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Obelisk
Word of the Day: Obelisk If you read my posts often, you know that I like to write about abstract and intangible English expressions. It’s not very often I write about a thing, but today I choose to write about Obelisks. At first, you may think obelisks are just giant towers. On that, you are…
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Cut your teeth
Idiom: Cut your teeth Initially, none of us have experience. It’s something every one of us has had to acquire. When attempting something new, we are not perfect at it and require guidance and practice. That’s what it means to cut your teeth. You gain practice and experience at something. Often you cut your teeth…
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Worrywart
WotD: Worrywart Some words, such as worrywart, make no sense until you understand the background behind them. Let’s begin with a wart, shall we? It’s a hard growth that you can get on your body. Often it’s on your hands or feet and comes from a virus. You can cut them off, but they often…
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Splash money around
WotD: Splash money around We can think of money as similar to water. When it is scarce, we value every drop. However, when we have plenty, we feel it is OK to splash it around. When you splash money around, you spend a lot of money buying things that you don’t need and could do…
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Forewarned is forearmed
Proverb: Forewarned is forearmed When offering advice on preparing for the future, someone may say forewarned is forearmed. What they mean is that it’s better to know what is going to happen before it happens. That way, you can be better prepared for when it does. This is part of a quote from Miguel de…
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Close to home
Phrase: Close to home In the West, we perceive many world happenings as occurring over there. ‘There’ being anywhere that is not the West. Events are starting to hit close to home. When something affects you personally or deeply, it hits close to home. We have either denied or ignored climate change for a long…
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It takes a village to raise a child
Proverb: It takes a village to raise a child The English language has proven very adept at borrowing words and expressions from other languages and cultures. The proverb, ‘It takes a village to raise a child,‘ is a good example. This proverb can be found in several African cultures. It is famous as the title…
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Float your boat
Idiom: Float your boat Contrary to what your first impression may be, there do not have to be any boats involved in the conversation for you to say, “Whatever floats your boat” to someone. It means you can do whatever you like and has the nuance that the speaker doesn’t care. This idiom is often…
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On the back of an envelope
Phrase: On the back of an envelope I’m not sure how familiar you are with start-ups, but many prominent companies and fantastic ideas were born on the back of an envelope. As you can imagine, there is not much space on the back of an envelope. Therefore, that limited amount of space forces you to…
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Take at face value
Phrase: Take (something) at face value With the Social media and fake news environment we live in today, it’s tough for us to take things at face value. When we take something at face value, we accept it as it is, are not skeptical about it and don’t look for an ulterior motive. As I…
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