We're joking, of course. This is really NOT our chunk of the day. Only students of English and people who haven't lived in the UK since about 1950 actually use this idiom – and it probably wasn't even used that…
Author Archive
Chunk of the day: adverse weather conditions
Over recent days, the news has been full of dire warnings. We've been urged to batten down the hatches and prepare to be hit hard by what's being called the Beast from the East! Quite what the former heavyweight boxing…
Word of the day: mate
I witnessed a rather entertaining scene yesterday afternoon outside a tube station in north London. The wallet of a middle-aged man somehow managed to drop out of his back pocket as he was leaving the station, and a younger -…
Word of the day: drone
Up until a few years ago, the word drone was most commonly used as a verb. If someone droned on and on, they talked about something in a boring way for a long time, so you might get stuck next…
Word of the day: Cheers
Following on from our previous post on the phrase bon appetit, it's perhaps a reflection of the priorities here in the UK that it's far easier to come up with a single English word for what we say before we…
Teaching deaf, hard of hearing and visually impaired students
As someone who spends a fair amount of time meeting and working with teachers in different contexts, I get asked all manner of questions and have become very aware of the limitations of my own knowledge. If anyone asks me…
Phrase of the day: bon appetit
You probably don't need me to tell you that food culture here in England is (and yes, I am using the classic English art of understatement here!) slightly different to much of the rest of the world. We seem to…
Word of the day: wide boy
Every big city contains certain kinds of characters who come to represent some deep and fundamental truth about the place. They capture some timeless essence of their being. One of the most enduring social types familar to anyone who's spent…
Chunk of the day: mass brawl
Twice in two days now, I've seen the words mass brawl appear in news headlines. First there was a story about up to a hundred schoolchildren, many still wearing their school uniforms, being involved in a mass brawl - a…
Phrase of the day: on the cheap
Some of you may have heard on the news this week that dozens of people were injured when a floor overlooking the main lobby of the Indonesian Stock Exchange building collapsed. You may even have seen the shocking video of…