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The theme of today’s blog post may not be exactly cheerful, but you might just find it useful. The subject is death and dying. Whether we like it or not, it’s something that we all talk about at some point in our lives. Continue reading “Talking about death (Part 1)”
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By Liz Walter
There are a lot of words for talking about temperature in English. Many of them describe particular types of thing. For example, some adjectives can be used to describe the weather but not food or people. This post is the first of a pair, and looks at some common words for things that are hot or warm.
I’ll start with red-hot, which is an emphatic word for something that is extremely hot. We use this adjective for objects, often metal objects, and not usually for weather or food:
Don’t touch that saucepan – it’s red-hot!
We talk about blistering or scorching (hot) weather, but we don’t usually use these words to talk about how people feel when they experience it:
They worked all afternoon in the blistering heat.
It was a scorching hot day.
There are however several words that can refer to both hot weather and the way we feel in it. These include baking (hot), boiling (hot), roasting (hot) and sweltering:
Everyone on the train was baking, but we couldn’t turn the heaters off.
It’s boiling hot here in the summer.
There was no shade on the beach and we were roasting.
We were forced to walk miles in the sweltering heat.
Scalding is an emphatic word used for liquids and implies that they will hurt you if you touch them. On the other hand, piping (hot) usually describes food or drink and is a rather positive description:
She accidentally put her hand in the scalding water.
Make sure the food is piping hot before you eat it.
If someone is too hot because they are ill, we say they have a temperature/are running a temperature, and if they are very hot because of a fever, we might say that they are burning (up):
Tom was running a temperature and feeling very ill.
She was burning up in the night.
If something is warm, it is fairly hot but not very hot. This word usually describes a pleasant temperature. Two more positive words are toasty, which usually describes a person’s body or sometimes a place that is comfortably warm, and balmy, which describes warm weather:
Make sure you stay warm if you’re going out in the snow.
My thick coat kept me toasty.
It was a balmy afternoon and we sat outside.
If you have found these words useful, look out for my next post, which will look at some of the words that describe things that are cold, or only slightly warm.
quiet cracking noun [U]
/ˌkwaɪ.ət ˈkrækɪŋ/
the situation where an employee keeps coming into work and doing their job, but feels privately unhappy and disengaged
Quiet cracking is when workers continue to show up to work and do their job but “struggle in silence while they do it”, according to Frank Giampietro, EY Americas chief wellbeing officer. In an interview with Business Insider, Giampietro said a lot more workers who wanted to leave were feeling trapped in their current roles as a result of the current hiring downturn.
[peoplemanagement.co.uk, 18 August 2025]
job hugging noun [U]
UK /ˈdʒɒb ˌhʌgɪŋ/ US /ˈdʒɑːb ˌhʌgɪŋ/
the fact of staying in a job because it provides security, even if you don’t enjoy it and it no longer feels rewarding
A cute new term for a morbid reality has cropped up online, describing workers who cling to their jobs out of fear about reentering the dismal job market: “Job hugging.” In many ways, the “job hugging” trend is a reversal of the so-called “great resignation” of the pandemic era, when workers felt safe walking away from positions they didn’t want, confident they’d find work elsewhere.
[independent.co.uk, 4 November 2025]
See also the Great Resignation
hybrid creep noun [U]
/ˈhaɪ.brɪd ˌkriːp/
the gradual increase in days employees are expected to come into the office, even though the company officially has a hybrid working policy
There has also been a recent increase in employers gradually pushing to bring employees into the office more frequently, often without a formal announcement, known as “hybrid creep”. According to career expert Peter Duris, it’s becoming more commonplace. “However, some employers may want to see more faces in the office, but do this without formally updating any policies.”
[stylist.co.uk, 30 October 2025]
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Today’s post is the second of a pair focusing on nautical idioms, that is, idioms relating to sailing and the ocean. Part 1 covered idioms with the words ‘boat’, ’ship’ or ‘water’. Today, I’m looking at idioms containing a range of other nautical words. Where an item of vocabulary or the nautical origin of a phrase is not clear, I have given a brief explanation. Continue reading “All hands on deck! (Nautical Idioms, Part 2)”
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by Liz Walter
My last post looked at phrases containing the word ‘end’ in the sense of the part that is furthest from the centre of something. Today’s post looks at phrases containing the word ‘end’ in its other main sense: the final part of something such as an activity or a period of time.
If something is at an end, it is finished and if it comes to an end, it finishes. On the other hand, if there is no end to something, it will never finish:
Eventually the rescuers arrived and her ordeal was at an end.
That period of my life was about to come to an end.
There seems to be no end to the conflict.
In the end, means finally, for instance at the end of a series of events or after a long discussion. We sometimes describe the point where something starts to get worse until it finishes or fails completely as the beginning of the end:
I made several attempts to call her, but in the end I went to her house.
It was the beginning of the end for our band when the drummer left.
If you do something to/until the bitter end, you continue until it is finished or completed, usually facing great problems or knowing that the result will be bad:
Their opponents had by far the better team, but they fought to the bitter end.
If you say that something is not the end of the world, you mean that it isn’t the worst thing that could happen. We sometimes use this phrase to imply that someone is making too much fuss about something. If someone comes to/meets a sticky end, they die in an unpleasant way. This phrase is slightly humorous, and shouldn’t be used in serious situations:
I know you’re upset about missing the show, but it’s not the end of the world.
The character comes to a sticky end when his car blows up.
I’ll finish with a very common phrase. When people are discussing a situation, they often finish with the phrase at the end of the day, followed by what they consider to be the most important fact about it:
You can complain about the driving test as much as you like, but at the end of the day, if you want to drive, you have to do it.
As you can see from this and my previous post, there are an incredible number of English phrases with the word ‘end’. Is this the same in your language?
As the UK is an island nation, it’s perhaps not surprising that there are a great many idioms in English that relate to the ocean and sailing. Some of these nautical idioms are not known or used by many people and others contain obscure items of vocabulary. However, a surprising number are fairly common in contemporary English. This post (and my next one) will cover the most frequent of these idioms. Continue reading “Rocking the boat (Nautical Idioms, Part 1)”
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Today’s topic is the language that we use to describe people and actions that are morally good and morally bad.
Continue reading “Worthy and wicked (Words meaning ‘good’ and ‘bad’)”
The Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year 2025 is… parasocial
This word, which was previously used mainly in academic contexts, was added to the Cambridge Dictionary in 2023 after our lexicographers noticed it appearing in news articles and on social media. Continue reading “Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year 2025”
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by Liz Walter
Today’s post is the first of a pair looking at some of the very many phrases that contain the word ‘end’. The noun end has two main meanings. The first is the part of something that is furthest away from the centre. Today’s post looks at phrases where ‘end’ relates to this meaning. Continue reading “Jumping in at the deep end: phrases with ‘end’”
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My last post looked at the language that we use to describe people and animals who are physically strong and weak. Today’s post focuses on words for things that are strong and weak. Continue reading “Sturdy or flimsy? (Words for strong and weak things)”