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 Fay Faye and I'm joined by Georgie.

Hi Faye how's your day going?

Not too bad, thank you. What about you?

Well, actually not great.

I was taking out the bins this morning and there were maggots everywhere.

It was disgusting. It made my skin

crawl. Oh Georgey you just said the maggots made your skin crawl and that's

the expression we're learning in this program but what does it mean?

Okay well I'm sure our listeners know what skin is but Fay Faye Faye what does

crawl mean? Well, crawl is a verb and it's a way of moving your body along the ground.

For example, babies crawl on their hands and knees.

And animals can crawl too, and it can be quite a creepy movement when they do so. That's right so we even have a nickname

for bugs which is creepy crawleys and if something makes our skin crawl it

means you have the sensation of horrible insects crawling over your body

that doesn't sound very nice does it no it doesn't so if something makes your

skin crawl it means you're incredibly disgusted or frightened by it.

Let's hear some examples. I watched a film about an alien that attacked a group of people on a spaceship.

The alien made my skin cruel.

My brother changes his bedsheets about three times a year. It makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.

I saw a new story about the plague of mice. There were thousands of them running through

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