“Wow. It’s already midnight? I feel like I just got here! This party is so much fun!”
“Yeah, time flies, right?”
Hearing or reading “time flies” for the first time might be confusing for newer English learners. I used it once in a classroom at the end of a particularly fun class and several students raised their hands at the same time and said, “Teacher! What does that mean?”
To begin with, “time flies” is a shortened version of a longer idiom:
Time flies when you’re having fun.
Knowing the longer version, it is perhaps easier to guess the meaning of this idiom:
Times seems to move quickly when you are enjoying yourself.
(Think about the opposite – doesn’t time seem to move so slowly when you are completing a boring task?)
It’s helpful for English learners to know that in informal conversation, this idiom is often shortened to simply:
Time flies.
Try and use this idiom – the shortened version! – in conversation this week!
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Teacher Amanda 