Hello and welcome to the English we speak with me dain and me Neil.

You look rather excited Neil.

Of course I am. The football world cup is about to start.

Excitement has reached fever pitch.

Well that doesn't sound very good.

The last thing we need at the World Cup is fever on the pitch.

Don't worry Jaying, there's no actual fever on the football pitch. Don't worry Jaying, there's no actual fever on the football pitch. No one is ill.

Fever pitch is just an expression that means there are high levels of excitement.

Thank goodness for that.

Let's hear some examples.

I was at the school sports day and excitement was at fever pitch.

The kids were going crazy supporting their classmates. Criticism of the company CEO was at fever pitch.

The staff were really unhappy.

Anger reached fever pitch after the referee said it wasn't a goal.

This is the English we speak from BBC Learning English.

We're talking about the expression fever pitch, which means a state of high emotion.

As you heard in the examples it's not just excitement that can be at fever pitch

it can be any strong emotion such as anger or criticism. That's right and we often use it with

reach or the verb to be plus at so excitement reached fever pitch or anger was at fever pitch.

And one last point, it's not really a football expression,

but because it contains the word pitch it's often used when describing football.

Right, can I carry on getting excited about the World Cup now?

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