Name: Advanced English: 5 Idioms with Unexpected Histories
Uploaded: 2025-06-17T18:30:52.000Z
Duration: 16 min 32 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...

Present continuous

Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo, E, what's confusing you?

To-infinitive

Listen, E wants to do this lesson with you, and it's kind of interesting, because a lot of times you'll do idioms.

But he has an idea where we can use idioms as conversation starters.

Because everybody knows the idioms, right?

How do you start a conversation like that?

You can't really, because if it's raining, they're going to go, duh, yeah, it's raining.

But what happens if we gave you five idioms that people probably don't know the total idiom because it's been changed through time?

And with that change through time, sometimes it means the exact opposite of what they're using it for.

That is a cool conversation starter, because it shows you have a depth of knowledge that you can share with someone else.

So, I'm going to give you the first one when we go to the board.

Now, I'm going to give you the idiom as it's supposed to be, okay?

But then I'm going to write what people say, so you can see the difference between what is said and what it used to be, and then we can quickly discuss why it might be the opposite or has greater information that's given, and you'll see people go, hmm, I never knew that.

And that makes you look smart, and that's what we want.

Not that you're smart, that people take interest in you because you can bring something new to them.

I know, not pretty, but some blood, and there's some water causing ripples.

Well, in Western society, specifically North American and, you know, English society, or, you know, England, the island, the British Isles, they love to say this particular idiom.

The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the room, the room, the womb.

Okay, so, a lot of complicated language here, so you might be like, what the heck?

Well, when you have a covenant, it's sort of people coming together and making a vow or a promise to each other to be like brothers.

So, you say you're like my brother, and I'm your brother, we will work together.

It's the agreement we make with each other.

So, we make an agreement with each other to work as family.

But this is something you find and you choose.

Now, when you look at the water of the womb, I've gained a bit of weight, so just leave me alone.

The womb is when a woman is pregnant, she has a big belly.

Well, you're inside of that, and when you're inside the womb, you share your mother's water, because it's water.

So, what this is saying, the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb is kind of true, because blood is...

Got more stuff in it than water, but the idea is the friends that you make, the friends that you make and the people you call that you decide to be your family actually have a stronger connection for you and are better than the water of the womb than family you have.

So, it's not just your mother, but they're saying if you have family that you were born into and you have family that you have created, decided to create through people from work or friends that you have met, those bonds are stronger and they should be stronger, because you decided to make them.

When you are born into a family, you're just born into it, but when you make a decision, you've consciously thought about it, so they probably share more of your values.

Now, we know blood is thicker than water, but they've changed it to mean that family, the bonds of family are thicker than the water that you share amongst your friends.

But as you can see, that's not what the original idea...

I'm going to say the original intent or the original idea was.

It was to say that the choices you make to create a family are...

Create stronger bonds than just being born into a family that you had no choice.

It means the exact opposite of what it was supposed to be.

Because when you walk up to me and go, have you ever heard that saying, the blood is thicker than water?

And I go, that's not what it originally was.

I'm going to say right away, what do you mean?

And I get to start talking to you, and you get to go...

Okay, number two is interesting because in the last few years, or last decade or so, you've heard this many times when you find a CEO of a company has done something bad, or a police department has done something bad, or a politician has done...

And what they usually say was the leader of these particular groups will get up and say, it's a few bad apples.

And they say, it's a few bad apples, meaning it's only one or two, so what's the problem?

Well, the original idiom wasn't that, because the original idiom understood something that's not usually talked about, and that's this.

The original idiom was a few bad apples spoil the bunch, meaning if you have one bad actor, one bad person in a group, they will make the whole group bad.

Does it mean they're all going to be terrible individuals?

No, but because they don't do anything about that one bad apple, they allow that bad apple to keep doing things and it ruins the group, so you end up not trusting politicians, not trusting police, not trusting company presidents, because that one bad apple, like they say, it's just one, the actual saying is no, no, no, even one will destroy everything, so we have to be careful not to let one bad apple there.

Okay, so let's do number three, shall we?

Well, with number three, this is rather interesting, because in the old days, there was sort of like...

Today, we insult people in a way who have...

Know a little about a lot of things, but not a lot about one thing.

In fact, we praise people who have a PhD, you know, they know one thing really, really well that's very, very narrow.