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Learned
Word of the Day: Learned (adjective) No, this is not the past tense form of the verb to learn, as in ‘I learned something new yesterday.’ This word has a different meaning and pronunciation. The pronunciation is ‘ler nid,’ and it is used like this: The learned (ler nid) professor increased the zeal of her students…
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Lip service
Idiom: Lip service Don’t believe him; he is just paying you lip service! Now, what the heck does that mean? Well, imagine it is election time. Your local politician is holding a town hall meeting, and citizens are complaining about something to him. He agrees that he will fix everything if, and only if, he…
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Zeal
Word of the Day: Zeal If you do something with zeal, you are very interested in it and enthusiastic about it. You do it with passion. It’s quite a nifty little word to know. For example, Great business people often have a passion for and are very enthusiastic about making money. They put all of their…
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Talk is cheap
English Idiom: Talk is cheap People talk all the time. Many people say they will do something, but they never do it. Talk is cheap, you see. It takes little time or effort to say what you will do. It is easy to say something but much harder to do it. Your company may promise…
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℃ / ℉
Symbol of the Day: ℃ / ℉ Many students have trouble reading these symbols, and some get them wrong because they forget to pronounce the plural’ s’ on degrees. The symbol ℃ is read as degrees Celsius. Please see the examples below. 0℃ is read as zero degrees Celsius. 1℃ is read as one degree…
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Put your money where your mouth is
English Idiom: Put your money where your mouth is Put your money where your mouth is is a very common idiom, and guys use it all the time when hanging out with each other. It means instead of just talking about something, you should do it. For example, if you say you can do something,…
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Convention
Word of the Day: Convention In yesterday’s post, I talked about the word convention, and I realized that most people probably did not understand this usage of the word. Of course, a convention is quite a large meeting of many people with similar occupations or interests. I, however, was not talking about a large meeting. I…
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Play (something) by ear
English Idiom: Play (something) by ear If you play something by ear, you react to things as they happen and do not have a plan for how you’ll respond or for what you’ll do. Many people prefer to have a plan when they go on vacation. Some people like to know beforehand where they will…
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Let your hair down
English Expression: Let your hair down It’s Saturday! For many people, it is a day off! No work, no manager, no boss, no stressors! Ha! It is time to let your hair down and get crazy. Feel free to sleep in for three hours. Eat your yogurt out of the container; who needs a bowl?…
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Saying
Word of the Day: Saying In the English language, we have proverbs, idioms, expressions, quotes, puns, slogans, mottos, clichés, adages, sayings and quips. There are still more. These are all used to name little expressions that English speakers commonly use. Often, these are very difficult for English language students to understand, and usually, it is…
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