Jan 30, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: not on speaking terms Over the weekend I saw a friend of mine who last year had some similar experiences to me as he’d fallen out with his parents about Brexit. Jon is married to a Spanish national and like countless others across the country, they’ve had a very stressful time of late as the government has so far […]
Jan 29, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: It keeps me off the streets I was chatting online with a friend in Ukraine the other day. She’d asked me what I’d been up to recently (What have you been up to? is a common way of asking about what someone has been doing recently) and I was listing some of what’s been keeping me busy: getting ready for some […]
Jan 26, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: Onwards and upwards The publication of this post marks the end of our first full week of WORD OF THE DAY over here on the Lexical Lab site and I’ve spent much of the last few days tying up loose ends – sorting out all the little bits and pieces that needed to be done as we move […]
Jan 26, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: Tell it to the judge! A couple of weeks ago, as part of the ADVANCED LANGUAGE AND CULTURE course I was teaching at the time, we discussed recent literary trends here in the UK. We looked at the best-selling books in different genres and talked about what the sales of certain titles might say about the state of society. As […]
Jan 24, 2017 Chunks, Word of the day Word of the day: pivot There’s an ancient Greek myth about a king called Sisyphus, who committed a terrible crime against the gods and was condemned to an eternity of hard labour! He was forced to spend each and every day carrying a huge boulder – a great big rock – up a mountain, only to see the thing roll […]
