A pigeon is a type of bird, and a pigeon hole is a very small hole made in a piece of wood for pigeons to stay in. This hole is only slightly bigger than the pigeon, so the pigeon has little room to move.

If you “pigeon hole” someone, it means that you make too many generalizations about that person based on a steriotype. It’s a bad thing to “pigeonhole” people. For example, a common steriotype is that accountants are a little boring. If you meet an accountant and think that he must be boring just because he is an accountant, you are pigeonholing him.

You could say to someone, “You shouldn’t pigeonhole all accountants as being boring. I know a few accountants who are a lot of fun to hang out with.”

If you “take something in stride” it means that you didn’t allow a bad situation to make you too stressed or depressed.   It means that you handled the bad news well.  It’s a good thing to be able to take something in stride.

Here’s a possible dialog:

A: Hey, did you hear that Jim got fired from his job?

B: Ya, he called me last night and told me.

A: How’s he doing?

B: He seems to be taking it in stride.

This means that Jim is doing a good job at handling the disappointment of getting fired. He’s not getting stressed out and going crazy about it.

Here’s another example:

A: Hey, I’m really sorry to hear that your girlfriend left you. How are you feeling?

B: I’m doing ok. I think this breakup might actually make us both happier.

A: I’m glad to hear you are taking it in stride.

Andy

This phrase is an old and fun one.
Snoozing means sleeping, or napping. The idea of this phrase is that if you are snoozing, ie. not paying attention, then you lose.

Imagine that there is one slice of pizza left in the box. Then you take the last piece of pizza and your friend beside you says, “hey, I was planning on eating that”. You can make fun of him by saying, “you snooze, you lose”. It basically means, “you were too slow and not paying attention, so too bad, you lose, and I get to eat the pizza.”

Andrew

This is a phrase that I’d like to share with you. It’s fun to use in a slang setting.

If you are “in your element” it means that you are in a situation that you are comfortable and familiar with. Roger Federer is “in his element” on the tennis court.

You could also say, “He’s really outgoing and seems to be in his element when meeting new people.”

If you are “out of your element” it means that you feel awkward and uncomfortable in the situation. Sometimes you can say you “feel like a fish out of water” in that situation. You could say, “His mom feels really out of her element when she is in a strange place. That’s the reason she never travels.”

The fun way to use this expression is to tell someone that they are “totally out of their element”. This means that they don’t know what they are talking about. It can be used during an argument when you believe the other person is talking about a topic that they know nothing about.

My dad doesn’t know any Chinese for example. If he started arguing with me about the language, I could say, “Dad, how can you be arguing about this. You don’t know anything about it. You are way out of your element here”. I would say it in a friendly way of course.

Let me know if you have any questions about using this fun phrase.

Andrew

This is a very useful phrase in English and something that you can hopefully avoid doing in your own life.

A “barrel” is like a big jar. Scraping the bottom of the barrel quite literally means that the barrel has almost nothing left inside and you are trying very hard to see if you can get the last little bit out.

The way it is used is like this: If you are scraping the bottom of the barrel it means that the selection (choice) that you made isn’t the most desirable. You only made this choice because you had no better options and you felt you needed to choose something.

If the boss hired someone who didn’t seem very qualified for the job you could say he was scraping the bottom of the barrel. That means that he didn’t have any better people apply for the job so he chose them only because there was no other choice.

Imagine one of your friends is dating someone who is unattractive, rude, and seems to be a bad choice. You could say, “I don’t know why she would date a guy like that. She is really scraping the bottom of the barrel.”

Your comments are always appreciated.

Andrew