want to improve that English for holidays when they come around again, for the people that you're going to meet. So it won't always be me, unfortunately, that will give you the lessons. I just don't have the time to do it for everybody as much as I would like to. But I've got six teachers working with me, all very professional, all really, really good and can cover different angles of English. So if you need me, you know where I am. Okay, thanks for listening as always. Join me again soon.