Name: The Roots of Everyday English Expressions: The Bible & Folk Tales
Uploaded: 2025-06-17T16:29:46.000Z
Duration: 12 min 52 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hi everybody, welcome to www.engvid.com, I'm Adam.

In today's video, I want to share with you some expressions, some common expressions in English, but what makes these particular expressions interesting is where they came from, their source.

So, most of these are from either superstition or from the Bible, believe it or not.

Many people don't realize they're quoting the Bible, but they are.

So, first of all, what is a superstition?

A superstition is a type of belief that is not really based on anything.

It's just a story that happened that was popular many, many, many years ago, and that parents told their kids, who told their kids, who told their kids, and people started believing it even though there's no scientific reason to.

Some people believe that if you break a mirror, you will have seven years of bad luck.

Some people think that if you see a black cat crossing in front of you, you should spit or you will have bad luck.

So, I'm going to give you a few expressions that are based on superstition that people use all the time.

So, I don't have any wood here, but I would knock on wood after I say something positive.

So, I say, oh, I think my son is going to be accepted into Harvard.

Now, if there's a piece of wood somewhere, most people will knock and say the expression knock on wood, because what they want to do, they don't want to jinx what they just said.

To jinx something is to bring bad luck on it.

So, you want to avoid the bad luck, so you knock on wood and then you're safe.

Some old story became a superstition and people accepted it.

Hail Mary is from a religion, not necessarily the Bible.

Now, what's interesting about this is I'm not actually talking about the prayer.

I'm talking about football, American football, and the Hail Mary pass is something that is popular in the sport.

A Hail Mary pass generally happens near the end of a game or near the end of a half, and one team is behind in points.

They don't have enough time to slowly move up the field, so they try a Hail Mary pass, which means trying to pass all the way across the field and hope that the catcher, the person who's supposed to catch the ball catches it and gets the touchdown.

Now, people... this started in the NFL, in football.

Now, people use this anytime that they need to do something desperate, in business, in social life, anything.

When you're running out of chances, when you're running out of time and you're desperate, you'll do a Hail Mary.

You'll basically fire everybody to save money.

You'll hire somebody, a professional, even though he costs too much, but it's a Hail Mary pass.

You need to do something desperate in order to score the touchdown, in order to succeed in what you're trying to do.

Now, technically not English, but we use it in English all the time.

To have deja vu is to think you've seen something before, or you've done something before, or you've experienced something before, and when you're doing it now, it seems very, very familiar, like you've done it before, maybe even in a past life.

So, in a past life, you ask the prettiest girl in school to go on a date, and now you're going up to her, and for some reason, you feel like, wait, I've done this before.

Maybe you're a little bit more nervous, maybe you're a little bit less nervous, but it seems very familiar to you, so you go ahead and do it.

If some of you have seen the movie The Matrix, you remember when the cat moved in front of Neo, and then the cat moved again?

But we use it in everyday life when something seems very, very familiar.

This is not from the Bible, but we relate it to the Bible.

A Bible thumper is a person who... this is thumping, basically hitting, so he keeps hitting the Bible.

Basically, we say this about a person who tries to push a religion on other people, or somebody who always quotes from the Bible.

So, if you go to certain places in the US, for example, there are a lot of Bible thumpers.

People who are always talking about what the Bible says, or that everybody should go to church and study the Bible, and stuff like that.

Not the best word, but sometimes you'll see... you'll hear people using this about politicians who are a little bit too religious, who want people to do things a certain way, or somebody who's a little bit too good, like not... doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, doesn't do anything.

Oh, he's probably a Bible thumper, because he lives by the Bible, so that's an expression you might hear as well.

Now, technically, it's not a real law, but Murphy's Law states that if anything bad can happen, it probably will happen.

So, people usually say this after something bad has happened.

So, I was on my way to a job interview, and on my way I got a flat tire, and I missed the job interview, and I didn't get the job.

And I told my friend about it, and he goes, well, you know, Murphy's Law, what are you going to do?

Nothing you can do about it, but people often quote this law.

If something bad can happen, it probably will.

A very common expression, and especially in business situations, the blind leading the blind.

So, a blind person obviously can't lead another blind person, because neither of them knows where they're going.

So, in business, if you have somebody, like a manager, who's not very good at his job, but he is responsible for training new employees who don't know what's going on because they're new, we say, oh, look, the blind leading the blind.

So, we're saying that both of them don't know what they're doing.

But the blind is the first one, the second one is the one who needs to learn something, and following the one who doesn't know how to teach.

So, when we say the writing is on the wall, it means it's very easy to assume something is going to happen.

It's almost, it's a very strong prediction.

So, I see, like a co-worker, let's say I go to business again, a co-worker is fighting with the boss.

So, like, the next time it happens, everybody's saying, she shouldn't do that, I mean, the writing is on the wall, she's going to get fired soon, right?

It's very obvious what is going to happen.

Very easy to predict what is going to happen based on what is happening now.

So, if somebody says the writing is on the wall, it's already, the future is already understood, basically, the prediction is already clear.

Next, chasing rainbows or chasing a pot of gold.

Basically, technically they actually go together, you're chasing a rainbow to find the pot of gold, but people say he's chasing rainbow or he's chasing a pot of gold.

Now, let me, before I get into that, let me introduce you to leprechaun.

The leprechaun is like a little guy who goes, who chases after the rainbow.

So, he thinks at the end of the rainbow, there's a pot of gold.

So, people who are chasing a pot of gold or people who are chasing the rainbow or people who chase the leprechaun are trying to get something, but they are fantasizing.

They're not going to get that thing they want.

So, a person, let's say for example, a person has absolutely limited or very, very basic understanding of computers.

He likes computers, he likes to go on the computer and do stuff, but he doesn't know programming, he doesn't know hardware, he doesn't know software.

So, this person thinks, oh, you know what?

I should apply to MIT or I should apply to the University of Waterloo in Canada.

These are like, in the whole world, these are like two of the top schools for computer science in the world.

So, this guy obviously is not going to be accepted.

The people who are going to these schools can already build computers.

They're just going to learn even more things.

So, we say he's applying to MIT, he's chasing rainbows.

It means he's chasing a dream that he will never find, he will never reach.