{"id":233802,"date":"2017-03-17T15:15:58","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T15:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gostudyin.com\/uk\/gsi_study_guides\/ielts-idiom-shoot-oneself-foot\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T15:51:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T15:51:18","slug":"ielts-idiom-shoot-oneself-foot","status":"publish","type":"gsi_study_guides","link":"https:\/\/gostudyin.com\/uk\/study-in-uk\/study-guides\/ielts-idiom-shoot-oneself-foot\/","title":{"rendered":"IELTS Idiom: Shoot Oneself in the Foot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Learning to use idioms and expressions which are common in the English language will make your English sound more native. In our Idiom of the Week series, we will be exploring common English idioms to help you excel in native English.<\/p>\n<h2>Idiom of the Week: Shoot oneself in the foot<\/h2>\n<p>To do something unintentionally that makes the situation worse. This expression possibly originated from soldier\u2019s deliberately injuring themselves to avoid going into combat.<\/p>\n<h3>Example 1<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>A:<\/strong>\u00a0Sales are down. Do you think the company can recover?<\/li>\n<li><strong>B:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, it would help if they\u2019d stop <strong>shooting themselves in the foot<\/strong> by hiring unreliable staff.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Example 2<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Question:<\/strong>\u00a0Can you tell me about the car industry in your country?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Answer:<\/strong>\u00a0The car industry in my country is huge. There are many famous manufacturers who ship all over the world such as Toyota, Mitsubishi, and Honda. They\u2019ve always been very successful, but some of them aren\u2019t doing so well these days. Mitsubishi really <strong>shot themselves in the foot<\/strong> by lying about their fuel efficiency. Now no one trusts them and their sales are down.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Study IELTS in London<\/h2>\n<p>Do you want to improve your English and study cheap and flexible part-time IELTS classes in <a href=\"https:\/\/gostudyin.com\/study-in-uk\/language-prep\/\">London<\/a>? Visit our Language Centre today to learn more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false},"study-guide-destinations":[127],"study-guide-categories":[],"class_list":["post-233802","gsi_study_guides","type-gsi_study_guides","status-publish","hentry","study-guide-destinations-study-in-uk"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gostudyin.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gsi_study_guides\/233802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gostudyin.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gsi_study_guides"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gostudyin.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/gsi_study_guides"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gostudyin.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gostudyin.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"study-guide-destinations","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gostudyin.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/study-guide-destinations?post=233802"},{"taxonomy":"study-guide-categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gostudyin.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/study-guide-categories?post=233802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}