#LearningEnglish

white elephant
a thing that is no longer needed and costs lots of money.
e.g. the office building, because everyone is working from home now.

white lie
a small lie that is used to say because you don't want to hurt someone.
e.g. You mon cooked dinner. And you said you love this dinner, but you actually didn't like it.

color
a shade or tint

tint
a shade or variety of a color.

shade
a color, especially with regard to how light or dark it is or as distinguished from one nearly like it.

a shade ~= a little

once in a blue moon
happens really rarely
once in five/ten/ years

blue blood
royal or from a noble family
(often in a negative way)
e.g. the senator cannot understand real people's problems because he's so upscale

upscale
relatively expensive and designed to appeal to affluent consumers.

to paint the town red
1 go to every single bar and restaurant to enjoy life
(painting the map with the one color, and if it is red then I've been to all of those places)
2 kill all the people in the town
(The paint is the blood that splatters on the walls and floors. Maybe it is mafia slang.)

catch someone red-handed
catch someone doing something illegal

red tape
bureaucracy, a lot of documents, a lot of rules you have to get in order to do something
cut (through) (the) red tape
to circumvent bureaucratic obstacles

roll out the red carpet
offer a special trearment

red herring
something, especially a clue, that is or is intended to be misleading or distracting.
a fact or idea that takes away attention from the main problem.