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Today’s post has a very positive feel to it as I’m looking at the language around responding to opportunities.
Starting with a useful collocation, we say that we take an opportunity, meaning that we use a chance to do something.
Continue reading “Making the most of it (How we talk about using opportunities)”
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Books play a hugely significant role in all our lives, so it’s probably no surprise that there are a lot of English idioms that include the word ‘book’. In this post, I’ve selected what I consider to be the most useful and current ones and look at how they are used.
Continue reading “Cooking or hitting the books? (Idioms with ‘book’)”
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Today’s post looks at phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs relating to studying, learning, and taking exams.
Let’s start with some useful verbs for reading.
Continue reading “Skimming through and writing up (Studying phrasal verbs)”
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I recently heard a journalist complaining that she didn’t understand the government’s position on a particular issue. It was, she said, as clear as mud, meaning, of course, that it was not at all clear! This humorous idiom made me think about the various ways in which we say that something is difficult or impossible to understand. Today’s post, including both single words and idioms, is the result.
Continue reading “It’s as clear as mud! (Words and expressions that mean ‘difficult to understand’)”
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This week, I’m looking at the language we use to refer to sources – that is, the places, things, or people that provide or produce a particular thing. (That ‘thing’ can be a physical object or something abstract, such as knowledge or an idea.) As usual, I’m including both single words and phrases in the post. Continue reading “Treasure troves and endless supplies (Words and phrases meaning ‘source’)”
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I recently published a blog post on the language that we use to describe the way things seem to be (Keeping Up Appearances). Today, I’m looking at a related subject – words that describe things that are definitely not what they seem to be. Continue reading “Fakes and forgeries (Things that are not what they seem to be)”
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There’s an English saying You can’t judge a book by its cover, meaning that you cannot know what someone or something is really like by considering only appearance. However, we all make assessments based on how someone or something seems to be (even if we then find out that our initial judgment was wrong). This week, I’m looking at the language in this area, covering both single words and phrases. Continue reading “Keeping up appearances (Talking about how things seem)”
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This week, in the second of two ‘Talking about differences’ posts, I’m looking at idioms and other phrases that are used for saying that things or people are different. Continue reading “Apples and oranges (Talking about differences, Part 2)”
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My last two posts have focused on the language that we use to describe people and things that are similar or the same, covering words such as identical and analogous and expressions such as dead ringer and spitting image. In this post, I look at the language of differences, considering single words in this area. Continue reading “Varied and diverse (Talking about differences, Part 1)”
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Two weeks ago, I published a blog post on the language of describing similarities, including words such as identikit and analogous. This week I’m looking at idioms and phrases in this area. Continue reading “Dead ringers and peas in pods (Talking about similarities, Part 2)”