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Metaphors??? We speak in metaphors all the time, often without even realising it! In this lesson I’ll share a few examples of some ‘colourful’ metaphors which I’ve noticed people using recently, online, on TV, and in news articles. So if you’d like to know what a landslide victory is, or a U-turn, or a final whistle, you’ll find the answer here! After watching, you can test your understanding of these metaphors with the quiz.

Learn more English expressions:
Learn 10 English Idioms with "BOOK"
Learn 14 Musical Expressions in English

In this lesson:
0:00 10 Strong English Metaphors
1:29 eye-watering sums
3:14 leading his troops through the sewer
5:45 doing a U-turn
7:53 scum
9:36 the final whistle hasn't blown yet
12:00 the elephant in the room
13:03 a tectonic shift
14:59 a landslide victory
16:11 mudslinging
16:53 witch hunt

TRANSCRIPT:
Hello. I'm Gill at engVid, and today we have a lesson on metaphors. We've done metaphors
before. You'll find I have a few other lessons that refer to metaphors. This one is about
colourful metaphors that you would find perhaps in the news, in references to politics and
politicians. So, the word... This colourful metaphors in itself is a metaphor. To call
a metaphor colourful, you can see it's written in red, so in a sense it's literally colourful.
But metaphorically, these metaphors are very, very strong. They're meant to have a strong
impact and to create a strong picture in your mind. Okay? So that's the point of metaphors.
Another word for metaphors is imagery. Imagery, so it creates a picture, an image in your mind.
Okay? And they're often very... They have a big impact when you hear them, more than just
ordinary, neutral language. So, for example, when people are talking about large sums of money,
especially when... To do with the government and how much money they're spending on... On something.
It's called "eye-watering sums of money". "Eye-watering" means, you know, your eyes are
watering or the tears are coming from your eyes because the amounts of money are so big.
But also, I think people's eyes water if they're in pain. So, the idea is that the amounts of
money being spent, it's painful to think about the kind of money that's had to be spent during
the COVID pandemic, for example. In the UK, a lot of money was spent trying to protect people's
jobs. People were put on furlough, which meant that they... Their money was coming from the
government rather than from the company that employed them, and the government was spending
huge amounts of money on that to help to preserve people's jobs so that they didn't lose... Lose
their job so that the company didn't fail, and so on. So, billions and billions of pounds were
spent. So, that was eye-watering sums were being spent on that employment scheme, for example.
Okay. And then more recently, we've had this quotation from one politician in the UK.
The leader of the opposition accused the Prime Minister of leading his troops through the sewer,
which sounds rather strange. I think the word "troops" you would normally have in the army,
and these would be soldiers rather than, you know, MPs, but that's part of the metaphor.
We've got a sort of army metaphor as well as mention of a sewer, which is where...
Well, when you flush the toilet, everything goes down under the ground through the pipes
in the sewer, the sewage system, so it's a disgusting thing to think about. So,
for the leader of the opposition to say that the Prime Minister is leading his troops,
meaning his MPs through the sewer, this was a recent situation where the government were being
accused of corruption or trying to manipulate the political system in a certain way.
They had a vote in parliament about something to try to get around a problem rather than to
deal with the problem properly. They were trying to get around the problem and to try to avoid
doing what they should have been doing, and the opposition and people generally thought
it was a rather sort of corrupt thing to do. So, this was the description.
The Prime Minister is leading his troops through the sewer, and it's a very sort of unpleasant
image for something. That was a rather unpleasant situation.
And then something similar to that, well, what happened after this, the next day the government
decided, "Oh dear, we'd better not do that, then. It's causing so much trouble. We won't do that.
We'll change our minds." So what... They did a U-turn. […]

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