Market Leader Upper Intermediate Units 1 and 4
Read the idioms below (or listen to your teacher say them) and guess whether each one is about success or failure:
Get off on the wrong foot On its knees
Back to square one In the bag
Blow up in your face Close, but no cigar
Come to grief On the crest of a wave
Draw a blank Fall at the first hurdle
A feather in your cap Get off to a flying start
Get a foot in the door By leaps and bounds
Let it slip through my fingers Make a killing
Miss the boat Ahead of the pack
The sky’s the limit Throw in the towel
Throw a spanner in the works Go from strength to strength
Win hands down Fall flat (on your face)
The final nail in its coffin A miss is as good as a mile
We were pipped at the post Losing your edge
Blockbuster Fall on his sword
From rags to riches Take off
Plunge Take a nosedive
Selling like hotcakes Gone through the roof
Drop out Ailing
On his way out Slump
Dive Soar
Crash Rocket
Grow A dip
Choose one of the famous companies or business people below and try to describe their past, present or usual position with expressions of success or failure like those above until your partner guesses which one you are talking about:
People
Steve Jobs Oprah Winfrey
Sir Alan Stanford Roman Abramovich
Donald Trump Li Ka-shing
Bill Gates J.K. Rowling
Rudolf Dassler Adi Dassler
Kim Woo-choong Bernie Madoff
Companies
Merck Roche
Citigroup (Citibank) GE (General Electric)
Volkswagen Porsche
AOL Time Warner Sony
Nintendo Puma
Adidas Apple
Microsoft Airbus
Nokia Ford
GM Nike
Reebok Rover
Lehman Brothers Arthur Andersen
Enron TWA
Daewoo Motors Nissan
Atari Tesco
Fila Disney
Countries
Iceland Ireland
Spain China
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PDF for easy saving and printing: Success failure idioms
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