"Your English ticket to life" Project by English teacher Iuliana Pienoiu. Halloween Idioms http://meditatii-engleza.ro/ You can also find me on Skype at: meditatii-engleza.

1. You look like you’ve just seen a
ghost!
 you look frightened or upset
E.g. Are you all right? You look like you’ve just
seen a ghost!

2. rolling over in one’s grave
 to be very upset (used to say that a dead
person would be very upset about what
someone has done or what is happening)
E.g. Mary remarried a year after her husband’s
death. He must be rolling over in his grave.

3. to make someone’s blood boil
 to make someone very angry
E.g. Whenever I think about what happened to
our poor aunt Linda, it makes my blood boil.

4. to dig one’s grave
 to do something silly which will cause you
trouble
E.g. John digs his own grave by spending his
entire salary on gambling.

5. in cold blood
 to do something deliberately and in an
unemotional way, without feeling any remorse
E.g. He killed his wife in cold blood in order to
get the insurance money.

6. scared to death
 very frightened
E.g. When the owl flew out in front of him it
scared him to death.

7. skeletons in one’s closet
 to have secrets hidden in your past that you
don’t talk about
E.g. He was not offered the teaching job
because he had hit a pupil at the last school
he taught at- this was a serious skeleton in his
closet.

8. skeleton staff
 the minimum number of employees needed
to operate a business
E.g. The Accident and Emergency Department
at the hospital was closed at the weekends
because it had only a skeleton staff.

9. like a bat out of hell
 to move very fast, describes something that
happens very quickly or suddenly
E.g. After snatching the old lady’s purse he ran
away like a bat out of hell.

10. out for blood
 looking to get revenge
E.g. Tomorrow we are playing the team who
beat us last month so we are out for blood.

11. over my dead body
 to refuse to allow someone to do something
E.g. You will pay the ransom for removing the
computer virus over my dead body.

12. stab in the back
 to betray someone
E.g. The boss giving me a bad reference for a
new job was a real stab in the back.

13. witch hunt
 to harass people with unpopular views
E.g. There was a witch hunt against the boss for
stopping overtime.

14. the witching hour
 sometimes around midnight, the time late at
night when the powers of a witch are believed
to be the strongest
E.g. The magician cast his spell at the witching
hour so it would have the greatest effect.

15. quaking in your boots
 to be so scared that your legs and feet are
shaking
E.g. When the robber saw the policeman he was
quaking in his boots.

16. not a ghost of a chance
 little to no chance of succeeding
E.g. The 95 year old man had not a ghost of a
chance of swimming the channel.

17. to play the devil’s advocate
 to raise objections against a position purely for
the sake of argument
E.g. The boss played the devil’s advocate
against the design for the new car.

18. www.meditatii-engleza.ro
 E-mail: iulianapienoiu@gmail.com
 Skype: meditatii-engleza