Idioms

Online resources

• • THE IDIOM CONNECTION contains English idioms listed alphabetically and by topic. As well as examples and explanations, there are interactive quizzes where you choose the appropriate idiom to replace a part of a sentence.

  • Cambridge Online Activities and Worksheets. Click on Idiom Definitions to do the interactive exercises. They contain excellent pictorial illustrations and the activities look very useful. Click on Idioms Worksheet to download printable activities in pdf format.

  • Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms: it is enough to enter one word into the search field.

  • English Idioms, Sayings and Slang, an alphabetical listing by Wayne Magnuson

  • Idiom Site: Find out the origin of idioms and common sayings

  • In the English Idiom Collection, there are two particularly useful links:

    • • Look for idioms containing a specific word: Idiom index

      • Look for idioms related to a specific topic

  • English Forum's interactive activity. After you submit your answers, an explanation of idioms is shown you at the bottom of the screen.

  • Activities for ESL Students has a long list of interactive exercises for studying idioms. They are separated into Medium and Difficult.

  • Interactive exercise on idioms using animal words.

Recommended reading: About idioms

From the Teaching English website, Mike McCarthy and Felicity O'Dell's book Idioms: Heavy Going or Piece of Cake? is discussed briefly.

Death by idioms

From the ESL magazine: Without Slang and Idioms, Students are in the Dark!

Observation of Idioms

Just the Word reads the British National Corpus. Enter a word or short phrase into the search window and you will see how it is used in various contexts.

BBC Dialogues

A set of sixty dialogues, each ending with an idiom was created for a BBC radio English teaching program in the early 1990s. Their texts were freely available, on paper, at the time. Over the years, I have used them in various ways that do integrate the four skills. The dialogues as well as some worksheets are available on this website here and on my old website here,

According to

Carter, R., McCarthy, M. (1994) Language as Discourse p.109

Idioms are often used to bring a discussion to a close or to sum up or encapsulate what has been going on in a discussion.