2026-03-30
6 分钟Hi, and welcome to the Espresso English podcast, where you can improve your English in just a few minutes a day.
My name is Shaina, and I'm the teacher at Espresso English.
Make sure to visit the website, EspressoEnglish.
net, where you can get online courses and e-books that will help you learn English even faster.
Let's get started with today's lesson.
Lesson five explanation, idioms with time.
Around the clock.
First, let me clarify one thing, the difference between a clock and a watch.
Many English students confuse these two words.
A clock is something you hang on a wall, and a watch is something you wear on your wrist.
The hands of a clock go around continuously in a circle,
so if you do something around the clock, you do it for 24 hours a day without stopping.
Light travels very fast, and the total distance that light travels in one year is called a light year.
It's about 10 trillion kilometers.
That's very far.
So the idiom light years away means that something is very far in the future.
Like clockwork, when a clock is working correctly, it is accurate and regular.
So if something happens like clockwork, it is predictable because it occurs exactly at regular intervals of time.
Rush hour refers to the period of time with lots of traffic.
Every weekday has two times that are considered rush hour, in the morning from around 7 to 9 a.m.