Last week, I offered a post about idioms pertaining to the number one (I limited the scope because there’s only so much space on the Internet.) Here’s the sequel, with expressions that mention all other numbers. 1. (a number) (something) short of a (something): said euphemistically of someone who is mentally deficient or unstable (as … Read more
English is replete with idiomatic expressions featuring numerical values, including dozens pertaining to the number one alone. Here’s a list of most (if not all) of the idioms in the latter category. 1. all in one breath: said of something spoken excitedly without pause 2. all in one piece: safely 3. all rolled up in … Read more
Hand tools have inspired a tool box full of metaphorical words and expressions. Here’s a list of many of those handy idioms. 1–5. angry/mad enough to chew nails/spit nails or ready to eat nails: enraged 6–7. another/final nail in the coffin: one of/the last of multiple factors that contribute to a failure 8–9. ax: a … Read more
The expression “to a T,” as in “That suits you to a T!” is often mistakenly written or said as “to the T” (or “to a tee” or “to the tee”). This type of alteration occurs often in idiomatic phrases (note “all of the sudden” and “for all intensive purposes,” among others). In today’s anarchic … Read more
The adjective clean has many senses: “free from dirt, contamination or disease, or pollution,” “fair” or “pure,” “clear” or “legible,” “smooth,” “empty,” “complete” or “thorough,” “skillful,” “free of a claim or impediment,” and “free from corruption or from lasciviousness or obscenity”; it also refers to freedom from drug addiction or lack of possession of contraband … Read more
A reader corrected my usage in the following extract from a previous post: Suggesting that one form of speech is preferable to another, however, can annoy people no end. The reader corrected this passage by inserting a to in front of “no end” Suggesting that one form of speech is preferable to another, however, can … Read more
When I was still young enough to be under parental supervision, if I did something ill-considered, I was not “grounded”; I “lost privileges.” The use of grounded to mean “confined to home outside school hours” had not yet penetrated to our neck of the woods. I was familiar with grounded in connection with electricity and … Read more
Zero is the basis of a small set of terms and idiomatic phrases, which are listed and defined below. Zero derives, through French and Italian, from the Latin term zephirum, which in turn stems, as do the other mathematical terms algebra and algorithm, from Arabic: Sifr means “cipher” (and is the origin of that word … Read more
The following headlines lead me to assume that the bride or groom or both did not survive the ceremony: Wedding Bells Toll For A Bride From Camelot—Philadelphia news site, 1986 Wedding bells toll for Tiger—Cape Cod Times, 2004 Wedding bells toll in Conn. for gay couples—Boston Globe, 2008 Wedding bells toll for Richard Marx, Daisy … Read more
A reader coming across this sentence in Arthur Miller’s An Air-conditioned Nightmare (1945) was puzzled by the use of the word let: Night and day without let the radio drowns us in a hog-wash of the most nauseating, sentimental ditties. Asks the reader, “Could this be a typo for “without let-up”? The English word let functions as a … Read more
I heard a reporter on NPR refer to something that had been “inundated by water.” Looking online, I found this headline: Family of Five Inundated by Water No Assistance Provided—Belize News In each example, “by water” is redundant. As a transitive verb, inundate means “to overspread with a flood of water.” It does make sense … Read more
A reader wonders if the phrase “out of sorts” might be worth a post. I think it is. The OED has four separate entries for sort as a noun. The first entry, marked “obsolete,” defines sort as “the fate or lot of a particular person or persons.” The word was borrowed from French, but it … Read more