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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)”
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If you’ve resolved to achieve something that requires a lot of effort in 2024, then this post is for you! Today I’m looking at idioms and phrases that we use to talk about making an effort. If you didn’t already know this, ‘make an effort‘ (= try hard) is a phrase itself, for example:
Can we all, please, make an effort to keep the kitchen a bit cleaner? Continue reading “Going the extra mile and elbow grease (Idioms for making an effort)”
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This week, we’re looking at alternatives to the word advice, including single word near-synonyms and phrases. We’ll start by considering the noun ‘advice’ itself because it has some nice collocations. You give advice and you get advice. If you do what someone advises you to do, you take or follow their advice: Continue reading “Hints, hacks and pointers (Words meaning ‘advice’)”
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Readers of our About Words blog often ask us for posts on currently used English idioms. One way that we make sure we give you up-to-date idioms is by looking at expressions used in current newspapers. This week, the idioms come from a range of national newspapers that were published on 5 October 2023. Continue reading “The calm before the storm (Newspaper idioms)”