The English We Speak: Can't see the wood for the trees
Learning English Conversations
BBC
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2026
⏱️ 3 minutes
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Summary
This idiom is about focusing on the small details too much and losing sight of the bigger picture. Learn when and how to use it, and learn other language to use in this situation, with Feifei and Georgie.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.8 | Our podcast series, Office English, is back with weekly episodes to help you improve your English at work. |
| 0:12.9 | Learn useful phrases to boost your career in English, from setting goals to using small talk, |
| 0:19.1 | to apologising when things go wrong. Follow the Learning |
| 0:22.5 | English for Work podcast to listen or visit BBC learning English.com. Hello and welcome to the |
| 0:29.8 | English we speak, where we explain expressions used by fluent English speakers so that you can use |
| 0:36.5 | them too. I'm Faye Faye and I'm joined by Georgie. How are you? I'm very well, thank you, Faye Faye. How are you? I'm very well. Thank you, Georgie. So what are we learning in this programme? Well, the other day I thought of quite an old idiom, can't see the wood for the trees. Now it's old, but it is still quite commonly used. If you can't see the wood for the trees. Now, it's old, but it is still quite commonly used. |
| 0:56.8 | If you can't see the wood for the trees, it means that you're so focused on the small |
| 1:01.1 | details of something that you aren't looking at the situation as a whole and what's important. |
| 1:06.2 | Oh, right, because wood in British English can mean something similar to forest. |
| 1:14.4 | So if you're standing in front of an individual tree, |
| 1:19.5 | maybe looking at the details of the bark, you can't see the entire forest, |
| 1:21.5 | you can't see the wood for the trees. |
| 1:26.9 | Right, which is why in American English, you might also hear can't see the forest for the trees. |
| 1:32.9 | Yes. Why don't we have an example, Georgie? How would we use it in the context of work? |
| 1:39.0 | Okay, so imagine a team working on a document. They spend hours thinking about the font size, but the content of the document is unclear and the overall structure doesn't make sense. |
| 1:44.6 | If you're obsessing over the font size, you're missing the bigger issue. |
| 1:48.2 | The document itself isn't working. |
| 1:50.4 | Yes, the team can't see the word for the trees. |
| 1:53.8 | This idiom is often used gently to give advice rather than criticism. |
| 1:58.9 | Shall we have some more examples? |
| 2:04.8 | Thank you. rather than criticism. Shall we have some more examples? When I was writing my novel, I couldn't see the wood for the trees. |
... |
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