Everyday English drawn from Greek mythology

A while back, I wrote a blog post about words and expressions that come from literature, but which have passed into everyday use. Today, inspired by a recent conversation with my daughter, who's currently obsessed with Greek mythology, I wanted…

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Literary figures in everyday speech

In one of my recent classes, we were discussing the way in which the use of social media inside authoritarian countries like Russia, China and Iran is almost always monitored, and how posting something that's deemed to be subversive or…

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Phrase of the day: How the other half lives

May has been a truly miserable month with the rain bucketing down day after day, the wind howling like it was the middle of March and temperatures more akin to November than the onset of summer. When will it all…

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Phrase of the day: What’s the damage?

Last month, I had to take my car in to the garage to get the annual MOT done. An MOT is basically a check you have to have done every year to ensure your car is still roadworthy – it's…

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What’s in a name?

Almost as soon as I started teaching, I realised that there were plenty of countries out there that took names a bit more seriously than we do here in England. When meeting new classes, I'd often be told things like…

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Phrase of the day: Nae bother

I have just come back from Scotland, where I was giving the keynote talk at the City of Glasgow College’s ESOL conference. I got given a present afterwards of a quaich - a small silver cup for sharing and drinking…

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Phrase of the day: When I win the lottery

Almost everyone who has learned English in class has probably had that lesson where you study second conditionals. In a second conditional, we use a past tense to describe an imagined, unlikely or impossible situation and would to describe the result…

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Phrase of the day: not bat an eyelid

One of the things that our students often comment on when they come to London is the fact that they often see things here that seem strange or that would cause upset or offence in their own country, but people…

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Phrase of the day: go with the flow

My preferred way of getting around London is by bike. I usually cycle in and out of town, and on my way home, I often go past the offices of Age UK, which is a charity that campaigns for old people and…

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Phrase of the day: making a rod for your own back

I had dinner round at a neighbour's place the other week. Our kids go to the same school, which is how we know each other, and while we were eating and drinking wine, the kids played happily upstairs. Well, actually,…

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