Name: 20 Different Ways To Wish ‘Happy Birthday’ & 'Happy Anniversary' (+ Free PDF & Quiz)
Uploaded: 2025-08-16T03:13:27.000Z
Duration: 12 min 52 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...

Hello everyone, and welcome back to English with Lucy.

To-infinitive

Today, I am going to teach you better alternative ways of wishing people happy birthday and happy anniversary.

To further improve your learning experience, I have also created a free PDF worksheet that goes with this lesson.

It's got everything we're going to discuss today, plus a quiz.

If you'd like to download the free PDF, just click on the link in the description box, enter your name and email address, you sign up to my mailing list, I send the PDF directly to your inbox.

Right, let's get started with the lesson.

Okay, this is a very common phrase and we tend to repeat the same thing over and over again.

But today, I'm going to show you 14 interesting, witty, and funny ways of wishing somebody a happy birthday.

Now, the first one is mainly used jokingly via text message.

Sometimes if we want to wish somebody a happy birthday, but we don't want to act like we're putting in too much effort, we just say, HB.

In these big WhatsApp groups we have now, it's very common in the UK to just have a page full of HB.

Some people consider it rude, but I think as long as the receiver knows that you're joking, it's nice.

We have number two, which is commonly found inside birthday cards.

Now, when I was a child, I never understood this phrase when I saw it on birthday cards, but it means many happy returns of the day.

As in, I hope you have many more birthdays.

Sometimes we use the word one in place of something that is already known to the listener.

They know that I'm talking about their birthday.

In number four, we have an alternative phrase for birthday.

You more or less know that if it's somebody's special day, it's their birthday, unless it's their wedding or another celebration like that.

So you could say, I wish you the best on your special day.

It is wishing you a day that is as special as you are.

Wishing you a day that is as special as you are.

Now it should be, I am wishing or we are wishing, but sometimes we just shorten it down to wishing you were here.

Another alternative, wishing you many more candles to blow.

When we have a birthday, we blow out a certain number of candles on our cake.

So we're implying that we hope the person lives for a long time.

A really nice alternative way of just saying, happy birthday.

If somebody is quite a lot older than 21, often we'll say happy 21st, pretending that we don't think they look any older than 21 years old.

I wonder if you have this in your own language and if it's the same number, 21, or if it's a different number.

Is there a dream age at which everyone wants to remain?

May your day be filled with laughter and presents.

Obviously, the most important thing about birthdays, apart from the cake, presents.

I get so excited about giving and receiving presents.

This is something that you can say to people who really like beer.

Because a birthday is a fantastic excuse to drink far more beer than usual.

It is, hmm, didn't we celebrate this just a year ago?

It is, congratulations, you survived another trip around the sun.

Because obviously we go around the sun every 365 days.

I don't think I need to explain that to you.

I think I'm underestimating your intelligence.

So obviously the womb is where you lived before you were born and you were evicted on your birthday.

It's a nice way of telling somebody that they are older.

You have to say, you're ageing like a fine wine, because obviously fine wines get better with age.

So if you're ageing like a fine wine, you're ageing beautifully.

And let's end this section on a really cute one.

It is, don't count the candles, just enjoy the glow.

Don't worry about how old you are, just enjoy the celebration.

Right, let's move on to wishing people a happy anniversary.

The first is wishing happy anniversary to another couple.

And the second section is wishing a happy anniversary to your partner.

So much more romantic in the second section.

Number one, the first one that you'll wish to another couple is wishing a perfect pair a perfect day together.

If two people are a perfect pair, it means they were made for each other.

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20 Different Ways To Wish ‘Happy Birthday’ & 'Happy Anniversary' (+ Free PDF & Quiz)

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