Premier Vocabulary is a mini-podcast for you to learn football English one word at a time. We have three different levels for you: easy, medium and hard.

This episode is hard so we’re looking at more difficult football phrases and idioms.

Summary

Learn more football vocabulary with Premier Skills English. Each lesson in our Premier Vocabulary section looks at one football word or phrase. This lesson looks at the phrase under the weather.

You can find more lessons on the side of this page.

Transcript

Rich: Hello my name’s Rich and welcome to Premier Skills English - Premier Vocabulary.

Jack: Hi there! I’m Jack. We’re here to help you with your football English.

Rich: Remember you can find transcripts for all of our podcasts on the Premier Skills English website.

Jack: Premier Vocabulary is a mini-podcast for you to learn football English one word at a time.

Rich: We have three different levels for you: easy, medium and hard.

Jack: This episode is hard so we’re looking at more difficult football phrases and idioms. These phrases can be used to talk about football but are often useful when talking about other topics.

Rich: The phrase we are looking at in this episode is: under the weather.

Jack: Before we tell you what this idiom under the weather means we’ll do a short conversation and see if you can work out the meaning yourself. In this conversation, Rich and I bump into each other at work.

Rich: Hi Jack, good weekend?

Jack: Yeah, it was nice. We went for a huge bike ride on Sunday. We did about twenty miles.

Rich: And you missed the Arsenal match.

Jack: No, I was back for that. I wouldn’t miss the match.

Rich: You don’t sound too good. You sound a bit under the weather.

Jack: No, I’m fine. I might be coming down with a cold or something.

Rich: Are you sure it’s not the Arsenal match or maybe that bike ride?

Jack: OK, so did you hear the phrase under the weather? Do you have a good idea of what it means?

Rich: Under the weather means to feel a little ill or sick.

Jack: You use the expression when you’re not feeling your usual self. You don’t feel really, really sick but you don’t feel like doing a lot of extra work and don’t feel bright and cheery.

Rich: You might also see the phrase being used to describe football teams if they don’t play as well as they usually do.

Jack: You might hear someone say that Chelsea looked a bit under the weather in the second half.

Rich: This wouldn’t mean that the Chelsea players are sick, just that they aren’t playing as well as they normally do.

Jack: There are a couple of other idioms that you could use instead of under the weather in the same way. One is below par.

Rich: We can say I’m feeling below par or Liverpool were below par on Saturday.

Jack: Or another similar idiom is out of sorts. I’m feeling out of sorts or Arsenal were out of sorts in the first half.

Rich: There is the final whistle!

Jack: We’ll be back soon with more Premier Vocabulary from Premier Skills English.

Rich: Bye for now and enjoy your football.

Discuss

When was the last time you were feeling under the weather?

Why do teams sometimes appear to be under the weather or are below par?