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by Liz Walter
We all know someone who seems to have trouble with everyday life; someone who drops things, bumps into things, breaks things, and generally has more accidents than other people. There are lot of ways of talking about clumsy people like this.
Continue reading “Like a bull in a china shop: talking about people who are clumsy”
By Patricia Ferraz
Brush up on your English through your love of reading. In this post, we highlight interesting phrases and idioms from the popular novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Continue reading “Putting a spanner in the works – Idioms in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society”
By Patricia Ferraz
Brush up on your English through your love of reading! In this post, we highlight interesting phrases and idioms from the popular mystery novel, The Thursday Murder Club. If you like mysteries and unusual detectives, you’ll love this best-seller by Richard Osman, which is soon to be made into a film by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment.
Continue reading “In for a penny, in for a pound: Idioms in The Thursday Murder Club”
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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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by Liz Walter
My last post was about hiding things, and today I am writing about finding or discovering them.
Find is a very general word, used both for when you look for something deliberately or when you find it by accident. It is usually used to talk about an object or something you can see. For information, we are more likely to use the phrasal verb find out. Discover is used for objects and information, and tends to be used more when we find something by accident or for the first time:
I found my keys under a cushion.
How did you find out my address?
We discovered a secret door that led to a tunnel. Continue reading “Searching out and tracking down: talking about finding or discovering things”
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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)”
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Today we’re looking at idioms from a range of national newspapers that were published on the same day. We do this every couple of months in order to provide you with up-to-date, frequently used idioms. Continue reading “Sitting on the fence (Newspaper idioms)”
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It’s said that the artist Andy Warhol once predicted that in the future, everyone would be world-famous for 15 minutes. We can’t say for certain what he meant by this. Perhaps he was reflecting on the desire that so many people have to be famous. Given this desire and the great level of interest in the lives of famous people, it is not surprising that there is a lot of vocabulary in this area. Continue reading “World-famous and newfound fame (Collocations of ‘famous’ and ‘fame’)”
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In Part 1 of my ‘Idioms with the word “world”’ post, I looked at a variety of frequent and contemporary expressions, including ‘out of this world’ and ‘the best of both worlds’. Today’s post continues the ‘world idiom’ theme and includes an expression for discussing how to fix the world’s problems and another for relaxing by watching other people. Continue reading “Watching the world go by (Idioms with ‘world’, Part 2)”
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If someone told you they were on top of the world you might well guess that they were very happy, but there are a great many ‘world’ idioms whose meaning isn’t quite so clear. In this post, I’ll be looking at the most common and useful of these and, because there are so many, the post will be in two parts. Continue reading “The world is your oyster! (Idioms with the word ‘world’, Part 1)”