to be at a loss (for words)

Remember when English sounded Greek to you and everything you wanted to learn felt like a big challenge? We could say in the beginning of our studies in English, we all feel at a total loss about how to proceed with the grammar, vocabulary, etc. When you're at a loss or at a total loss, you don't know what to do because you're very confused. When you're in a situation where you don't know what to say, you can specify the expression by adding "for words" to it, as in I am at a loss for words. So imagine you're about to ask a girl out, but you're very shy. When you approach her you find yourself at a total loss for words. You have no idea what to say and picking the right words seems like the hardest thing to do.

There's one more expression with the word loss: be a dead loss. As you can see, it has a bad connotation. If someone or something is a bad loss, they're disappointing because they are of bad quality and can't do what you expect them to do. So imagine someone is a dead loss at sports. That means he or she cannot play anything well. If something is a dead loss, they turn out to be a big disappointment. So for example, you set up a meeting to discuss a very important topic, but very few people show up and you can't come to any results without everybody. So you can say the meeting was a dead loss. That's it for today. I hope this is useful. Talk to you next time!