In this video, I use an idiom story to teach six English idioms. Listen to a short story about how I lost my keys and found them. See if you are able to recognize the idioms used in the story. Then, I explain each of them one by one.
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Idioms Used in the Story
- turn (a place) upside down
- nowhere to be found
- at my wit’s end
- get on (my, someone’s) nerves
- (leave) no stone unturned
- a lost cause
Idiom Story Six Idioms About Losing My Keys – English Idioms Lesson
The other day I lost my keys. I turned my house upside down looking for them. They were nowhere to be found. I was just about at my wit’s end. Nothing gets on my nerves more than misplacing stuff and spending hours looking for it. Still, I kept looking, leaving no stone unturned. I thought it was a lost cause. Well, you know what they say. It’s always the last place you look. Well, the last place I looked was the refrigerator, and there they were.
How many idioms did I use in that story? Do you recognize them? Go back and read it again.
If you said six then you are good at recognizing idioms. If you said seven, you may have mistaken “it’s always the last place you look” for an idiom because I prefaced it with ‘you know what they say.’
But really, that was just a joke, not an idiom.
First, I turned my house upside down.
Obviously, I can’t really turn my house over. To turn a place upside down means to look everywhere for something. You could say “I turned my room upside down looking for my book report,” meaning you looked all over your room, through the drawers, in the closet, underneath the bed, etc.
My keys were ‘nowhere to be found.’
When something is nowhere to be found, it seems to have vanished. It’s impossible to be found. Obviously, this is an exaggeration. When we say something is nowhere to be found, we don’t mean it literally. I did eventually find my keys.
But after looking for my keys for hours I was almost ‘at my wit’s end.’
At my wit’s end means I didn’t know what else to do or where else to look. I was out of ideas, completely perplexed.
When I lose things it ‘gets on my nerves.’
When something gets on your nerves, it really annoys you or irritates you. It may even anger you.
While looking for my keys, I ‘left no stone unturned.’
That means I looked everywhere, in every possible location. I really didn’t think I was ever going to find them!
I thought it was a ‘lost cause.’
A lost cause is something that is almost certain to fail or to not turn out the way you want.
Luckily, it wasn’t really a lost cause. By the way, this is not the first time I’ve left my keys in the refrigerator!
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