The Blog

50 More Important English Idioms

51. beyond your years

When something is not what you thought it was, you can say that it is beyond your wildest dreams.

52. Dig in your heels

Digging in your heels means that you refuse to do something whenever somebody convinces you to do so. They will try all they can, but you will not give...

A new look for PhraseMix.com!

If you're a regular PhraseMix reader, you've probably already noticed that things look a little different.

This is a redesign that we've been working on for many months now. The main goals of the redesign were:

1. Make the site easier to read and navigate

We made the page wider, made...

Moving from "I" to "we"

Third person and first person

When you write something in English, you have to choose which "person" you're going to write in. You can choose to write in "third person", which means that you talk about things as "he", "she", "it", "they", "that", and so on. Here's how I might write about...

The first-ever PhraseMix book is coming out soon!

I'm proud to announce that the first-ever printed book from PhraseMix will be released on September 15th, 2015. It's being sold in Japan, with the title "英語はもっとフレーズで話そう" ("Let's learn English more phrasally!"). It was translated into Japanese by Misako Yoke and is being published by GOKEN...

When will you be perfect in English?

A PhraseMix reader wrote to me recently about her problems with learning English, and I noticed this sentence:

My problem is that I can't apply for a job because I am not so perfect in English.

I thought it would be good to talk about this idea of "perfect in English". If you study English...