Better Spoken English » out of the blue http://www.betterspokenenglish.com Guaranteed to improve your spoken English! Sun, 22 May 2011 08:00:33 +0000 en hourly 1 Idioms: ‘Out of the blue’ http://www.betterspokenenglish.com/idioms-out-of-the-blue/ http://www.betterspokenenglish.com/idioms-out-of-the-blue/#comments Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:58:34 +0000 Greg and Ivy Cook http://www.betterspokenenglish.com/?p=202

Out of the blue is a commonly used idiom. Do you know it?
It’s used to describe an event that happened (or is happening) unexpectedly, without warning or preparation.

Photo Credit: Christian Sherratt

Here are some examples:

“Out of the blue, my parents decided to buy me a brand new car for my birthday.  I’m so happy.”

“I hate it when out of the blue, things start going wrong.”

Conversation example

Jim: Melissa, you’ve been a good secretary at our company for two years now.  Unfortunately, I have to let you go. We’ll pay you 2 months salary.

Melissa: Do you mean that you’re firing me?

Jim: Yeah, I’m afraid so. Out of the blue, our company lost millions of dollars this week in the global financial crisis.  This has forced us to fire most of the staff.

Melissa: This is terrible! You know I really love this job.  This whole thing is out of the blue for me. I still can’t believe it.

Jim: I know…I’m really sorry.

See if YOU can create some examples like these…  after you have created them, you can write them in the comments section below!

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