Welcome to our Daily English Listening Practice with this week’s series:
13 Common English Expressions
on Failure and Success
Today we talk about Common English Expressions on Failure and Success. We include 13 common words and phrases that you’ll actually hear in normal conversation. There’s tons more, but we’ll start here!
Listen to the audio clips for information and pronunciation.
Rags to Riches
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Notes: a successful person who started from nothing, very popular in news articles and success stories
Underdog
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Notes: the team or player most people think won’t win, most people support them over the bigger or better team
Called it
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Notes: when you successfully guess something in the future; totally called that
Nailed it
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Notes: when you succeed at something, usually very informal
In the bag
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Notes: really sure of success; the game’s in the bag; this can easily sound overly-confident depending on the situation
Blow up in your face
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Notes: something that completely fails; it totally blew up in my face, I wasn’t sure if it would blow up in my face or not, so I took the risk
Totally Flopped
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Notes: informal, something or an idea that didn’t succeed in any way; also, it went belly-up
Cut Your losses (and Run)
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Notes: accepting that you lost and try to move away from a failing project, sometimes people continue to pay or invest in something because of their previous investments
Turned it Around
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Notes: going from bad to good, from a failure to a success
Bail Out
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Notes: when you choose to leave a failing situation
Spinning Your Wheels
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Notes: doing the same thing over and over again without success
Make or Break
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Notes: make is the success, break is the failure; the risk is that you’ll completely succeed or completely fail
Gone Downhill
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Notes: polite way of saying that it’s worse than before; “gone to sh*t” very informal
Thanks,
Kat and Mark
