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Pull out all the stops
English Idiom: Pull out all the stops When you pull out all the stops, you do your utmost to accomplish a task and be successful. The people in the picture are all from the same company. They are on a corporate team-building retreat to help strengthen teamwork in the office. One of the team-building exercises…
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Penmanship
Word of the Day: Penmanship How’s your penmanship? Penmanship is the ability to write neatly with a pen or pencil. Good penmanship can be elegant. When it’s bad, it can be difficult to read. Do you have beautiful writing? Or does your handwriting look like the scratches of a chicken who stepped in ink and…
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Come from money
Idiom: Come from money When some people were young, they dreamed of marrying someone who comes from money. Maybe they are married now and still dream of marrying someone who comes from money. Heck, I don’t know what people think – and I try not to judge people by what they believe, but I’m getting…
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Big Kahuna
WotD: Big Kahuna English is excellent at acquiring words from other languages. Today, we have one from Hawaii. In Hawaiian, kahuna means an important person or shaman (medicine man). When we speak English, we are not speaking just one language; we are speaking almost every language in the world, or at least some parts of…
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United we stand, divided we fall
Expression: United we stand, divided we fall United we stand, divided we fall is a common motto you may have heard. It means that as long as people work together, they can overcome any adversity. People working together are stronger than if they work individually. A perfect example of putting this expression into practice is how…
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Metrics
Word of the Day: Metrics I’m sorry to tell you this, but whenever you speak to someone, they judge and form opinions about you. They judge you by many metrics related to your appearance, such as age, gender, nationality and how you speak to them. Then, they use another set to judge how you speak.…
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Poke fun at (someone/something)
English Expression: Poke fun at In the West, we poke fun at things all the time. We like to laugh at ourselves and others. We enjoy making things seem ridiculous and stupid. Poking fun at people or teasing and making fun of them is most often done for fun with no harm intended. Politicians are…
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The haves and the have-nots
WotD: The haves and the have-nots Just who are the haves and the have-nots? Have you ever seen one before? They are mysterious groups of people. Perhaps some of them are your friends or neighbours, or maybe you are one of them. Well, the answer is quite simple. The haves are the people who have…
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Leave a bad taste in (one’s) mouth
Idiom: Leave a bad taste in your mouth The idiom leave a bad taste in one’s mouth has nothing to do with eating or bad-tasting toothpaste. It deals with feelings. Have you ever been treated rudely or poorly in a restaurant or store? How did you feel about that experience? I bet that experience left…
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Rummage
Word of the Day: Rummage I used to love to rummage through the discounted book bins, looking for hidden gems that had either been overlooked or were damaged. Unfortunately, it’s been years since I was in a bookstore that primarily sold English language books. Digging through hundreds of books took some time, but it was…
Got any book recommendations?