Packed in like Sardines

The other night I was teaching a client in Moscow and he asked me to explain the phrase, "packed in like sardines" which he had heard was a good way to describe rush hour on the Moscow Metro, however he was a little unsure if it was an offensive phrase or not.

The phrase is not offensive and in fact comes from the business of food processing.
Sardines, as you know are a type of fish, and we normally buy our sardines in small tins. When we open a tin of sardines, its normal that there are a lot fish in the tin and there no free space.

Therefore the phrase packed in like sardines is used to describe a situation where people are in an area or space with little room to move.

So it is not offensive and in fact a very good way to describe the Moscow Metro during rush hour.

"Every morning I take the Metro to work, it is always full and there is no room to move because everyone is packed in like sardines."

Packed in Like sardines = No space to move

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Birrr Cold Feet

As you know in English we love to use idioms, and one strange idiom that is used very often is "cold feet".

Obviously there are two meanings to the expression "cold feet", one meaning, is the literal meaning, which is to describe the fact that a person actually has cold feet.
"I have been standing in the snow in my sandals, I have really cold feet"

However this is not the idiomatic meaning, idiomatically when someone says they have "cold feet" they are using it to describe fear or strong doubt.

"I wanted to ride the roller coaster, but when I got to the line I got cold feet so I didn't ride it"

This means that speaker wanted to go on a roller coaster, but became afraid and didn't ride it.

Remember, don't get cold feet when speaking English, just ask your online English teacher to help you.


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That's a Killer

From time to time you may hear English speakers use the word killer in a sense that has nothing to do with killing something!

Killer can be used as an adjective to describe something that is very good, excellent or even hard.

"That was a killer game of football" = It was a very good game of football.

"That was a killer exam" = It was a very hard exam.

Killer can be used as a noun, in the form of a greeting that suggests the person being greeted in a very cool person.

"Hey Killer, how are you today?"

Remember unless you are 100% sure of English and English slang, we recommend you don't use it as if used wrongly it may cause great offence.
However we do recommend that you learn slang so that when you hear it, you understand it.

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Question Tags

In English when we want to continue a conversation we can put a question tag at the end of a sentence.
The purpose of the question tag is to invite the person who we are talking to reply to us.
“You agree with me, don’t you?”

Question tags are easy to construct, if the base sentence is positive, then the question tag is negative and if the base sentence is negative then the question tag is positive.

We construct the question tag using the auxiliary verb from the base sentence and invert it:

It isn’t a nice day, is it?
You have my pen, haven’t you?

If there is no auxiliary verb in the base sentence then use do/does/did:
The school closes at 5PM, doesn’t it?
You eat meat, don’t you?

Remember when learning English, it’s very important to take lessons with a professional native speaker teacher.
Join us online to learn English in small groups or one to one with Smart Language Solutions.

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