Name: AEE Bonus: Power Idioms in English with Aubrey
Uploaded: 2025-07-03T10:20:48.000Z
Duration: 3 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...

Future simple

Hi everyone, Aubrey here for All Ears English, and in today's bonus video, you are going to learn three idioms with the word power.

To-infinitive

This means to exert an excessive amount of authority or power over others, especially in a negative way, to boost one's ego, right?

We'd say like, Mary's always bossed me around, she's always on a power trip.

We would never describe someone as on a power trip if they're using their power in a fair or just way.

It's always negative to describe someone who's abusing their power, who's acting in a way that makes it seem like they need to make everyone feel like they're powerful in order to boost their ego.

Okay, the second idiom is the powers that be.

So this could be government or some other policymaker.

For example, we sent in the petition, and now it's up to the powers that be to decide what happens.

But it can be anyone who has authority or is in control.

For example, I wanted the party to be on Friday, but the powers that be decided to have it be on Saturday.

I might be referring to my partner, a good friend, right?

But whoever had more say than I did, who had more authority or power, they're the powers that be and they got to decide.

All right, the third idiom is more power to you.

It sort of means good for you and good luck.

Say like, if you could pull that off, more power to you.

If you know someone's going to medical school and you'd say, wow, that's going to be a lot of work, more power to you.

Now, be careful because we also use this idiom sarcastically in a way that's a little bit mean.

We'd say like, it's like saying I don't agree with your choice, but you can do whatever you want.

For example, if you want to spend all day playing video games, more power to you.

And I'm clearly meaning, I don't agree with your choice, but do what you want, right?

It's all about context and tone for those.

Guys, I want you to know these great idioms for power so that you can be powerful in using native English.

And we want you to know about your personal power vocabulary list with the All Ears English app.

It's now on Android and iOS, and you're able to save all your vocabulary in one place.

We highlight high level words in the app for you to save, and instead of having lists of vocabulary everywhere that you can very easily lose, you can have all your vocabulary there in the app.

So go to allearsenglish.com slash app, A-P-P, to download the All Ears English app today and use these powerful idioms in your native speech next time you're chatting in English.