Are you determined to do anything, come hell or high water. Are you
able to keep your head above water these days? Is there anything you want
to try and test the waters? Has anyone told you a story that couldn't
hold water? Let's discuss Welcome to another Happy English podcast, coming to you
from New York City. And here's your English teacher, Michael. All right,
thank you John, and thanks everyone. It's Michael here from Happy English
and I help people speak English better. And this is Happy English Podcast Episode
seven hundred, Part two, Water Idioms seven hundred. You know, I
started the Happy English Podcast in twenty fourteen and in almost ten years I put
out seven hundred episodes, which means seven hundred English lessons. That's quite a
milestone for me. And I would just like to take a moment to say
thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Whether you're a first time
listener or a longtime listener, I really appreciate all of your support. Thank
you so much. Today we're going to look at five more idioms that use
the word water and have a connection to the sea and water. By the
end of this podcast lesson, you'll not only learn these idioms, but you'll
also find out how they came to be. Let's dive in the first one
is come hell or high water. If hell or a flood came to your
place, it would be a huge difficulty or an obstacle that could prevent you
from doing what you want to do. But you are strong and determined,
come hell or high water, you are going to do it. Come hell
or high water means even if hell or a flood with high water came,
you are totally determined to do what you want to do and nothing will stop
you. Come hell or high water. Here are some other examples. Linda
was determined to finish her college degree, Come hell or high water, even
though she had a full time job and had two small kids. John called
the office and despite the storm outside, he's coming to the meeting this afternoon,
Come hell or high water. Speaking of difficult situations, if you were
in the ocean and there were a lot of high waves, that's a difficult
situation. It may be hard to keep your head above water. When you
need to manage a difficult situation, or when you have a lot of issues,
problems, or responsibilities, you need to keep your head above water.
In other words, you need to manage that situation. For example, after
losing his job, Mark had to find a way to keep his head above
water and pay his bills, so he decided to start driving an uber.
Maria managed to keep her head above water running her small pizza restaurant during the
pandemic. In the previous example, I mentioned that Maria has a small pizza
restaurant. She opened a small place just to test the waters. When you
try something out just to see how it goes before fully committing to it,
you test the waters just like you would dip your food put into the pool
to see how the water is. You test the waters. Here are some
examples. Before investing all his savings, Peter decided to test the waters in
the stock market with a small amount of money. Sarah wanted to see if
she enjoyed teaching, so she volunteered as a substitute teacher to test the waters
before pursuing a teaching career. If you had a bucket that had a few
holes in it, it wouldn't be able to hold any water, right,
it's not good enough to hold water. Well. With that image, if
somebody tells you something and it doesn't seem true, you could say that it
doesn't hold water. It doesn't hold water means that the story you heard is
doubtful or perhaps just not true. For example, Mark sixskis use for being
laid again just doesn't hold water. I think we need to issue him a
warning. Karen's story about meeting Taylor Swift to the deli just doesn't hold water.
I doubt she's drinking coffee in a deli in the city on a Sunday
morning. Have you ever ordered a drink in a bar or a restaurant and
a taste seems weaker than usual, Well, it's possible that someone added a
little water to your drink that would make it taste weak and also save the
bar money. They add water and the flavor goes down. In other words,
they water it down. You can use water down as a verb or
watered down with a hyphen as an adjective. Here are some other examples.
There's a cheap bar down the street from the office that serves water down beer.
The coffee in this diner tastes like it's been watered down. Keep in
mind, the best way to remember this or any English point is to take
the word or phrase write it in a sentence that's true for you. Or
true in your world and then memorize your sentences. Well that's it for today's
English lesson, come hell or high water. I'll be back with another lesson
next week. By the way, if you'd like to get more practice using
your English, you need to join my podcast Learners study group. There you
can make new international friends, join me for live group coaching every week.
Plus get the pdf, transcript and audio download for every Happy English podcast in
the past and in the future. And each episode has exercise where you can
practice this English point with speaking and writing checked by me. To learn more
or to see some of the example sentences from this lesson, just visit my
Happy English dot com and choose podcast lesson seven hundred. Remember, learning another
language is not easy, but it's not impossible, and I'm here to help
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