Hello and welcome to the English We Speak, where we explain phrases used by fluent English speakers so that you can use them too.

I'm Faye Faye and I'm joined by Georgie. How are you doing?

Well, I'm feeling calm now, but this morning, all the trains to work were cancelled, so I had to get the bus instead.

It really grinds my gears when that happens without

warning or explanation. Oh, tell me about it. Well, grind someone's gears is the expression

we're looking at in this programme. Train cancellations without warning, grind your gears, Georgie.

So what does that mean? Well, if something grinds your gears,

it really annoys you. What grinds your gears, Faye Faye? When people eat really crunchy things

sitting next to me in the office, that really grinds my gears. Yeah, I can understand that one.

Now, this phrase is usually used in the present

simple to talk about things which generally annoy you. So you can start a sentence with,

it grinds my gears when, or you could say, that really grinds my gears. Yes, you wouldn't

usually hear it in other forms like it ground my gears or it was grinding my gears to talk about things that

happen once. Use it for things which happen often. Let's hear some more examples.

Every evening when I go home, there's just so many tourists in the train station. It really

grinds my gears.

They get in the way with their suitcases and I'm in a rush and I just want to get home.

Okay, I'll tell you what really grinds my gears. When people have got something for the dishwasher

and they don't put it inside, they put it next to the dishwasher. So someone, me, has to come

along and put it in for them. So I go to this coffee shop with my friend and every time I go there,

it's like they've increased the price again. It really grinds my gears.

Now there are some other useful phrases to use when things annoy you. A pet peeve is a noun and it's something that annoys you. They're usually quite personal. So, for example,

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