Top 20 Idioms and Phrases on Exams

🍗 Bone up on

Meaning: Study hard, usually in preparation for a test

🔥Burn the candle at both ends

Meaning: stay up late into the night and then get up early the next day to carry on working

🔥Burn the midnight oil

Meaning: work late into the night

🏜️Come up trumps (or turn up trumps)

Meaning: unexpectedly produce just what’s needed at the last moment

🏖️Dead cert

Meaning: Something that’s certain to happen or be achieved

⛱️Draw a blank

Meaning: fail in attempts to remember something

📝Hit the books

Meaning: begin to study hard

📖In a brown study

Meaning: daydreaming or deeply contemplative

👜In the bag

Meaning: virtually guaranteed; success assured 

🧣Keep your nose to the grindstone

Meaning: apply yourself conscientiously to your work

🧴Knuckle down

Meaning: focus on a project or a task

🎓Learn something off by heart

Meaning: learn something in such a way that you can say it from memory

🧸Make a pig’s Ear of

Meaning: botch something up; make a complete mess of something

🧼Make the Grade

Meaning: be satisfactory and of an expected level

🧣Moment of truth

Meaning: Critical or decisive time when you find out if your efforts have succeeded.

(You can relate it with Result Day)

🧺On course for

Meaning: likely to achieve something

⚖️Pass with flying colours

Meaning: do very well in a test or exam

🔦Rise to the occasion

Meaning: Manage to do something successfully in difficult circumstances

🧤Sail through

Meaning: succeed in doing something without difficulty.

🪑Study animal

Meaning: Someone who studies hard (the opposite of a party animal)