The party season has started! Here’s our essential guide to talking about having fun.

Fun or Funny?

Be careful with the word “funny”. It means “amusing” or “strange”. So, for example, you can say:

“My Uncle John is a very funny man. He’s always telling jokes!”

“A funny thing happened to me yesterday. I saw Rob and said hello, but he completely ignored me.”

To talk about enjoying yourself, you can say that something is “fun” or that you “had a lot of fun”:

“His parties are always fun.”

“We had a lot of fun at his party.”

Enjoy

An alternative to saying “fun” is “enjoy”. Remember, you need an object with the verb “enjoy”:

“I really enjoyed myself at the party last night.”

“I really enjoyed the party last night.”

I had…

“I had a great time … (at the party)”

You can also say “I had…”

… a fantastic time
… a wonderful time
… a brilliant time
… a fabulous time
… an amazing time

“I had a ball …(at Sarah’s party)!”

“I had the best night ever last weekend!” (the best time / party you have ever had)

“We had a good old knees-up at the party.” (“Knees-up” is a British English word meaning “to dance”.)

Other expressions

to party / party hard = to enjoy yourself

“We partied all last weekend.”
“They party hard every weekend.”

to have a wild weekend = to have a really fun weekend

“The students had a bit of a wild weekend and didn’t recover until Wednesday.”

to let your hair down = to stop being serious and to enjoy yourself

“I like letting my hair down at the weekend because I study hard all week.”

to stay up all night = not go to bed until the morning

“They went out on Saturday and stayed up all night.”

Describing the evening

You can …

… chat with friends
… catch up with their news
… dance all night long
… have a couple of drinks
… flirt with a good-looking guy / girl (= talk to someone in a particular way because you are attracted to them and you want them to be interested in you, too!)
… go on somewhere else (leave one party / event and go to another)

The music was

… great
… right up my street (just the type of music you like)

The other people there were

… fun
… up for a laugh (keen to have fun and to party)

The atmosphere was

… electric (dynamic and exciting)
… laid-back / chilled

The decor was

… funky / retro (not modern, but unusual and interesting)
… a bit tacky (negative word, meaning a little “cheap-looking”)
… cool
… 80s-themed (made to look like a party from the 1980s, etc)

Don’t forget to check out our pages on English vocabulary for parties and social occasions and Party idioms for more English phrases and idioms!