Leg youtube/watch?v=eCGCm_9FzwM

1. Leg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCGCm_9FzwM

2. Hello and welcome to another Daily Dose of English. Today’s Daily Dose of English is about… Leg Most of us have two legs. We use our legs for walking. We also use the word leg in several common idiomatic expressions. An idiom is an expression whose meaning cannot easily be determined from the words alone. Take the idiom legless for instance. This does not mean someone who has lost their legs through accident or disease. What legless actually means is that the person who is legless has had too much alcohol to drink. Being drunk, they cannot stand on their legs. Because they cannot use their legs, they can be considered to be legless. Here’s an example of usage: She’s absolutely legless! Been drinking in the pub since lunchtime. I don’t drink too much. I’d hate to end up legless. Another idiom using leg is shake a leg. We say this to someone who we want to hurry up or to start doing something. For example: Come on you two, shake a leg! We’ve got to get this order finished by this afternoon. I thought you had an interview at ten o’clock? It’s nine-thirty now, so you’d better shake a leg if you’re going to get there on time. This is the last ever Daily Dose of English, I’m afraid. There won’t be any more, ever! No! I’m just pulling your leg. The idiom, pulling your leg, means to tell someone a lie as a kind of joke. So, don’t worry, there will be plenty more Daily Doses of English for you to enjoy, and you won’t have to pay an arm and a leg for them, because they’re completely free. Did you notice that last idiom? An arm and a leg. This idiom means that something costs a lot of money. I might ask you how much your new car cost, and you could say, It cost an arm and a leg. I would notice that you still had both your arms and legs and would assume you were using the idiom to say that your new car cost a great deal of money. What do you think I’d mean if I said, My Hoover’s on its last legs? Well, a Hoover was a brand of vacuum cleaner popular in Britain. In fact, it was so popular that Hoover became the common word for a vacuum cleaner and even the verb, to Hoover. Now you probably know that vacuum cleaners don’t have legs, right? So how could a Hoover be on its last legs? It actually means that it is very old and in poor condition. It is likely to break down and need replacing very soon. Any machine can be on its last legs when it is old and about to fall to pieces. And finally there’s the idiom not have a leg to stand on. That’s just it, see? You haven’t got any witnesses. It’s your word against his and you haven’t got a leg to stand on. I didn’t have a receipt to prove that I had bought it, so I didn’t have a leg to stand on when the police arrived. So, you can see that if you don’t have a leg to stand on, you are in a situation where you cannot prove something. The strangest idiom with leg is break a leg. It is considered unlucky to say good luck to an actor in the theatre, so they say break a leg instead. Personally, I’d consider it very unlucky to break a leg. But that’s actors for you. I hope you enjoyed that Daily Dose of English and I’ll see you again soon for another one. Goodbye for now.