Archives for the ‘Expressions’ Category
- Them’s the Breaks
- Esteem and Ratchet
- Same Phrase, Different Meanings
- Body Parts as Metaphor
- Falling Prey to Error
- The Name Is not the Person
- Calculus Etymology
- 30 Ways to Say, “You’re Stupid”
- Critical Race Theory
- A Willing Suspension of Disbelief
- Words and Expressions from Poker
- Conjuring and Cancelling with Cancel Culture
- Two Literary Syndromes—AWS and OHS
- Shakespeare—for All Time
- Calques: Linguistic Immigrants in English
- “To Cow” and “To Kow-tow”
- Do You Mean Limbo or Purgatory?
- List of Halloween Words
- Cognition and Cognitive Offshoots
- Musings on Five Collocations
- Wringer or Ringer?
- Bedbugs and Bessie Bugs
- Bare or Bear With Me?
- Hot Takes and Spit Takes
- Idioms and Expressions That Refer to Eating
- 70 “Home” Idioms and Expressions
- 5 Derogatory Adjectives Derived from Words for Medical Conditions
- Slang Words Ending in “O”
- 20 Archetypes for People Based on Names
- 45 Idioms with “Roll”
- What Is the Meaning of “Hack?”
- Many Ways to Break
- Misuse of “Comic Relief”
- ICYMI, in Case You Missed It
- Oppose and Opposed To
- 50 Idioms with Single, Double, and Triple
- 25 Pairs of Compound Nouns and Verb Phrases Ending in “Out”
- 25 Idiomatic Phrases That Include Single Initials
- “Claiming To Be” and “Stating That”
- Kinds of Consequences
- 80 Idioms with the Word Time
- 30 Baseball Idioms
- Four Common Idioms from Shakespeare
- 55 Boxing Idioms
- Bullets, Silver and Magical
- 100 Idioms About Numbers
- 45 Idioms About the Number One
- 90 Idioms About Tools
- The Meaning of “To a T”
- 25 Idioms with Clean
- No End and To No End
- Grounded and Ten Other Idioms with Ground
- All About Zero
- Toll, Knell, and Tocsin
- Without Let
- Inundating and Drowning
- Sort and Out of Sorts
- If You Don’t Know Jack, You’re a Jackwagon
- “Confused With” and “Confused About”
- “Familiarize with” and “Habituate to”
- 50 Idioms About Roads and Paths
- The Meanings and Origins of Common Greetings and Pleasantries
- Horseracing Idioms in Politics
- Idioms About Distance
- Tent Poles and Tentpoles
- Impede and Impinge
- Wishing You Well
- Hitting the Nail on the Head
- The Most Unkindest Cut of All
- On Behalf Of vs. In Behalf Of
- Take off
- In and Of Itself
- Chances Fat and Slim
- Skid Row
- Fingers and Fingering
- Graduating FROM High School and College
- “As Well As” Does Not Mean “And”
- At The Age That
- Mea Culpa
- To Relish Memories or To Revel In Them?
- Doing Penance
- Center Around and Centre Round
- Buck Naked and Butt Naked
- Cost-Effective vs. Cost-Efficient
- Diluting the Bucket List
- Give It Up vs. Applaud
- Precursor To vs. Precursor Of
- In Case Of and In the Event Of
- Lord of the Manor
- Holing Up
- Not That Big of a Deal
- From Memory and By Heart
- 8 Expressions with the Word Quick
- Vis-à-vis Has More Than One Use
- Jiggery-pokery and Pure Applesauce
- Chalk It Up
- Raining Death and Destruction
- Prop, Props, and Props To
- Having a Fit
- Chock-full
- Running the Gamut and Running the Gauntlet
- Tracking an Odd Construction in the Media
- Copying Files On, To, or Onto
- Five Ways to Look Up
- Brave New World
- Hanks of Hair and Gobbets of Flesh
- Tit-for-Tat
- “In Absentia” Used As An Adjective
- Mistakes With Regard
- Belt Idioms
- “Comprised of” Revisited
- Sleight of Hand
- To Curry Favor
- High-stepping Stepchildren
- Inning, Innings, and the Seventh-Inning Stretch
- Picking Nits, Not Nicks
- Uneasy vs. Uneased
- To Go Haywire
- Femme Fatales and Film Noirs
- Prepositions to Die With
- Shore It Up
- Bail Out vs. Bale Out
- Lagging Behind
- Jury-rigged vs. Jerry-rigged
- A Ways To Go
- A Law Unto Themselves
- Nobody Makes “Bad Progress”
- The King is Dead. Long Live the King!
- Two Inverted Idioms
- Contrast and Stand in Contrast To
- The Ubiquitous Butt
- Yellow Card
- Six Idioms with Dozen
- Just Deserts vs. Just Desserts
- Rope-a-Dope and International Affairs
- For Some Reason
- Get Ahold Of
- Carriage Trade
- At the End of the Day
- Eyeteeth
- Get Your Goat
- Hypocorisma
- Euphemisms for Job Loss
- Trademarked Words
- Spaying and Neutering
- At a Crossroads
- 11 Circle Expressions
- Take in Stride
- Five Misspelled Idioms
- Mutually Exclusive
- Every Other
- For Sale vs. On Sale
- Ever Since and Every Sense of the Word
- A Cause for Concern
- Facing the Worst
- With All Due Respect
- Awe and Awesome
- To Do vs. To Make
- Phrasal Verbs with Stand
- Hobbling and Cobbling
- Out of Pocket and Singing in Tune
- By the way vs. As a matter of fact
- Beans and More Beans
- Blah, Blah, Blah
- Bridges
- At Your Disposal
- Food Idioms
- The Indispensable ‘Get’
- Scot-free
- In Whom Do We Trust?
- By the Same Token
- Disappointed + Preposition
- Boots and Booty
- The Many Meanings of Make
- Bespoke
- What Can I Do You For?
- An Elephant of a Different Color
- Sands and Hands of Time
- Comes to Bear
- Expressions with Turn
- Auspices and Guises
- Come to Pass
- In Regards To
- Ludicrous vs Ridiculous
- Prepositions That Follow the Verb Alert
- Transitive Twist on “Agree”
- Try to vs. Try and
- Personal and Personally
- Taken Aback
- Wayside and Waste Side
- Boy Oh Boy
- Study, Learn, and Read
- For Free and Other Pleonastic Expressions
- Idioms with Compare
- Oblivious to or of?
- Et cetera, Re, and Sic
- Come With
- The New, Delightful Use of Because
- Prepositions with Enamored
- Escape Velocity
- Congratulations on or for?
- Fishy Expressions
- At Whose Earliest Convenience?
- Bootstraps and Bootstrapping
- Unlike No Other
- Hue and Cry
- Lo and Behold!
- Prepositional Idioms with “of”
- The Many Uses of John
- Six Shades of True
- The Many Uses of “Best”
- Old Guard and Young Turks
- Based On vs. Based Around
- 75 Idioms and Expressions That Include “Break”
- Coup d’Etat and Coup de Grace
- 40 Idioms with First
- The Fifth Estate
- 30 Idioms About Common Shapes
- 16 Substitutes for “Because” or “Because Of”
- 50 Plain-Language Substitutions for Wordy Phrases
- Should You Angle for Anglo-Saxon, or Enlighten with Latin?
- 50 Idioms About Arms, Hands, and Fingers
- 15 Names and Descriptions of Effects
- 30 More Nautical Expressions
- 50 Idioms About Meat and Dairy Products
- 25 Idioms About Bread and Dessert
- The Meanings of “Like”
- Alternative Meanings for Names of Sense Organs
- 10 Colloquial Terms and Their Meanings
- 10 Varieties of Linguistic Siamese Twins
- The Purposes of “Per”
- Idioms Referring to Colors of the Rainbow
- 15 Reduplicative Doublets
- 13 Theatrical Terms in Popular Usage
- Treatment of Words That Include “Self”
- 10 Metals and Minerals for Metaphors
- It’s Acceptable to Use (Some) Contractions
- 11 Forms of Word Patronage to Forgo
- The Ups and Downs of “Left” and “Right”
- Placeholder Names
- Onomatopoeia
- The Story Behind Words for Hair Color
- 40 French Expressions “En Tout”
- 50 Handy Expressions About Hands
- 10 Intensifiers You Should Really, Absolutely Avoid
- 20 Synonyms for “Expert”
- 10 Demographic Names and Expressions
- 12 Misunderstood and Misquoted Shakespearean Expressions
- 7 Expressions and Ideas About Elephants
- 10 Terms for the Common People
- The Ins and Outs of “High” and “Low”
- The Old News About the Oxymoron
- 5 Slang Words That May Never Be Legit
- 10 Terms of Gender Identity
- 225 Foreign Phrases to Inspire You
- The Other N-Words
- The Indispensable Interjection “Oh”
- 150 Foreign Expressions to Inspire You
- Nylon Stockings and Denier Spam
- The Shelf Lives of Expressions and Slang
- 25 Words and Their Prepositional Pals
- Are Anti-Semitic Arabs Self-Haters?
- 5 Fixes for Pop-Culture Pile-Ups
- I Said Jerry Rig
- “Because Of” and “Due To”
- Kiss Anyone, Just Not the Gunner’s Daughter
- A Little Fox Never Hurt Anyone
- A Besetting Sin
- This is so gay!
- Peace of Mind and A Piece of One’s Mind
- Heart-rending and Gut-wrenching
- Types of Ignorance
- “Quit” as Predicate Adjective
- “Ma’am” and Regional Colonialism
- Irish Potatoes and Pennsylvania Dutch
- “To Tide You Over”
- The Ambiguity of “Afraid”
- “Near East” vs “Middle East”
- Compare and Contrast
- Life Passed Me By
- Empathy “With” or Empathy “For”?
- Albatross and Alcatraz Island
- Overwhelm and Underwhelm
- Spitting Image
- Bob’s Your Uncle!
- Hear, Hear!
- One Fell Swoop
- Lucky Expressions
- “Have” vs “Having” in Certain Expressions
- “Make Peace With” and “Come to Terms With”
- 100% Will Suffice
- I Pity the Full!
- Made With Scratch?
- This Sink Needs Fixed
- “Based in” and “based out of”
- The Quasi-adjective “Couple”
- Excited ABOUT, not “for”
- Hale and Haul
- Ipso Facto and Other “Factos”
- Sources of Titles Drawn from Shakespeare
- Book Titles from Shakespeare
- 3 Common Latin Expressions
- Excuse me!
- What Does “to bring to bear” Mean?
- Everybody Speaks Hamlet
- Opinion of, Opinion on, Opinion about
- Take An Example
- Weltering in Gore
- “Homing In” and Plain “Honing”
- “One-Off” is not a New Expression
- What does “in camera” Mean?
- “Hell-bent” and “Hell-for-leather”
- Post, Entry or Article?
- What’s the Time?
- The Line is for the Toe
- Motherland or Fatherland?
- “Human Readers” A Tautology?
- “Completed Suicide”
- Waiting with Bated Breath
- Happy Yuletide!
- Tomayto or Tomahto?
- Hey You!
- Thou lily-liver’d boy!
- Best Foot Forward
- Verbification at Work
- Hamstrings and Hamstringing
- Curating the Web
- “In” and “On” with Time Expressions
- Hypercorrecting A Well-known Phrase
- Calloused or Callused?
- Parsons Chairs and Parsons
- Catfights and Dogfights
- Here I thought “Nimrod” was a compliment!
- Illegal Aliens and Illegal Immigrants
- Meddling with Mettle
- Foo Fighters and UFOs
- “Loath” and “Loathe”
- Time, Gentlemen, Please!
- Nothing Wrong with “went missing”
- It’s Greeking to Me
- Needing to do A Few Things
- The Post Office is Kitty-corner to the Court House
- Brainstorms, Turning to Showers
- The Devil, Part Two
- Making a Mountain Out of a Molehill
- That Dark Type is Called “Boldface”
- Coming Down the Pike
- “Pomp and Ceremony” or “Pomp and Circumstance?”
- First Come, First Served
- “Wracking” or “Racking” Your Brain?
- Does Web Usage Matter?
- Free Rein or Free Reign?
- Rule of Thumb
- The Humble Foot
- Airplane Ears
- Without Cease
- Let’s Party!
- Laurels and What One Does With Them
- The Cat’s Pajamas
- Speak of the Devil!
- Hurrah for the Lowly BUG
- How Can a War Be “Civil”?
- Not Good or No Good?
- Eating Humble Pie
- A Harrowing Use of “Harry”
- The Many Faces of “Run”
- That Elusive Will o’ the Wisp
- Mmmm, You Dirty Rat!
- In the Long Tail
- More Than One Meaning for “Poke”
- O Captain, My Captain!
- Hey Clyde, Who’s That Harvey?
- Banished Words of 2009
- Can “blarney” be “in fine fettle”?
- Passing the Buck Slip
- I Got the Blues
- Some “All” Words and Expressions
- The Changing Pronunciation of “Leisure”
- We’re in the Pink
- “Colloquial” Does Not Have to Equate with “Ignorant”
- Hoist With His Own Petard
- Autumn or Fall?
- Know Your Eschatology
- Dirt and Filth
- Cockney Rhyming Slang
- Some Hairy Expressions
- Cut To The Chase
- Everybody Must Make Up Their Own Mind About “Their”
- When Did “Pimp” Become a Positive Term?
- Pander Code
- Nonstandard Usage Detracts from Novel
- If You Can Keep Your Head…
- Even, Yet, and Still
- Blowing The Gaff
- The Vicissitudes of the Latin Plural in English
- Few vs. Several
- What’s a Male Mistress?
- Euphemism and Euphuism
- A Slip Of The Lip
- Found Any Eggcorns Lately?
- Speaking Of Eponyms
- Caesar, Kaiser, and Czar
- Politicians and Humpty Dumpty
- Usage That Provokes “Blackboard Moments”
- Multiple Plurals, Multiple Meanings
- Ten Yiddish Expressions You Should Know
- Better Use “Redneck” with Care
- Skin And Bones
- “Black Friday”: An Unfortunate Expression
- Gods and Ducks – Get It Right
- Dear Sir
- Is it Libel, or is it Slander?
- Numerical Expressions
- Hang, Hung, Hanged
- Don’t Be Vexed by Vexillology
- “Pushing Up Daisies” and Other Euphemisms for Death
- No More Used Cars
- Latin Words and Expressions: All You Need to Know
- “Could Care Less” versus “Couldn’t Care Less”
- 6 Foreign Expressions You Should Know
- Let the Word Do the Work