going to the movies
130
1.0
- idiom
- US
:
ir al cine
- "I think you, me, and Kevin ought to go to the movies tonight," she said.
- people who go to the movies
They just want to go to the movies not as often.
- They just want to go to the movies not as often.
- And so I say, hey, bro, can we go to the movies and can you just dissect what you see?
- He said, no, you have to go to the movie theater and experience it with with the public.
- So a compound subject, right, is like he and his friends went to the movies.
- So this might be a comedy night, the theatre, a music gig, go see a film, like go to the movies.
- So if you go to the movies and he, for example, buys the tickets, you could buy the popcorn.
- I just feel like we still live in a world where people want to see someone that looks like them before they go to the movies.
Examples
-
We could go to the movies tonight.
-
I love going to the movies with my friends on weekends.
-
And he asked me to go to the movies with him.
-
We're just going to the movies with a bunch of friends.
-
We were just going to the movies, and now you can come with us.
-
I had lunch with a man today and we went to the movies.
-
The last thing I want to do tonight is go to the movies with the Grants.
Fiction book (1997) -
"What if I don't want to go to the movies?" I asked.
Fiction book (1995) -
That's actually funny, though, because I'm going to the movies tonight too.
-
Sue is getting ready to go to the movies with her friend Liz.
Fiction book (1993)
Synonyms
3
3.2
The activity of going to the cinema to watch films
Going to the cinema to watch films
How Common
- US
130
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'attending a cinema to watch a film' is directly and transparently derived from 'going' (moving/attending) combined with the destination phrase 'to the movies' (the cinema/films), following a standard motion/location compositional pattern. The phrase uses high-frequency, literal words and matches common cross-linguistic expressions for going to see films, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Going to the movies comes from the old name for films, 'moving pictures'. People would go out to a building to watch these movies on a screen, so the phrase means 'going' to see a film at a cinema today.