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DAILY ACTIVITIES

BBC 6 MINUTE ENGLISH ONLINE SHOPPING

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DEMOCRACY, by Leonard Cohen

COUNTRIES AND NATIONALITIES

THIRD CONDITIONALS

BUNGHOLE OF THE WEEK: SNAKE IN THE GRASS

 A treacherous person, as in Ben secretly applied for the same job as his best friend; no one knew he was such a snake in the grass . This metaphor for treachery, alluding to a poisonous snake concealed in tall grass, was used in 37 b.c. by the Roman poet Virgil ( latet anguis in herba). It was first recorded in English in 1696 as the title of a book by Charles Leslie.

SOURCE:  http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com

 

In 2005, British newspapers picked up on a story about a burglar who had stolen cash, jewellery and an African Grey parrot from a house near Hungerford, Berkshire. David Carlile, widely described in the press as 'feather-brained', explained to the police that he knew that African Greys could talk and he didn't want the bird to 'grass him up'. Presumably, had the parrot been a Norwegian Blue, he would have left it to pine for the fiords*
*Dead

'Grassing up' has been a commonly used expression in the UK since the mid 20th century, but is less common elsewhere. The first known use of 'grass' in that context is Arthur Gardner's Tinker's Kitchen, 1932, which defined a grass as "an informer". Grass was a well-enough established word in the 1980s to have spawned 'supergrass', that is, a republican sympathiser who later 'turned Queen's evidence' and informed on the IRA, and which gave the Brit-pop band Supergrass their name in the 1990s.

Informers are variously known as squealers, noses, moles, snouts and stool pigeons. These terms invoke imagery of covert snooping around and of talking. Grass is less intuitive. It could just have arisen from 'snake in the grass', which derives from the writings of Virgil (in Latin, as 'latet anguis in herba') and has been known in English, meaning traitor, since the late 17th century.

There is another route to the word and this is via rhyming slang. Farmer and Henley's 1893 Dictionary of Slang defines 'grasshopper' as 'copper', that is, policeman. The theory is that a 'grass' is someone who works for the police and so has become a surrogate 'copper'. The rhyming slang link was certainly believed in 1950 by the lexicographer Paul Tempest, when he wrote Lag's lexicon: a comprehensive dictionary and encyclopaedia of the English prison to-day:

"Grasser. One who gives information. A 'squealer’ or ‘squeaker'. The origin derives from rhyming slang: grasshopper - copper; a 'grass' or 'grasser' tells the 'copper' or policeman."

That comes only a few years after the term grass was coined and there seems little reason to doubt it as the derivation. The original users of the term 'grass up' were from the London underworld and would have certainly been better acquainted with rhyming slang than the works of Virgil.

Some have also theorised that the term 'shop', meaning 'give information that leads to an arrest', derives from the same source, that is, that, as 'grass' derives from 'grasshopper', then so does 'shopper'. The earliest known use of shop in that context dates from around the same time as the emergence of grasshopper. The issue of the magazine Tit-Bits for May, 1899 includes:

"[He] volunteered for a fiver to 'shop' his pals."

As far as we know, African Greys don't go shopping. 

SOURCE:  http://www.phrases.org.uk

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TRAVEL & HOLIDAY COLLOCATIONS

TRAVEL & HOLIDAY COLLOCATIONS from Mc Ias Vëerengher

DECEPTION

DECEPTION from Mc Ias Vëerengher

REPORTED SPEECH

ENGLISH IDIOMS: SCHOOL

NEVER HAVE I EVER

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ORAL PRACTICE

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PASSIVE VOICE

BUNGHOLE OF THE WEEK: POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK

Meaning

The notion that a criticism that a person makes of another could equally well apply to themself.

Origin

This phrase originates in Cervantes' Don Quixote, or at least in Thomas Shelton's 1620 translation - Cervantes Saavedra's History of Don Quixote:

"You are like what is said that the frying-pan said to the kettle, 'Avant, black-browes'."

The first person who is recorded as using the phrase in English was William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, in his Some fruits of solitude, 1693:

"For a Covetous Man to inveigh against Prodigality... is for the Pot to call the Kettle black."

Shakespeare had previously expressed a similar notion in a line in Troilus and Cressida, 1606:

"The raven chides blackness."

SOURCE: www.phrases.org.uk

MODAL VERBS

DOES BRAINSTORMING WORK?

RSA Shorts - Does Brainstorming Work? from Ant House Studio on Vimeo.

1. Brainstorming is the most widely implemented creativity technique all the time.
2. It was pioneered by this ad executive named Alex Osborn.
3. In a series of best-selling business books in the 1940s and early '50s
4. he outlined the technique called brainstorming.
5. Basically, there's just one rule to brainstorming,
6. which is "don't criticize".
7. Whatever you do in a brainstorming meeting,
8. you cannot criticize the ideas of other people.
9. All ideas are good ideas,
10. and the assumption behind this is that imagination is very meek and shy and fragile.
11. (LAUGHTER)
12. If it worries about being criticized it'll just clam up
13. and won't be able to free associate at all.
14. But the only problem with brainstorming is that it just doesn't work.
15. Psychologists have known this for 60-plus years.
16. Study after study has shown that if you put people in a room, tell them to brainstorm,
17. they gonna come up with fewer ideas and less original ideas
18. than those same people working by themselves.
19. Brainstorming would become less than the sum of our parts.
20. Now, the reason brainstorming doesn't work
21. returns us to the very first rule of brainstorming which is "thou shalt not criticize".
22. Because as studies by Charlan Nemeth have shown,
23. groups that engage in what she called "debate and dissent",
24. where they're encouraged to engage in constructive criticism,
25. they come up with 25% to 40% more ideas,
26. and those ideas are regular much more original.
27. That's because when we don't criticize each other,
28. when we just pretend that every idea is a good idea,
29. we tend to float on the superficial surface of the imagination.
30. Our free associations, left to their own devices, are not of interest.
31. If I ask you to free associate on "blue",
32. I can predict, with a high degree of accuracy,
33. that your first answer will be "green",
34. followed by "ocean", "sky".
35. Then things get a lot more complicated.
36. You may say "Joni Mitchell" or "Miles Davis"
37. or "jeans" or "Smurfs", but nothing too profound or surprising.
38. That's because our free associations are bound by language,
39. and language is full of cliches.
40. Now, the way we get past those cliches is to engage in criticism.
41. You know, that's what surprises us, that's what invigorates us, that's what wakes us up.
42. It means paying attention to get the ideas of other people.
43. It forces us to dig a little bit deeper
44. and that's when things get interesting.

BUNGHOLE OF THE WEEK: PULL THE WOOL OVER SOMEONE'S EYES

Meaning

To deceive, to hoodwink.

Origin

The natural assumption is that this phrase derives from the wearing of woollen wigs, which were fashionable for both men and women in the 16th and 17th centuries. The phrase itself is of 19th century American origin. The earliest example that I can find of it in print is from the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel And Gazette, October 1839:

"And we ask one question that they dare not firmly answer, whether they are not now making a tolerable attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the people."

The 'wig' derivation is probably correct but there must be an element of doubt about it as the wearing of wigs had largely died out in the USA by the early 19th century. The tradition has continued in Europe where the judiciary of several countries wear wigs in court. Not so in the USA, where the third president Thomas Jefferson (president between 1801 - 1809), although a wig wearer himself, advised the judiciary there: "For Heaven’s sake discard the monstrous wig which makes the English judges look like rats peeping through bunches of oakum."

 Source: www.phrases.org.uk

ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE

I'M YOUR MAN

If you want a lover,
I'll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love,
I'll wear a mask for you
If you want a partner, take my hand
Or if you want to strike me down in anger,
Here I stand
I'm your man

If you want a boxer,
I will step into the ring for you
And if you want a doctor,
I'll examine every inch of you
If you want a driver, climb inside
Or if you want to take me for a ride,
You know you can
I'm your man

Ah, the moon's too bright
The chain's too tight
The beast won't go to sleep
I've been running through these promises to you
That I made and I could not keep
But a man never got a woman back,
Not by begging on his knees
Or I'd crawl to you baby
And I'd fall at your feet
And I'd howl at your beauty
Like a dog in heat
And I'd claw at your heart
And I'd tear at your sheet
I'd say please, please
I'm your man

And if you've got to sleep
A moment on the road,
I will steer for you
And if you want to work the street alone,
I'll disappear for you
If you want a father for your child,
Or only want to walk with me a while
Across the sand
I'm your man

WHAT IF...? "MAGNOLIA", SIDNEY BARRINGER'S UNSUCCESSFUL SUICIDE

USED TO AND BE/GET USED TO

MIXED CONDITIONALS

FOR AND SINCE

BUNGHOLE OF THE WEEK: CATCH-22

Meaning

A paradox in which the attempt to escape makes escape impossible. 

Origin

The title of Joseph Heller's novel, written in 1953 and published in 1961, (properly titled 'Catch-22' - with a hyphen). The first chapter was also published in a magazine in 1955, under the title 'Catch-18'.

The paradox is presented as the trap that confined members of the US Air Force. In logical terms the 'catch' was that, by applying for exemption from highly dangerous bombing missions on the grounds of insanity, the applicant proved himself to be sane (after all, that's what any sane person would do). If anyone applied to fly they would be considered insane. Either way; sane or insane, they were sent on the missions. This might be described logically as, 'damned if you do and damned if you don't', 'the vicious circle', 'a chicken and egg situation', or 'heads I win, tails you lose'.

In the book, this is explained thus:

Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another approach. "Is Orr crazy?"
"He sure is," Doc Daneeka said.
"Can you ground him?"
"I sure can. But first he has to ask me to. That's part of the rule."
"Then why doesn't he ask you to?"
"Because he's crazy," Doc Daneeka said. "He has to be crazy to keep flying combat missions after all the close calls he's had. Sure, I can ground Orr. But first he has to ask me to."
"That's all he has to do to be grounded?"
"That's all. Let him ask me."
"And then you can ground him?" Yossarian asked.
"No. Then I can't ground him."
"You mean there's a catch?"
"Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

The phrase is now often misapplied to any problematic or unwelcome situation.

SOURCE:  www.phrases.org.uk

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