There are 171,476 words in current use in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. If you’re learning English for the first time, it’s an intimidating number.
Some of the words are cutesy (kerfuffle, jubilee). Others are onomatopoeic, with a similar sound to the idea they’re describing (meow, clink, squeak). Some are bizarre sounding (for example, syzygy: the alignment of three celestial objects, such as the sun, the Earth, and either the moon or another planet.)
Outside of those 171,476 weird, wonderful words, you have idioms, which are phrases that can’t be fully understood based on the meanings of the individual words. American English idioms tend to be particularly strange: Put lipstick on a pig? They went postal? Spill the tea? It’s a lot for a new English speaker to take in!
We asked people from other countries and foreign-born Americans to share the American phrases they never got their heads around, and frankly, could do without.
Keep in mind, there were a ton more sayings they loved, which we’ll visit another day. See what they had to say for this list below.
“Break a leg.”
“Every time I hear this phrase I think of literally someone with a broken leg and that vision frightens me. The reason for this is that I heard this phrase when I was starting to learn English, and I was taking everything with its literal meaning. Later on, I understood that it means good luck, but I cannot manage to remove the vision from my mind.” ― Olga Grijalva Alvarez, a Mexican travel content creator
“Put lipstick on a pig.”
“I hate pigs and the visual of that grosses me out.” ― Jihan Fawaz, a Lebanese
language instructor who runs the YouTube account Learn Turkish with Jihan
“I’m working on it” (when talking about food).
“I’m always surprised when a server at a restaurant asks if I’m still working on my food. I’m not working on it! I’m savoring it!” ― Virginia Langhammer, a Brazilian who teaches Portuguese and owns the Speaking Brazilian Language School
Thomas Barwick via Getty Images
“I can’t even.”
“I understood the context when I first heard it in a video. Everything is fine, actually, except the fact that it’s grammatically incorrect. When I still hear the phrase, I expect it to be completed somehow.” ― Firdaus Baig, an Indian tutor who teaches Hindi online Indian
“On a weekly basis.”
“Why use such a long phrase to say ‘weekly’? I even told one of my first English teachers…
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