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Six Minutes Vocabulary from BBC LearningEnglish.com.

Hello and welcome to six minute vocabulary with me, Neil.

And me, Finn.

In this program, we're talking about phrases from Shakespeare.

They're phrases that were either invented by Shakespeare or used by him in his plays, and that we still use a lot today.

We'll give you plenty of examples of these, and we'll teach you what they mean.

We'll have a quiz, and we'll also bring you a top tip for learning vocabulary.

Let's start with Danny. He's talking about cooking and entertaining friends.

And while you listen, think about this question. Does Danny think it's easy to find special ingredients for recipes?

For some people, food is the be-all and end-all, and I have friends who, whenever I visit, produce a dish fit for the gods. But in my opinion, cooking is not for the faint-hearted. I really

hate spending forever and a day in the kitchen. Dinner parties usually mean trying to track down

some special ingredient, which ends up being a wild goose chase. It's pretty much a foregone conclusion that my chosen

recipe won't work out as I hope. So I just throw a party once a year to repay all my friends

in one fell swoop. Fortunately, every one of them has a heart of gold, so they understand.

That was Danny. And we asked you, does Danny think it's easy to find special ingredients for

recipes? And the answer is no, because usually it's a wild goose chase. Now, a wild

goose chase is used in Romeo and Juliet.

This means a situation where you waste time chasing after something that you can't get.

So Danny clearly has had bad experiences of trying to find ingredients and not succeeding.

Exactly. Well, there are four more Shakespearean phrases in our

first clip. Listen out for them. For some people, food is the be-all and end-all, and I have friends

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