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Cry wolf
Phrase: Cry wolf If you want to expand your vocabulary repertoire, follow the news. You can learn the English language, or any language for that matter, from the newspaper. Recent European events have provided us with the opportunity to look at the idiom cry wolf. When someone cries wolf, they raise a false alarm. Do…
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In full swing
Phrase: In full swing What a difference a year makes. This time last year, COVID-19 was in full swing. Now, we’re all breathing easy as we return to some semblance of ‘normal life.’ When something is in full swing, it’s fully operational and no longer reduced or in the nascent stages. So, as I was saying,…
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Get by
Word of the Day: Get by If you go to university or attend some other form of postsecondary education, you do so because you want to do more than get by. What do I mean by that? I mean that you want to make money. When you get by, you can live and feed yourself but…
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Trials and tribulations
WotD: Trials and tribulations Life is full of trials and tribulations. Please don’t ask me why because I don’t rightly know. All I do know, and I learned from experience, is that things test your patience in life, and nothing goes according to plan. Trials and tribulations are the events in life that cause suffering.…
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Off-kilter
Word of the Day: Off-kilter The English language is full of funny little words, and off-kilter is one. Something can be off-kilter or out of kilter, but it can’t be on-kilter or just plain kilter. You’ll only see it used negatively. Language is strange that way. When something is off-kilter, it is not working as…
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Zeitgeist
Word of the Day: Zeitgeist You know, I’ve added quite a few French and Latin loanwords here in this blog post but a few German ones. Today we’ll look at the word zeitgeist. First off, we should get the pronunciation correct. The ‘z’ is pronounced as ‘ts,’ like at the end of ‘sweets,’ so it’s…
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Stick your head in the sand
Idiom: Stick your head in the sand Donald Trump was right. Yes, I said it, and I’ll never repeat it. Sometimes you have to swallow your pride and admit when you are wrong. When you stick your head in the sand, you ignore a problem or inconvenient situation and hope it goes away. What was…
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Sabre-rattling
WotD: Sabre-rattling In hindsight, we can now say what we thought was merely sabre-rattling was open preparation for war. The West had grown too comfortable with threats of war from Russia, North Korea and perhaps China. As Russia built up its forces on the borders of Ukraine, even conducting joint ‘exercises’ in Belarus, the world…
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Smoke and Mirrors
WotD: Smoke and Mirrors There’s a war going on in Ukraine right now. It’s not just a shooting war but also an information war. Initially, the Russian government had planned to unleash a smoke-and-mirrors campaign. Information described as smoke and mirrors is intended to cloud the truth or embellish it with misleading information. The purpose…
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