C1 Negative emotions English vocabulary: In this advanced lesson, you will be learning to look at 10 advanced collocations for negative emotions and feelings. You will be learning how to describe emotions in English with these C1 Negative emotion expressions. These are English collocations of the C1 level. All of those are quite negative in, the way they express feelings. So let’s go through them and give you some examples.
10 C1 Negative Emotions English Vocabulary
- To feel down
- To feel sick with worry (to say I’m worried sick. You can use either way, it’s both the same). For example, I feel sick with worry, or I’m worried sick.
- To give vent to something
- To weigh on your conscience/mind
- Heavy heart
- Nasty shock
- Dread to think
- To Bear a grudge
- To dash somebody’s hopes
- To bottle up your feelings
1. To feel down
Meaning: to feel upset to feel depressed; We feel that we’re lacking energy, we feel depressed, we feel upset, all of those negative emotions.
Example:
- I am feeling a little down today. I don’t feel myself, I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the weather or maybe it’s just the time of the year, whatever it might be, I just feel a little down. I think I’ll go home, put my feet up and have a glass of wine.
2. To feel sick with worry / to be worried sick
Meaning: to be under a little bit of strain and feeling the stress
Explanation:
Usually when somebody is worried sick, they’ve got a lot of stress or a lot of problems on their mind because perhaps a family member is sick. So they’re worried sick as what’s going to happen. They’ve gone into hospital for a couple of weeks, and then not sure what the results of the tests are going to be.
Example:
- My daughter, she’s worried sick about the exams that just around the corner. They’re going to happen in a few weeks.
- I’m worried sick about the dog, you know, he’s never ever sick and I had to take him to the vet and the vet said he wasn’t sure what it was.
3. To give vent to something
Meaning: to let your negative emotions
Explanation:
Usually, when we give vent to something, it’s to give vent to our anger, or to give vent to some frustration, or something that irritates us too. So to give vent to our anger, irritation or frustration would be a good example. When we give vent to something, it means we let let it out. [C1 Negative emotions English vocabulary]
Example:
- He got a puncture on his bicycle. He picked the bike up and threw it on the ground to vent his anger.
- You might be cycling along enjoying the warm summer sun and you get a puncture on your bicycle and you hear that terrible sound. It’s as the air goes out of your tire. And you realise that you don’t have a pump with you. You don’t have a puncture repair kit, you have nothing. So you pick the bike up in you throw it on the ground to vent your anger.
- He couldn’t get the last bit of that equation and vented his frustration by screaming aloud.
- You’re trying to work out that mathematical problem and for some reason, you just can’t get the last little bit of that equation and you almost pull your hair out with frustration you vent your frustration, and your mother comes running up the stairs, Oh, what’s wrong? What’s wrong with you screaming about this mathematics? So to vent your frustration to vent your irritation means to show it, to reflect it in some way by screaming, kicking, shouting.
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4. Something weighs on your conscience/mind
Meaning: feeling a lot of worry, concern, or anxiety, especially for a long time
Example:
- I just have all of these problems weighing on my mind. I am not feeling good.
- It’s weighing on my conscience; I should have lent her the moment. She looked desperate. (So when you’ve got something weighing on your mind, or something weighing on your conscience, you feel guilty. Maybe you feel guilty about something you should have done).
5. A heavy heart
Meaning: you have a heavy heart when you are sad about something; A heavy heart will also weigh on your mind. We often use the expression to do something with a heavy heart means you do it but your heart’s not in it, you don’t really want to do it.
Example:
- I have to tell you with a heavy heart that we have to cancel the holiday this year, we just can’t go. (So you do it with a heavy heart, you do it without wanting to do it, it’s just one of those things).
- It’s with a heavy heart that I failed them, They really need to try better the next time.
Perhaps you’re a school teacher, and you have to mark the exams, and you look at a few and you’ve got a couple of bright students, but for some reason, they just didn’t reflect it in the exams or the tests. So it’s with a heavy heart, that you give them the exam results because when you look at their faces, they’re going to be really, really disappointed. So to do something with a heavy heart.
6. A nasty shock
Meaning: Bad news something you were expecting; A nasty shock can be literally if you stick your finger in the socket on the wall, you’ll get a nasty shock. But a nasty shock is something that’s bad news).
Example:
- I got a nasty shock when I opened the bill. The electricity has gone up by 60%. 60%! Can you believe it? (I don’t know what I’m going to tell my husband when he comes home. So it’s a real, real shock and nasty shock).
- I got a nasty shock when I opened the letter and found out that I would been caught speeding a few weeks ago. [C1 Negative emotions English vocabulary]
7. Dread to think
Meaning: when somebody is anxious and worried about something
Example:
- I dread to think what the world is going to be like next year when we have all these food shortages.
- I dread to think what life would be like without mobile phones. How would we contact everybody?
- I would dread to think what life would be like without online lessons. I would have to waste hours after going to and back from classes.
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8. To bear a grudge
Meaning: an ill feeling you hold against somebody because of something they said/did
Explanation:
If you bear a grudge, it’s a bad feeling or an ill feeling you hold against somebody because of something they said, or something they did or something they didn’t do. A long time ago could be days, weeks, months, years, somebody or some people bear grudges for a long, long time.
Examples:
- Obviously, she bears a grudge against me. She doesn’t come near me. She does not talk to me (to bear a grudge is when you hold something against somebody, something they did do, something they did say or something they didn’t do. And they bear a grudge for a long, long time).
9. To dash somebody’s hopes
Meaning: to disappoint to destroy someone’s plans
Dash is a wonderful word to… You can dash means to rush somewhere, to break something. (So when we dashed someone’s hopes, we break them, we smashed them here, we destroy them).
Example:
- If you get bad results in your exams, that dashes your hopes of getting into that university that you wanted to go to and you have to settle for the other university.
- Our college football team lost in the semi-finals of the cup. So dashed our hopes of being able to go and watch them in the big stadium. (they dashed the hopes of bringing glory to the team for yet another season). [C1 Negative emotions English vocabulary]
- I saw the boy who I fancied walking out with another girl and that dashed my hopes about ever getting together with him. (so when you dash someone’s hopes, it means they are over, they have ended. And they’ll have to start again).
10. To bottle up your feelings
Meaning: try not to express your feelings
Explanation:
when we bottle something up, when we put it in the bottle and we stick a cork in the top of the bottle. So you literally bottle it up. When we bottle up our feelings, it means we don’t let them out or we try not to let them out.
Examples:
- Don’t bottle up your feelings, you’ll feel worse, it’ll make you feel sick. So let it out, go outside, and scream.
- Don’t bottle it up. Don’t lock it inside. You don’t keep it with a cork on it because yet it might explode and hopefully not in your face.
Conclusion
So those are the 10 particular collocations all about emotions and feelings, all with a negative twist.
Let’s read them one more time. So, C1 collocations for negative feelings are, 1. To feel down 2. To feel sick with worry or to be worried sick. 3. To give vent to something; to give vent to some feelings of anger or frustration. [C1 Negative emotions English vocabulary] 4. To weigh on your conscience or to weigh on your mind; to feel guilty. 5. A heavy heart, Do something with a heavy heart when you don’t really want to do it but you have to do it.
6. To get a nasty shock when you open that envelope and the bill falls out for an extraordinary amount of money. 7. You dread to think about something. 8. To bear a grudge; to hold a grudge against somebody for a long period of time. 9. To dash somebody’s hopes so that they can’t do what they wanted to do, what they hoped to do. 10. To bottle up your feelings as the last one where we lock everything in tightly, we don’t let it out. And sometimes, someplace, it’s going to explode and it’s going to cause a problem. Okay, so to bottle up your feelings.
So 10 particular collocations, negative emotions, and feelings, they’re at a really advanced level. So as always try to use them, try to practice them.
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