Twiddle your thumbs
Learning English Conversations
BBC
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2022
⏱️ 2 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A phrase for boring times.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a download from BBC Learning English. |
| 0:03.0 | To find out more, visit our website. |
| 0:05.6 | This is the English we speak, with me Faye Faye. |
| 0:09.1 | And me, Rob. |
| 0:10.6 | Now, our piece of authentic real English in this program is, Faye Faye, |
| 0:16.0 | Twiddle your thumbs. |
| 0:18.0 | Oh, okay, I will. |
| 0:20.0 | What are we waiting for? |
| 0:23.5 | Nothing, Rob. |
| 0:25.3 | Twiddle your thumbs is the phrase. |
| 0:27.6 | Oh, sorry, Faye, I thought you were telling me to wait around, not do anything, until something happens. |
| 0:34.8 | Why would I do that? |
| 0:36.7 | So you can watch me twiddle my thumbs? |
| 0:38.9 | No, Rob. |
| 0:39.8 | The informal phrase, twiddle your thumbs means to wait around doing nothing until |
| 0:44.7 | something happens. But you can twiddle your thumbs again while we listen to some |
| 0:49.8 | examples. Where have you been? apples. |
| 0:58.0 | Where have you been? I've been twiddling my thumbs waiting for you to arrive. Just twiddle your thumbs while we work out how the computer works. |
| 1:02.0 | I've been twiddling my thumbs because I arrived early for |
| 1:05.8 | the meeting. |
| 1:09.6 | This is the English we speak from BBC Learning English and we're learning about the phrase |
| 1:15.1 | twiddle your thumbs which means do nothing while waiting for something to happen. |
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