Name: Learn the English Phrases "My heart skipped a beat!" and "a hop, skip, and a jump"
Uploaded: 2025-03-16T21:01:20.000Z
Duration: 4 min 9 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English expression, my heart skipped a beat.

Now, this can be used in a couple of ways.

Like I could say, "The first time I met Jen, my heart skipped a beat," meaning that I found her attractive and I was excited to see her.

It can also be used for something that's a little bit scary though.

As a parent, if the phone rings in the middle of the night, my heart skips a beat.

Because it makes me think that maybe one of my children, maybe something bad has happened to them.

If you are my age and if you have teenage children, and if they are supposed to come home at midnight, and it's 1:00 in the morning and the phone rings, usually my heart skips a beat.

So when you say my heart skipped a beat, that's the past tense, it means that something exciting happened or something a little bit scary happened.

The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is a hop, skip and a jump.

I think this comes from triple jump in the the Olympic sport where you hop, skip and jump.

But we use this to refer to something being not far away.

I could say my brother just lives a hop, skip and a jump from here.

My sister lives a hop, skip and a jump from here, my brother lives a little bit further away.

So it's used to talk about distance and it means not very far.

So to review, if you say my heart skipped a beat, it could mean that something exciting happened.

Or it could mean that something scary happened.

And if you say something is a hop, skip and a jump from here or a hop, skip and a jump away, it means it's really, really close.

If you hopped and then did a little skip and a jump, you would be there.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.

This comment is from Judit. Let me get it open here, or @Aerosmith77 as she also goes by.

"Thanks for this short video, Bob, I hope it doesn't mean that you skip tomorrow's video though. I was happy to hear that you are getting ready to make a live stream on Friday. I am looking forward to it!"

And my response, I'm getting ready to go out and shoot the lesson now, so no skipping.

I guess I... I'm in the middle of shooting the lesson, thanks Judit for that comment.

Yeah, I am. Definitely out here, making a lesson.

And putting this lesson up for Wednesday morning.

So this will be ready to go. I'll do a little bit of editing on it as when I go back in the house and it will be ready for all of you to watch.

I have switched from a winter coat to a spring jacket.

I might have referred to this as my fall jacket last year.

It's kind of funny how the same jacket when worn in a different season gets a different name.

So I put my fall jacket away, wore my winter coat for the entire winter season and now I have my spring jacket on, which looks exactly like my fall jacket.

It's beautiful out here. Jen and I are really excited to get started on doing little things on the farm.

Now, I do say it's beautiful, but it's very brown, isn't it?

Like no leaves on the trees, the I should really pick that gate up, shouldn't I at some point.

I am looking forward to the return of green.

But this is nice. It's 12 degrees right now Celsius, so I'm really, really enjoying it.

I have a list of little chores I have to do later today. It's spring break and I have a few things to do. I'll show you one of them.

But this handle on this door has been broken for a very long time and this lock doesn't work anymore.

Again, I don't know if I'll get this done today.

But I need to go to the hardware store and get a new, at least a new handle for the door and install that.

So anyways, thanks for watching this short English lesson.

I'll see you in a little... in a couple days with another one.