It's now four years since I started writing this blog and, to celebrate the anniversary, I always publish a presentation with the "cartoons of the week" of the last year. Most of these cartoons have been chosen because they are witty puns (I love puns!), but others are here to commemorate important events like the terrible typhoon that hit the Phillipines a couple of weeks ago.
The blogs and webpages that I usually visit for inspiration with the cartoons are the following:
Finally, I would like to thank all the readers who have left comments on the entries and in general all the people who visit this blog. This is for you!
There are many idioms formed by two words joined by the conjunction and. You can have:
adjective and adjective: high and dry
noun and noun: body and soul
verb and verb: wait and see
adverb and adverb: here and there
preposition and preposition (usually identical pairs): on and on.
two words of different categories joined by "and": by and large (preposition and adjective), home and dry (noun and adjective).
Today, we are going to deal with "adjective and adjective" idioms. They are usually two adjectives with similar meanings that reinforce the idea given by each of them. As in other idioms, the order of the elements cannot be changed: You can say "alive and kicking", but "kicking and alive" is not possible.
Let's see some of them:
Alive and kicking (also alive and well): Well and healthy, active. It is disappointing to see that racism is still alive and kicking.
Safe and sound: unharmed and healthy after going through a difficult situation: We drove along a narrow, winding road, but we arrived home safe and sound.
Cut and dried: decided and determined beforehand, lacking freshness and spontaneity, decided in a way that cannot be changed: When it comes to the music industry, there is no cut and dried formula for success.
Hale and hearty: healthy and strong: He didn't look as hale and hearty as his wife, but for a man in his late fifties, he looked good.
Bright and breezy: cheerful and full of energy: Maggy is always bright and breezy in the mornings.
Fair and square: honestly and according to the rules: The Socialist Party won the election fair and square. In a direct way that is easy to understand: I told him fair and square to go away.
spick and span: neat and clean: Mary's house is always spick and span. She's so houseproud!
Free and easy: relaxed: Life is never going to be as free and easy as it used to be when we were young.
Sick and tired: annoyed or fed up with someone or something to the point of losing one's temper: I'm sick and tired of wasting my time at long, poinless meetings.
Meek and mild: quiet, gentle, and always ready to do what other people want them to do, without expressing their own opinions. "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild" is a christian hymn.
Short and sweet: dealt with very quickly, to the point: We haven't got much time, so I'll keep it short and sweet.
First and foremost: most important. First and foremost, I would like to thank you all for coming. (Sometimes we leave the most important thing till the end, in which case, we use "last but not least")
Black and white: having no colours except black, white and shades of grey: A black and white film / photograph / television. The expression "in black ad white" means "in writing" or "in print": I never thought they'd put it in black and white on the front page.
High and dry: stranded, in a difficult situation, without help or money: When we were about to catch the bus, the driver set off and left us high and dry.
Now you can check what you have learned by doing this exercise:
Many of these idioms can be heard in songs. Here are a few:
However, there are a few adjectives that can only happen in one of these positions. Today, we are going to see those adjectives that can only be predicative.
Predicative adjectives
Most of the adjectives only used in predicative position begin with the prefix a-.
(This prefix comes from the Old English "an", meaning on, which helped form adjectives and adverbs from nouns, or the prefix ge- that used to go before participles. It doesn't have anything to do with the negative prefix a-, which comes from Latin and Greek, and is thus used in words coming from these languages).
You can say He is alive, but *An alive man is not possible. However, most of these adjectives have an equivalent attributive adjective. Let's see a few:
Predicative
Attributive
afraid
frightened
aghast
terrified
ajar
slightly open / half-open
agog
eager
alight
lighted
alike
similar
alive
live / living
alone
lone /lonely /solitary
ashamed
embarrassed
asleep
sleeping
awake
waking
So, you can say: The boy is afraid, or a frightened boy. But *An afraid boy, is not possible.
Apart from these adjectives beginning with a-, there are other predicative adjectives:
Poorly (attributive: ailing) Mary is very poorly today.
Well (attributive: healthy) She was well yesterday.
Ill (attributive: sick) when it means "unhealthy": He is ill, he is a sick man. However, ill can also be attributive when it means "bad", instead of "unhealthy": Ill fame, ill luck, or in the expression It's an ill wind that blows nobody good.
Sorry is predicative when used for apologies: I am sorry, but when used attributively, it means "sad" or "unhappy": a sorry sight.
Compare these two sentences: The prices are rising. They are raising the prices.
These two verbs are often confused because they look similar but, in fact, they are quite different.
When you raise something, you lift it to a higher position or increase it. When someone or something rises, they move from a lower to a higher position. Rise can also mean to increase in number or quantity. Raise is a regular, transitive verb, which means that it is always followed by a direct object: The little girl raised her hand.
In this example, "her hand" is the direct object. If you don't add a direct object, the meaning of the sentence is not complete. If you just say: "The little girl raised", people would expect you to say something else to complete the sentence.
On the other hand, rise is an irregular, intransitive verb, so it is never followed by a direct object. Something rises, but you cannot rise something. Examples: The temperature is rising. The sun rises in the east.
The past tense of this verb is rose, and the past participle is risen.
Another verb that can get confused with these two is arise. It is intransitive and irregular too (arise, arose, arisen), but much more formal than rise. It can also mean "get up", but rise is preferred for literal meaning, while arise is mostly used with figurative meaning: They are trying to deal with the problems that arise from immigration. A new crisis has arisen.
Let's have a look at a few collocations and idioms:
RAISE
Raise your voice: shout. Don't raise your voice like that, please. I'm not deaf!
Raise money / funds / a loan means to collect money. They are raising money for charity.
Raise a child means to bring up a child. They raised her daughter as a Catholic.
Raise animals: take care of or breed animals They raise chickens on their farm.
Raise your glass to somebody means to hold up your glass and wish them happiness or good luck before you drink.
Raise hell is to protest angrily or cause a considerable disturbance.
Raise the roof is to produce a lot of noise in a building.
Last year I had a great group of 2º ESO students. They were just 12 or 13 years old. However, their level of English was quite high, so I asked them to do a project presentation about Scotland and I was very pleased with the result.
The idea was to create a collaborative presentation with Google Docs. First, I showed them how easy it is to use this web tool. You can see it in this video.
Being digital natives, they had no problem whatsoever to learn the basics. Then, I showed them a presentation with the procedure they had to follow and the questions they had to answer. Here it is:
I also created the presentation they were going to work on. I just put the title and a picture and sent it to their e-mail addresses, enabling them to edit it. I also warned them to be careful not to delete their classmates' work!
And here is their presentation. Isn't it great?
I hope this can be an inspiration for EFL classes, because sometimes it is not easy to find topics for projects.
English is a very creative language in the sense that new words are invented every day, and one easy way to create a new term is to make compound nouns or adjectives. Thus, an animal with cold blood is a cold-blooded animal. Cold-blooded is a compound adjective made up of an adjective and a noun, to which the suffix-ed has been added. This word ending in -ed may look like a participle but in fact it is not, because in order to be a participle, the root has to be a verb, not a noun.
A few more examples:
A man with dark hair and blue eyes is a dark-haired, blue-eyed man.
A person with long legs is a long-legged person.
As you can see, all these examples are formed by adding -ed to an adjective-noun combination. But this is by no means the only one possible. Keep reading to find others.
A compound adjective is a combination of two or more words that works as an adjective. These words can be adjectives, nouns, adverbs or participles, and they can be hyphenated or not. A hyphen is a punctuation mark in the form of a short line (-) that is put between two words to join them.
These compounds can be written as one word (waterproof), two separate words (brick red) or they can be hyphenated (snow-white). The compounds that are used more often tend to appear in one word. Those that combine occasionally but keep their individual meaning tend to use a hyphen. And those that come in two words keep their independent identity. But British and American English don't always use the hyphens in the same word combinations, so, when in doubt, check a good dictionary!
Sometimes, more than two words can be found forming a compound (up-to-date, state-of-the-art,..) These expressions are only found hyphenated when they precede the noun they qualify, but not when they follow linking verbs. Examples: If you are a fashion lover, read these tips to stay up to date. I like to follow the latest up-to-date trends. His house is state of the art. It is full of the latest gadgets. I love state-of-the-art technology.
Let's have a look at the different combinations that we can find: Noun + adjective Trustworthy, blameworthy, duty-free, tax-free, seasick, watertight, waterproof, colour-blind, worldwide, knee-deep, self-conscious, and other compounds that are equivalent to the construction "as...as..." : brick red (as red as brick), stone-cold (as cold as a stone), paper-thin (as thin as paper) Adjective+adjective
A combination of two qualities: bitter-sweet, deaf-mute.
A combination in which the first element takes the suffix -o: socio-economic, Anglo-Saxon, Franco-German, Anglo-American. In this case, all the combinations are hyphenated.
A combination in which the first adjective qualifies the second adjective: dark-blue, red-hot, Roman-Catholic.
Adverb+adjective Evergreen, oversensitive, all-American Noun+present participle Self-defeating, self-denying, heart-breaking, breath-taking, law-abiding, Noun+past participle Self-taught, hand-made, thunderstruck, home-brewed, heart-felt, brightly-lit, open-minded, well-behaved Adjective or adverb+present participle Forthcoming, everlasting, neverending, easygoing, good-looking Adjective or adverb+past participle Far-fetched, well-meant, widespread, new-laid, long-awaited Number+ noun Second-hand, first-rate. Notice that adjectives using numbers, like any other adjectives, are not found in the plural. Thus, a boy who is twelve years old is a twelve-year-old boy, or a tree which measures three metres is a three-metre-tall tree. These expressions with numbers are always hyphenated. Adjective+ noun
Apart from the common formation that we have seen at the beginning of this post, in which the noun takes the suffix -ed, there are other possibilities such as last-minute, deep-sea, ... Noun+noun Part-time Verb+adjective or adverb Feel-good, buy-now, pay-later
And remember that new combinations are always possible. You can create your own adjective!
Let's watch this video about two beautiful brown-eyed girls. Notice that the song by Van Morrison is called "Brown Eyed girl". Why doesn't it have a hyphen? Because you don't need it in titles! Enjoy!
On February 2nd, a curious ceremony takes place in several American States: a group of men dressed in tuxedos and wearing tall hats go to a groundhog’s den and wake him from his hibernation. As the poor creature gets out of his burrow, the men watch his behaviour. Two things can happen: If he gets frightened by his shadow and he goes back to the protection of his lair, that means that there will be still several more weeks of cold winter weather. However, if he decides to stay, the forecast is that spring will come early.
The most famous groundhog in America is Punxsutawney Phil, from Gobblers Knob, Pennsylvania. According to his followers, Phil is the true and only weather forecasting groundhog, and the others are just impostors. They also sustain that there has only been one Phil and that he goes on living thanks to some secret recipe punch that he drinks during the summer: just a sip gives him seven more years’ life. Of course, this must be taken with a pinch of salt, as it is known that a groundhog lives only for seven or eight years.
This tradition of weather forecasting was introduced in America by German immigrants, who in their homeland used to watch the behaviour of hedgehogs on Candlemas for their predictions. They also had some proverbs about the weather: “If Candlemas is mild and pure, Winter will be long for sure.” “If Candlemas brings wind and snow, Then spring will very soon
show. But if it's clear and bright, Then spring won't come so right.”
For the translation of these proverbs see this page.
But why was the religious festivity of Candlemas chosen as the day of the
prediction? Candlemas was celebrated on February 2nd, which is right in the
middle of the winter, between the winter solstice and the spring equinox,
and thus it is the right time to make a guess whether the long-awaited spring is
near.
Unfortunately, our little friend Phil is not very reliable, as only about 40%
of his predictions turn out to be true. Anyway, each year this tradition draws
thousands of people to the home of this cute rodent and puts a warm smile upon our
faces in the long dreary winter.
In the following video we can learn a bit more about the habits of these
animals (also called woodchucks) that are related to squirrels. Then you can
answer the questions below. Happy Groundhog’s Day!
