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by Liz Walter
My last post looked at idioms that come from the sport of boxing. This post presents some more common sporting idioms. Back in 2019, I wrote about idioms with the word ‘ball’. I won’t repeat those here, but there are plenty of others!
Continue reading “Open goals and jumping the gun: more sporting idioms”
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This week’s post is a companion to one that I published last December on the language of embarrassment. That post focused on the feeling of being ashamed or shy in the company of others. Today’s post looks at the related theme of feeling or appearing foolish or making someone feel this way.
Continue reading “It’s so humiliating! (The language of feeling foolish)”
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by Liz Walter
Back in 1974, the world looked on as Muhammed Ali beat the great George Foreman in the thrilling boxing match known as the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’. Foreman’s recent death was a reminder of that contest, and also of just how many boxing terms have made their way into general idiomatic use. This post will cover a few of the most common ones.
Continue reading “The gloves are off: idiomatic phrases from boxing”
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Do you like learning English by playing games? Here at Cambridge Dictionary, we now have a Games Hub with daily word games so you can practise your English in a way that is both fun and motivating. To mark the arrival of our fabulous games, we thought we’d take a look at the language that people often use when they’re playing games.
Continue reading “Whose go is it? (The language of playing games)”
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by Liz Walter
My last post looked at ways of describing how important someone is in an organization, for example at work or in the armed forces. This post covers some more general ways of talking about how important someone is in a society, or how important other people make them feel.
Continue reading “Anyone who’s anyone: talking about how important people are (2)”
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Today’s post is the latest in my Newspaper idioms thread, in which I present you with a selection of English idioms and phrases used in several newspapers published on the same day. The aim is to provide you with a range of contemporary, frequently used English idioms.
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by Liz Walter
Zoologists tell us that if you watch a group of chickens, you can place them in order of importance because birds with a high status peck those with a lower status. While humans don’t peck or – usually at any rate – physically harm one another to demonstrate power, we do use the phrase pecking order to talk about social hierarchy, in other words how important one person is in relation to others.
Continue reading “The pecking order: talking about how important people are (1)”
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The world’s stock markets are very much in the news these days. With this in mind, I thought I’d take a look at the sort of language that is commonly used to talk about market fluctuation. I’ll focus especially on the colourful terms that describe dramatic changes in trading and share prices.
Continue reading “Stock market turmoil (Talking about stock markets and share prices)”
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We’ve all had the experience of looking forward to something and expecting it to be great but finding, when it happens, that it’s a disappointment. Conversely, we all know what it’s like to have low expectations of something but find that it’s much better than we were expecting. This post looks at language in this area and includes both single words and phrases.
Continue reading “Did it live up to your expectations? (Talking about disappointment)”
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by Liz Walter
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times: don’t exaggerate!” So goes the old joke. In general, we disapprove of people who exaggerate, that is, make something seem more extreme than it really is. Today’s post looks at some of the many ways we have of describing this behaviour.
Continue reading “Laying it on thick: talking about exaggeration”