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Would you like to help support better English around the world? You can support this podcast and more with a small contribution at https://ko-fi.com/billgreen54 American English grammar review with Billgreen54. Idioms! Another fun subject right? Hey bite the dust to be destroyed or ruined beyond repair. This can be applied to people, it can be applied to things. For instance, if you had, say, a motor in a car, and the motor stopped working and needed to be replaced, you could say the motor has bitten the dust, something like that. Another example, the boss didn't like my proposal, and he wants me to start over. Another good idea bites the dust. In other words, that idea is no good. We're not going to use it. Another example could be I think this lamp just bit the dust it broke in. I know it's not worth fixing. So there's something wrong with the lamp. It doesn't work anymore. I need to buy a new lamp. Maybe the dust here's one we don't use every day. There's two different ways to say this idiom, bitter pill to swallow or hard pill to swallow. It's when you have a difficult or unpleasant reality to deal with. An example is John discovered the hard truth about responsibility. He didn't get his college application in on time and the school won't reconsider. It was a hard pill to swallow. But he had to learn the hard way. Another example is Jill thought she was a good singer. When her brother told her she was tone deaf. It was a bitter pill to swallow. The term tone deaf means somebody can't sing very well because they can't hear what they're singing or don't realize that what they're trying to sing is not very, let's say, easy to listen to the expression and it's a bitter pill to swallow suggest something that like a pill is unpleasant but can not be avoided black and blue, discolored from a bruise injured in a fight either physically or verbally. Here's an example. The girl fell out of the tree but didn't break any bones. She just had a black and blue knee. You could see that right? So that would be literal. Another example might be Hey, James came out of the meeting black and blue since he had made so many mistakes preparing the report without consulting his boss. In this context, he came out of the meeting black and blue, not really, he didn't have any black and blue on him. It was all about what happened in the meeting. And he made a few mistakes. And therefore, he wasn't looked upon as someone who did a very good job black market, a system of buying and selling illegal goods or goods at illegal prices or quantities. During the war each household was allotted a small amount of sugar and butter each month. If you wanted more, you had to buy it on the black market. Another example: Hey, there's a growing black market for consumer goods that are difficult or impossible to find here the black market. Most people know what that means. But in this context, it is always about finding something that you cannot find in your own market or something where you have to do something in a against the law or illegal way, blackout to lose consciousness temporarily. Thanks for listening! Would you like to help support better English around the world? You can support this podcast with a small contribution at https://ko-fi.com/billgreen54 ESL Teacher Billgreen54 shares American English at its best! Pronunciation, Intonation, Spelling, Grammar Rules! It's all here in this special podcast! Our English lessons are easy to understand! Our podcast is created for Native English speakers as well as ESL students! Whether you are studying English as a second language or as a refresher! Have fun with English! Would you like to help support better English around the world? You can support this podcast and more with a small contribution at https://ko-fi.com/billgreen54 Watch and learn from our channel at https://www.youtube.com/americanenglish2020 More English resources at https://www.larisaenglishclub.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/english-grammar-review/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/english-grammar-review/support