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A change is as good as a rest
Saying: A change is as good as a rest A change is as good as a rest means that changing your work location or switching to a different task can be as beneficial or refreshing as taking a vacation or a day off. Many of us start to feel stressed during the dog days of…
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Monotony
Word of the Day: Monotony When you do the same thing every day, day after day, week after week, month and month, it is called monotony: the humdrum of daily life. When everything is the same and boring, that is monotony. Don’t get me wrong; sometimes, monotony is a good thing because it can help us…
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Get away from it all
Idiom: Get away from it all Do you ever feel like it’s time to get away from it all? When you get away from it all, you leave the stress of daily life behind you and go somewhere you can be happy, slow down and enjoy life. Work, work, work. I bet you think you…
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Empty nester
Word of the Day: Empty nester This term has been around since the early 1960s, so it is not an old term nor a new one. An empty nester is a person whose children have grown up and left the nest (home), and now the parents are left in an empty house (nest) that is…
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All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
English Proverb: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy Now, this is a wonderful proverb to follow in summer. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy means if a person spends too much time working and not enough time relaxing and enjoying life, they will become bored, and their…
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Shake in your boots
English Idiom: Shake in your boots This will make you shake in your boots. Imagine it’s a lovely Sunday morning in summer. You decide to take a stroll in the forest before breakfast. The day is cool before the sun’s heat increases, and as you follow a winding path through the trees, you enjoy the beautiful…
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Winnow
Word of the Day: Winnow I used the word winnow to explain the proverb separate the wheat from the chaff. Winnowing is a way of separating edible rice or wheat seeds from their inedible coverings or chaff. For this process, farmers traditionally used a woven scoop, a tool designed to gently toss the rice or…
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Separate the wheat from the chaff
English Proverb: Separate the wheat from the chaff The boys of summer are well into their season, the games (and the weather) are heating up, and soon, it will be time to separate the wheat from the chaff. Separating the wheat from the chaff is to separate the good from the bad. Farmers do this…
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T.G.I.F.
Abbreviation of the Day: T.G.I.F. I am sure some of you saw T.G.I.F. and said, “Thanks God it’s Friday.” right? Wrong! I’ve corrected this tiny mistake for my entire teaching career (20 years). Many Japanese English language learners need to correct this mistake. The mistake is in the first word, ‘Thanks.’ There is no ‘s’.…
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Wet your whistle
English Idiom: Wet your whistle For many people, Friday signals the end of the workweek. What better way to celebrate the end of the working week than by wetting your whistle? Hmmm. No, it has nothing to do with whistling underwater, although some people like to whistle after wetting their whistle. Many enjoy singing at…
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