Learn English idioms for Valentine’s Day

with Everest Language School

 

We want to wish all of our followers a very happy Valentine’s day and want to teach you some English Idioms for Valentine’s Day. For any of you who want to learn English idioms about love and the heart we have created a post over on our instagram just for you. Please feel free to share the poster with you friends and help “spread the love”. Have a great Valentine’s day and we hope that using some of these idioms will help you find love in Dublin.

Remember Everest Language School is an English school in Dublin. If you like the material you find on our blog, please look at our English courses and see if you would like to come and study English in Dublin.

What is Valentine’s Day?

Valentine’s Day, or St Valentine’s Day, is celebrated every year on February 14th in Ireland and around the world. It is the day when people show their love and affection for another person by sending cards, flowers or chocolates with messages of love. 

Who was Saint Valentine?

Well, it’s actually not that clear! There were more than ten St Valentines and one pope Valentine. From what we know, St Valentine (the one we celebrate on February 14th) was a priest from Rome in the third century AD. At that time Rome was ruled by Emperor Claudius II. The Emperor had banned marriage because he wanted to have more men to fight in his army. 

Being a romantic person, Valentine strongly disagreed with this marriage ban, so he secretly organised clandestine marriages. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before Emperor Claudius found out about what Valentine was up to and threw him in jail and sentenced him to death. This may have stopped him from performing marriages, but the execution made Valentine a martyr that we still celebrate today.

How did Valentine’s Day start?

Like many Christian celebrations, we can probably trace the origins of a similar festival to pre-Christian times. It is generally thought that Valentine’s day developed out of an earlier Roman festival. The Romans had many gods and many days of celebration throughout the year, one such festival was called Lupercalia. This festival was also in mid February and marked the beginning of Spring.

The Lupercalia festival was a wild festival of animal sacrifice and madness in the streets. But it can be credited as one of the earliest occurrences the blind date games that are still popular on St Valentines day to this day. During Lupercalia, in the game, men would pull a random name out of a box. Based on who they got from this game they would end up with a “girlfriend” for the festival, and in some cases, they would end up getting married.

With this festival, as with many other pre-Christian festivals around the world, the church wanted to put a Christian stamp on this celebration and so they decided to use it to remember St Valentine. 

How did St Valentine’s heart end up in the heart of Dublin?

What many people do not know is that the patron saint of love has a very special link to Dublin, Ireland. The heart is the universal symbol of love, and in a church in the very centre of Dublin you can find the heart of St Valentine! 

But how did it end up there? Well, in 1835, an Irish Carmelite priest, Fr John Spratt was invited to Rome. The sermons he deliver proved to be very popular among the clergy there and because of that he received some unusual gifts from Pope Gregory XVI, including the heart of St. Valentine.

Today, you can find the heart of St Valentine in a shrine dedicated to the saint in Whitefriar church on Aungier street in Dublin. Still to this day the relic attracts visitors from all over the world, from amorous couples praying to St Valentine for eternal love to beekeepers praying he will look after their bees (St Valentine is also the patron saint of bee!).

Positive idioms about love for Valentine’s day:

To be head over heels in love

To be mad about someone

To have the hots for someone

To have a crush on someone

Negative idioms about love for Valentine’s day:

To break someone’s heart

To be heart-broken

To be going through a rough patch

To be on the rocks

Phrasal verbs for Valentine’s Day:

To go out with someone

To ask someone out

To chat someone up

To break up

To get back together

To get over someone

What type of English idioms and phrasal verbs do you want to learn next?

If you don’t understand any of these idioms, please ask us in the comments.

Do you know any more English idioms about love or the heart?

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