#764 To Be Hooked on Something

Today's Learning English idiom for ESL learners is to Be Hooked on Something Also: Are British people addicted to Smartphones? The English Breakfast is evolving - we now have cheese with coffee. British People now drink Japanese wine "sake". extract Today's phrase is to be hooked on something. To be hooked on something and that's a playful way to describe a habit which may look like an addiction. Now, we often refer to… for example children playing video games too much. Parents might say: “oh you're really hooked on that aren’t you”. And if someone is very passionate about a hobby, we often refer to them as being hooked. Particularly on things like food. We can say, for example: “Oh my children are really hooked on fish and chips. They love that”. It's a way of referring to someone using a repetitive habit. Now we often use it playfully, there's no darker meaning to it. Although, It does indicate that perhaps there's some kind of resemblance to people who have an addiction. Now people who have an addiction let's say to alcohol or drugs they don't usually talk about themselves being hooked on something. But it may be that the habits that they have are the same although having an addiction of course, is a much more serious problem. Let's examine this a little bit deeper. So there's a news story today. And it says, “Addicted Brits are so hooked on their smartphones they need a fix from them every hour”.