транскриптHello, I’m a very interesting and intelligent man. And this is Fred, who, as you may have noticed, is a horse. Today Fred and I are going to be helping you to improve your English. I bet you’ve never been taught by a horse before. Hungry, isn’t he? In fact, he eats all the time. He eats like a horse – of course he does – he is a horse. In English, if someone eats a lot we can say ‘he eats like a horse’. To eat like a horse. To eat a lot. [Neighing and other horsy noises.] . What's that you say Fred? Ah, just that silly noise horses make. Anyway, I heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. We use this idiom when we've got some information directly from the person responsible for it. For example: my boss is going to fire me. Yes, it’s true. I heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. It means my boss told me directly. I didn’t hear it from anyone else. Sad news, I’m afraid… Fred’s died. Which means there's no point in trying to get him work any more. How do we make a horse work? Yes, that's right, by hitting it, or as we say, ‘flogging it’. Our next horse idiom: ‘to flog a dead horse’. Which as you can see is completely pointless.
‘To flog a dead horse’. This means to waste effort on something that we have no chance of succeeding at. I sometimes feel like I’m flogging a dead horse when I’m teaching. My students, they never seem to learn… I don't quite understand what the problem is…..very frustrating… [Horse noises]