by Liz Walter
Many of us will have given and received gifts over the holiday period. This post looks at some of the language around this custom.
Continue reading “I’ve brought you a little something: The language of gifts”
Last month we looked at a selection of idioms containing the word ‘hand’, concentrating on idioms connected with power. This post will cover ‘hand’ idioms with a range of meanings, focusing, as always, on the most frequent and useful.
Continue reading “You’re in good hands (Idioms with ‘hand’, Part 2)”
by Liz Walter
As we head into a new year (which I’m sure everyone hopes will be better than the old one!), I thought it would be nice to look at some useful phrases containing the word ‘new’.
Today, in the last of the ‘Describing character’ posts, we’re looking at words for a variety of negative characteristics, from the tendency to criticize others, the belief that you are better than everyone else.
Continue reading “Pompous and patronizing (Describing character, part 5)”
by Liz Walter
Today’s post focuses on phrases that contain general personal names – there are a surprising number of them!
Continue reading “I don’t know him from Adam: phrases containing names”
Who knew how many idioms and phrases there were containing the word ‘hand’! I certainly didn’t until I started researching them. A lot are common in everyday speech and are therefore useful to learn. As there are so many, this will be the first of two posts, Part 1 and Part 2.
Continue reading “Help is at hand (Idioms with ‘hand’, Part 1)”
by Liz Walter
At the beginning of the month I wrote about words and phrases connected with being quiet. In this post, I’ll be looking at the opposite: how to talk about noise.
Continue reading “I can’t hear myself think: more interesting ways of saying ‘noisy’”
Our Word of the Year 2020 is… quarantine. Our data shows it was one of the most highly searched words on the Cambridge Dictionary this year.
Quarantine was the only word to rank in the top five for both search spikes and overall views (more than 183,000 by early November), with the largest spike in searches (28,545) seen the week of 18-24 March, when many countries around the world went into lockdown as a result of COVID-19. Continue reading “Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year 2020”
genetic scissors noun [plural]
UK /dʒəˈnet.ɪk.ˈsɪz.əz/ US /dʒəˈnet̬.ɪk.ˈsɪz.ɚz/
a method of cutting the DNA in a cell so that it can be repaired
Researchers need to modify genes in cells if they are to find out about life’s inner workings. This used to be time-consuming, difficult and sometimes impossible work. Using the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors, it is now possible to change the code of life over the course of a few weeks.
[nobelprize.org, 7 October 2020]
lyfe noun [U]
/laɪf/, /lɔɪf/
any form of life, including but not limited to the human, animal and plant life we are aware of
“Lyfe” is a recent scientific coinage defined as any system that combines four processes: “dissipation, autocatalysis, homeostasis, and learning”. Life in the familiar sense is merely “the instance of lyfe that we are familiar with on Earth”, but other much weirder types might exist.
[www.theguardian.com, 6 August 2020]
gigafactory noun [C]
/ˌgɪg.ə.ˈfæk.tᵊr.i/
a very large factory where batteries for electric vehicles are made
A £1.2bn project to build Britain’s first ‘gigafactory’ to supply electric batteries for the UK car industry could unravel without changes to UK state aid rules, according to the company’s chief executive.
[telegraph.co.uk, 4 October 2020]
During the course of a day, we make repeated references to time, whether we’re worrying about being late for an appointment or expressing surprise at how quickly something has happened. Any concept that we frequently convey is likely to have idioms associated with it. This post looks at those idioms, as always, focusing on phrases that are frequent and current.
Continue reading “At the crack of dawn: Idioms used for speaking about time”