Websites Explaining Idioms and Phrases

As someone with English as my second language, I often find myself wanting to use expressions I know in my primary language (Brazilian Portuguese) but don't know in English, or running into English expressions I don't understand the meaning of.

Image source: Openclipart

I have written a post in Portuguese where I list a few websites that explain English phrase meanings. Some of them are in Portuguese and either explain English phrases, or suggest English phrases with equivalent meanings to common expressions in Portuguese. I won't list those sites here because they'll be of no use for people reading this post who don't understand any Portuguese (if you do, then you'd better check out the Portuguese post instead). The only one of the Brazilian sites I'll list here is the following one, which is in English:

Portuguese Blog - Street Smart Brazil

This one is for those interested in learning Portuguese. This site is in English, and teaches Portuguese! Since I'm used to seeing sites in Portuguese teaching English, I found it interesting to come across one that does the opposite. This website has paid Portuguese lessons, but their blog contains free articles with English explanations of Brazilian Portuguese colloquial phrases and slang! Some examples:

• One-word Portuguese Lesson [Video]: Avacalhar
• One-word Portuguese Lesson [Video]: Cerva – Brazilian Slang Words
• One-word Portuguese Lesson [Video]: Muvuca – Brazilian Slang Words

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And now for the non-Brazilian websites, that are completely in English. I resort to these sites when I come across an expression in English that I don't know the meaning of.

The Free Dictionary

Aside from being a words dictionary, The Free Dictionary has a sub-site dedicated to explaining the meanings of idioms, phrasal verbs and such (idioms.thefreedictionary.com). We can use the search box to look for an expression, or simply write the expression in the URL directly, with the words separated by a plus ("+") sign instead of a space character. For example, to search for "make up" directly in the URL, it would be:

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/make+up

WordReference

Or, more specifically, the forum, where people ask about expression meanings or correct word usage. But instead of using the site's search, I just use an external search engine, such as Google or DuckDuckGo. For example, to search for "make up" (again :P ), I go to the search engine and type:

site:forum.wordreference.com "make up"

Phrase Mix

Phrasemix.com is a website with paid English lessons, but many free lessons too! What I find interesting about this site is that it teaches expressions used by natives, but which us non-natives probably wouldn't guess the meanings easily. Some examples below:

• "How do you take it?"
• "Do you want to go to time out?"
• "He's got a lot going for him."

Here is an index of all the lessons.

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If anyone knows of other interesting sites that explain expressions/idioms/phrases, please share in the comments!