10 English Idioms from Health & Medicine

Do idioms make you “break out in a cold sweat”? Then this lesson is “just what the doctor ordered”. That means that this lesson is perfect for you! Today, we will look at idioms from the world of health and medicine. I will teach you ten idioms that seem like they have something to do with health but that mean something quite different. Most of them allow you to express how you feel emotionally or physically. We will cover expressions like “rub salt in the wound”, “get a dose of your own medicine”, “scratch that itch”, “bitter pill to swallow”, and more. These are useful idioms that native English speakers use regularly. So watch the video, and do the quiz at to test your understanding! TRANSCRIPT Hi. Welcome to engVid. I’m Adam. In today’s video, I’m going to give you a few idioms from the health and medicine world. Now, of course, you know idioms are collection of words that may or may not mean exactly what the words suggest. So, these idioms can be literal, means... meaning they mean what they say, or they can mean something completely different. So, let’s look at a few of these. “To give someone or to give something a black eye“. Now, if you punch somebody right in the face... right in the eye, it will get all black and maybe close a little bit. We call this “a black eye“. It’s like a big bruise. This is a good word to know. A “bruise“ is, like, when something goes black; or if you go hit here and it gets all blue and black - that’s a bruise. So, that’s a black eye. But “to give someone a black eye“ can also mean to hurt someone’s reputation. Okay? Or a thing, like a company or a network. So, for example, a reporter misrepresented a certain story, and it turned out that this story was false, and so he... this reporter gave the network or gave the news channel a black eye, which means that their reputation is a little bit questionable; now people maybe don’t trust this news network anymore. It could happen with a company, a government office, anything. If you do it to a person, you give someone a black eye means you hurt his or her reputation. Good. “A bitter pill to swallow“. So, a pill is like a little thing... when you’re sick, you take a pill, you swallow it and it’s... it usually doesn’t taste good. If you don’t take it with water and drink it quickly, it’s very bitter. But we also use this idiom to mean that something is very difficult to accept. Okay? So, let’s say I run a big company and I have to... it’s a family company and I have a lot of staff, and I like all my staff and they like me, but the company is not doing very well financially, so I have to lay off; I have to fire a bunch of people, and that is a very bitter pill to swallow. I don’t want to do it, but I have to. And they don’t want to have to go, but they have to. Right? So it’s a bitter pill to swallow. A more common example... let me give you another one: I work as an editor and sometimes people bring me their writing, and some people are just not very good writers, and so I have to tell them they’re not very good writers, and that’s a very bitter pill for them to swallow; they have a very difficult time accepting it. Okay? That’s one example. “Break out in a cold sweat“. So, when you have a fever; when your temperature is too high inside, you’re sweating - it means water is coming out of you, but you’re cold at the same time. So, that’s a “cold sweat“. But we also use this idiom when we’re afraid of something or we’re very nervous about something. So, I was walking with my girlfriend down the street, and then I saw my other girlfriend coming the other direction. And suddenly I broke out in a cold sweat. And my girlfriend said: “What’s wrong?“ and I said: “Nothing.“ But she could see that it’s a cold sweat - it means I’m afraid of something, and then she figured out what happened and I got into trouble. Just example. Okay? “A taste“ or “a dose of one’s own medicine“. So, the more common one is “taste“, but sometimes you’ll hear “dose“. A “dose“ is basically a portion, but we use it for a sickness. So: “a taste of one’s own medicine“... when you take medicine, you take a dosage. This is the other way you might see it. The amount that you have to take of the medicine. But as an idiom, what we talk about is when you do something, and it’s usually something negative, to somebody or to other people, and then suddenly that same thing is done to you - then that means you’re getting a taste of your own medicine. So, if I say some bad things about this person, and I spread it around and I tell everybody: “Oh, yeah, this person did this or that“, and everybody thinks: “Okay, whatever.“ And then somebody says it about me - everybody understands that I got a dose of my own medicine. I shouldn’t be talking about other people, because I don’t like it when it happens to me; when somebody says something about me. […]