

I have to finish this assignment by Monday.Try and manage your work so that you don’t bite off more than you can chew and end up burning the midnight oil (too often)! This idiom refers to a time before electric lighting when people would use oil lamps for light. Speaking of working a lot, have you ever burned the midnight oil? If you burn the midnight oil, you’re working late into the night to finish something. She wanted to say yes to the project at work, but she knew if she did, that she would be biting off more than she can chew.I think I might have bit off more than I can chew. Biting off more than you can chew might be fine when it comes to your dinner, but not to your work! Think about if you actually can take on that extra assignment, or if it will just leave you feeling drained and overworked. This English idiom you should know means to do too much or take on more responsibility than you can handle. You know how once in a while, that steak looks so good and so tasty that you take a much bigger bite than you can actually chew? Well, you can also bite off more than you can chew when it comes to work. I really don’t want to go back to the drawing board with this idea, but I might have to.My boss realized that our new project wouldn’t work, so we have to go back to the drawing board and start again.“ ‘ Back to the drawing board.’ Isn’t the drawing board the place where all the best work happens? It’s not a bad thing to go back there. You may or may not have a literal drawing board handy(around), but sometimes starting from the ground up (starting again) a second (or third!) time can reveal(show) something you hadn’t seen before! This means you need to start planning all over again. Sometimes if a project looks like it might not work, you may need to go back to the drawing board. “Hey Jack, are you listening?” “Yes, I’m all ears! Sorry, I was thinking about something else for a moment.”.


This English idiom you should know comes from the practice of supposedly(maybe) having soldiers bite down on a bullet while undergoing surgery without anesthesia(medicine that puts you to sleep so you don’t feel pain). If you bite the bullet, it means you endure(go through) something that might be unpleasant. However, there are many English idioms you should know, because we use them all the time!ĭon’t get stuck in language limbo(an intermediate state)! Here are 7 common English idioms you should know that you may hear in the boardroom or on the street: Bite the bulletĭon’t worry, this doesn’t involve weapons at all, although it used to. It can be extremely(very) confusing when you hear an idiom for the first time, as the words seem(look like) to have nothing to do with each other at all. Idioms are one of the best indicators(gauge, signs) of your path to fluency in a language.
