Idioms to Put a Smile on Your Face

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Hello, welcome to another class. I’m Robin and today we are going to be talking about smile idioms. Yes, idioms related to smiling or with the word “smile” in them. So I know that idioms are a difficult part of learning English because you just have to memorize them. And there are so many in the English language. So one trick is to memorize a few at a time. So today, I’m going to talk about a specific group, which are these idioms related to smiling. And for your information, October 2 is actually World Smile Day. Okay, so it’s important to know that some of these idioms are actually not all positive, so I’m going to separate them into two groups. So we have some idioms that are positive, related to smiling and some idioms that are actually more negative. Okay, and you’ll see what I mean when I give you some examples here. Okay, so let’s look at idioms, positive idioms, related to smiling. First, let me point out that another word for smile, a synonym of smile, is “grin”. So to smile, and to grin are the same, they mean the same thing. They are synonyms. Okay, so let’s look at these examples of positive smiling idioms. So “to be all smiles”, okay, this means you’re smiling and you are happy to be all smiles. “To grin from ear to ear”. So if you are grinning from ear to ear, it means you have a really big smile on your face because you’re very happy about something. “To crack a smile.” Okay, so this is kind of the opposite. If you crack a smile, it means that you just smile a little bit, okay, so it’s not this grinning from ear to ear, it’s just a little bit of a smile, to crack a smile. “To be beaming”. Okay, if you’re beaming, it also means that you are super happy about something. So a beam, like a beam of light. If you’re beaming, then it means you are glowing, you’re smiling, you’re super happy. Okay, so these are idioms that we can use to talk about ourselves or about someone else. And let’s look at another one. “To put a smile on someone’s face”. Okay, this is something that we can do for someone else. If you put a smile on someone’s face, it means that you do something that makes them happy. Okay, so maybe you help someone, you tell them a joke, you do them a favor, that means that you put a smile on their face. Okay, another expression related to an idiom related to smiling is when “fortune smiles on someone”. So if you say, “Oh, fortune smiles on John because he got a job last week”. So that means you are lucky you have good luck, good things happen to you if fortune smiles on you. So these are some examples of positive idioms related to smiling and now I’m going to give you a few negative ones or ones that aren’t so positive, okay? “To wipe a smile off someone’s face”. So imagine someone does something that you don’t like or maybe someone laughs at you or they make fun of you. You say “I’m going to wipe that smile off your face”. Now it doesn’t mean that you’re going to hurt them physically, necessarily, but it means I’m going to make you stop smiling. Okay, so to wipe, so this is to wipe, to wipe the smile off someone’s face means to make them stop smiling or laughing when they shouldn’t be okay, so this is like a negative situation. To grin, okay, remember the synonym “to grin and bear it”, okay to grin and bear it means that you are in a situation that you don’t like, you are not happy about something. Think about the situation right now with COVID. But to grin and bear it means that you keep going, you keep moving, you move forward anyway. Okay? So even though times are hard, you grin, you smile, and you bear it and you keep going. Okay? And finally, “to force a smile”. So if again, we’re not happy about something, we don’t like something. Normally we would not smile in this kind of a situation but to force a smile means that you do it anyway. So you smile again and you keep going. So these two to force a smile or to grin and bear it, these are very similar meaning finding the positive, keep going and a bad or a negative situation. All right. So I hope that you have learned something new today, with these smiling idioms. I hope that you have a reason to smile today. So tell me in the comments, what is your reason for smiling? Okay, give me a good reason. I want to read it. And try to use an example of one positive and one negative idiom in the comments. So write your examples in the comments and I look forward to reading them. So thank you for joining me in today’s class. I hope that you’ve learned something. I hope that this class has put a smile on your face and I hope that you have a great rest of your day and I’ll see you next week. Take care. Bye!