I’m sure I’m not alone in sometimes wishing that things were easier. Work tasks, instructions, directions – so many things that we deal with on a daily basis can prove difficult. Read this post and the next time you find something hard, you’ll at least have an interesting set of vocabulary with which to complain!
Continue reading “Easier said than done! (Talking about things that are difficult)”
cheating mafia noun [U]
UK /ˈtʃiːt.ɪŋ.ˈmæf.i.ə/ US /ˈtʃiːt.ɪŋ.ˈmɑː.fi.ə/
a system in which students can pay to receive help to pass their exams in order to increase their chances of securing a place at a good university
Students need top marks — sometimes over 99 percent — to get into the country’s highly oversubscribed universities and so examiners are bribed, answer sheets leaked and exam rooms infiltrated. No more, said Neena Srivastava, secretary of the Uttar Pradesh board of education, who described the cheating mafia as part of organized crime. “We are fighting against this evil. We have to cleanse the state of this menace.”
[Washington Post, 9 February 2018]
It is with great sadness that we say farewell to Professor Ron Carter, who died after a long illness on 12th September 2018. Ron was Emeritus Professor of Modern English Language at the University of Nottingham and, since the late 1980s, his name has been closely linked with Cambridge University Press through his books, research projects and service as a Press Syndic.
Ron’s first book for CUP, The Web of Words, co-authored with Michael Long, was published in 1987. Ron’s passion for literature and his firm belief that knowledge of how language works was the key to unlocking the meanings of literary works stand as an enduring thread in his published works. While never abandoning his interest in stylistics and literary studies, over the next two decades, Ron turned his attention to the creation and exploitation of corpora, and in the 1990s we founded and co-directed the CANCODE and CANBEC spoken English corpus projects, funded jointly by the Press and the University of Nottingham. The impact of the CANCODE project was global, not only in terms of the wealth of linguistic insight gained from it, as reflected in Ron’s many academic articles, and those of his Nottingham colleagues and students, but also in the paradigm-shift it created through its emphasis on the grounding of English language teaching materials in empirical evidence. The culmination of Ron’s corpus research came in 2006 with the publication of the Cambridge Grammar of English, which I was privileged to co-author with him. The book attracted national and international media interest, an experience Ron was no stranger to, following his influential role on the government-funded LINC (Language in the National Curriculum) programme in the 1990s, with media interviews and debates and controversies, which Ron handled with his usual gentle, calm and highly professional manner.
Other books for CUP and academic papers followed from the corpus projects over the last 20 years, and I was greatly privileged to have been his co-author on many of them. They included Exploring Spoken English, Exploring Grammar in Context (co-authored with Rebecca Hughes), English Grammar Today (co-authored with Anne O’Keeffe and Geraldine Mark) and From Corpus to Classroom, which we co-authored with Anne O’Keeffe. The fact that many of Ron’s most significant works for CUP and other major publishers were co-authored is a tribute to the wonderful relationships he forged with his fellow academics in Nottingham and other universities. We who worked with him loved the humour, the razor-sharp insight, the gentleness, fairness and decency and the devotion to rigorous scholarship which were the hallmark of his approach to research and writing.
During the last years of his university career, Ron served as a Press Syndic, a role to which he brought all the qualities of a man determined to uphold academic standards and a man of great vision, one prepared to see what was around the next corner and not to be afraid to confront new challenges in scholarship and language pedagogy.
Ron will never be forgotten by his friends and colleagues, by the editors and others with whom he enjoyed such good relations at the Press, and, most of all, by the many hundreds of students who passed through his hands at the University of Nottingham and who received the gift of inspired teaching and nurturing from the humblest and the most decent of men.
Michael McCarthy
by Liz Walter
Collocation, or the way we put words together, is a very important part of English. In this post, I am going to look at some of the most common mistakes learners make with verb + noun collocations. If you make these errors, people will still understand you, but your English will not sound natural and you will lose marks in exams. Continue reading “Making an effort and telling a joke: avoiding common errors with collocations”
plastic footprint noun [C]
/ˈplæs.tɪk.ˈfʊt.prɪnt/
a measurement of the amount of plastic that someone uses and then discards, considered in terms of the resulting damage caused to the environment
As such, Greenpeace suggests a number of small changes people can make to reduce their plastic footprint. The first steps involve avoiding buying items such as plastic bottles of water and carrying a permanent or reusable one instead. It also advises using a refillable cup when buying takeaway coffee to help cut down on the estimated 2.5 billion disposable cups discarded every year in the UK.
[The Telegraph, 10 January 2018]
We share our planet with a huge number of other creatures – living beings that we categorize as animals, birds, fish or insects. This week, we’re taking a look at the language that we use to talk about these creatures.
Let’s start with the phrase in the title. Four-legged friend is a humorous expression used in British English to refer to an animal, especially a dog or a horse: This week, we publish poems on the subject of our four-legged friends. Birds, meanwhile, are sometimes referred to as ‘our feathered friends’: So how can we help our feathered friends survive the cold weather?
Many other animal terms reflect their relationship with humans. For example, a pet is an animal that lives in a person’s home as a companion: Isabel wanted a pet so we bought her a cat. Pets are sometimes referred to more formally as companion animals: Over sixty percent of all UK households have one or more companion animal.
Domesticated animals have been brought under human control in order to live or work with us: domesticated animals, such as dogs and horses
Meanwhile, wild animals live independently of people, in their own natural conditions: wild horses
A stray is a pet that no longer has a home or cannot find its home. ‘Stray’ is often used adjectivally: a stray dog / I think that cat’s a stray. The adjective feral describes an animal that exists in a wild state. It is used especially for animals that were previously kept by people: feral dogs/cats
Creepy-crawly is a child’s word meaning ‘insect’. It is sometimes used negatively, suggesting a fear of insects: I’m not really a fan of creepy-crawlies. / a child’s book on creepy-crawlies
Prey refers to an animal that is hunted and killed for food by another animal: A hawk hovered in the air before swooping on its prey. A predator is an animal that hunts, kills, and eats other animals: lions, wolves, and other predators
A pest is an insect or small animal that is harmful or damages crops: common pests such as mice
The plural noun vermin is used for small animals and insects that are harmful and difficult to control in large numbers: flies, rats, cockroaches and other vermin
Sadly, a word that is heard more and more is endangered. Endangered animals may soon not exist because there are very few now alive: Mountain gorillas are an endangered species.
Whether you’re an animal lover or not, we hope you find some useful words and expressions in this post!
phast noun [C]
/fæst/
a ‘phone fast’: a period of time during which someone chooses not to use their smartphone
For the past month, I’ve been trying to phase my phone out – the same way you’d phase out an annoying acquaintance. I’ve started avoiding it for a whole 90 minutes before bed, which has been tough, I won’t lie, but definitely doable. It’s what Price calls a phast, or phone fast. She explains how regular, short breaks from our phones “are essential for our emotional and intellectual health”.
[www.image.ie, 15 February 2018]
attention economy noun [U]
UK /əˈten.ʃᵊn.iˈkɒn.ə.mi/ US /əˈten.ʃᵊn.iˈkɑː.nə.mi/
an economic system where the amount of information available on the internet means that companies must compete to attract the attention of potential consumers
As 63% of marketers world-wide set out to increase traffic and leads over the next 12 months, their first instinct will be to produce more content. Fight this instinct. Remember, we are living in an attention economy. The way to get attention today isn’t to shout more or shout louder; instead, think carefully about how you can use these 8 strategies to help people better navigate the information deluge.
[www.thinkgrowth.org, 20 June 2017]
surveillance capitalism noun [U]
UK /səˈveɪ.ləns.ˈkæp.ɪ.tᵊl.ɪ.zᵊm/ US /sɚˈveɪ.ləns.ˈkæp.ə.t̬ᵊl.ɪ.zᵊm/
an economic system where a company, usually a website, makes money by selling its users’ personal data to other companies
Google and Facebook, in particular, are avatars and practitioners of the new “surveillance capitalism”, the system whereby it is not our need for goods and services that creates the greatest corporate wealth, but the data we generate that can then be sold on.
[The Sunday Telegraph, 4 February 2018]
by Liz Walter
I’ve written quite a bit recently about arguing and fighting, so I thought it would be nice to turn to something more pleasant: staying calm and relaxed. This can be difficult in the modern world, where many people report feeling stress or pressure (the anxious feeling you have when you have too much to do or difficult things to do): I couldn’t stand the stress of that job. We were under pressure to work harder. The related adjectives are stressful and pressurized: The situation was very stressful. She works in a pressurized environment. Continue reading “Don’t sweat the small stuff: words and phrases connected with keeping calm”
MAMIL noun [C]
/ˈmæm.ɪl/
abbreviation for middle-aged man in lycra: a man who takes up cycling in middle age, especially one who rides an expensive bike and spends a lot of money on clothing, accessories and so on
Richard’s transformation into a MAMIL began five years ago when, to get fit, he bought a road bike. At first, he wore a sensible pair of shorts and a loose-fitting jersey. But then the buying began in earnest. New wheels (the old ones were slowing him down, apparently), a pair of cycling shoes, then another pair, then a ‘quicker’ helmet, then a personal trainer to help him shed the pounds and improve his ‘power to weight ratio’.
[Daily Mail, 11 December 2014]
Much of what we do each day is planned or expected but not everything. Sometimes, for whatever reason, we suddenly do things that we are not expecting to do or have not prepared for. This week, we’re looking at the language that we use to express this.
Let’s start with a very useful adjective: spontaneous. A spontaneous action is sudden and done as a natural response to what is happening at the time: The silence was broken by spontaneous applause. / When she got up to leave, everyone applauded spontaneously. The noun from ‘spontaneous’ is spontaneity: We all need a little spontaneity in our lives.
Continue reading “On the spur of the moment (Words and phrases to describe sudden actions)”