Going Shopping: carrot, cucumber, beans, tomato

Idioms with vegetables

Idiom	Explanation	Example
dangle a carrot (in front of someone)	encourage or persuade someone by offering an incentive or a reward	All you have to do is dangle a carrot and he will accept the job.
a carrot top	a person with red hair	The baby is so cute, she’s a carrot top like her mum.
cool as a cucumber	be calm and collected	The situation was stressful, but Laura was cool as a cucumber.
be full of beans	have a lot of energy	The children are always full of beans on Christmas morning.
spill the beans	reveal a secret	We wanted to share our big news ourselves, but Nadia had already spilled the beans.
a bean counter	a person whose job involves accounting	My job isn’t that interesting, I’m just a bean counter in the planning department.
tomato, tomato (pronounced: to-may-to, to-mah-to)	what difference does it make? (only used in spoken language)	—Shall we use the green plates or the blue ones? —Tomato, tomato.

display incorrect answers

Exercises C1

Complete the sentences with the words below. Use each word once.

carrot – cucumber – bean – beans x2

You said you had some exciting news? Come on, spill the .
I was freaking out, but luckily Jess was cool as a about the whole thing.
You’re energetic this morning! Why are you so full of ?
They’re going to have to dangle a pretty big to get Margot to come back to the firm.
We were excited about this project, but the counters said that it would be too expensive.