Idioms with people's names

There are quite a few idioms and proverbs that use proper nouns, which are words that name specific persons, places or things and are always written in capital letters. Today, we are going to have a look at some idioms that use names of people:

• Every Tom, Dick and Harry means everybody, every ordinary person: If you tell Louisa, soon every Tom, Dick and Harry will know about it.
• Jack of all trades, master of none is a proverb used for people who are competent with many skills but are not especially good at any of them. As is usual with proverbs, the second part can be left out. There's a chap in the office who can do almost anything; he's a jack of all trades.
• All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy is a familiar proverb that means that if a person does not take some time off work, they can become boring. It was the phrase that Jack Nicholson kept typing in The Shining, a film based in the novel of the same name by Stephen King.

  

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• Johnny-come-lately means a newcomer, someone who has just joined a group. She may be a Johnny-come-lately in the office, but she´s doing really well. There's a song by Eagles in which this expression can be heard. You can find it at the end of this entry.
• Keep up with the Joneses means to try to be as good as the neighbours by getting what they have and matching their lifestyle: Her neighbour bought a new car and she went out and bought another; she's always trying to keep up with the Joneses.
• Rob Peter to pay Paul is to take or borrow money from someone in order to pay a debt to another person. If you take money from a credit card to pay off another, it's a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. It won't take you anywhere. 
• John Hancock is a person's signature. It refers to one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence of the USA. Put your John Hancock on the dotted line, please.
• A peeping Tom is a voyeur, a person who takes pleasure from secretly watching others. By way of example you can watch the video below, which is an excerpt from the legendary film "Back to the Future".

• To live / lead the life of Riley is to live a really good life with few problems. Stop complaining. You're living the life of Riley. The origin of this idiom is in an old Irish song called "Is that Mr. Riley?"
• (And) Bob's your uncle is used after explaining a simple set of instructions, meaning that it's very easy to do: Boil the pasta, drain it, put the sauce on top and Bob's your uncle! 
• Take the Mickey (out of someone) is to make fun of someone. This expression, used mainly in Britain, comes from the Cockney Rhyming slang "Mickey Bliss", meaning "piss", because the orignal expression was take the piss out of someone. It is also equivalent to pull someone's leg, which is also used in America. Are you being serious or are you taking the Mickey out of me? 
• The real McCoy is the genuine thing or person. This isn't an imitation. It's the real McCoy.
• We are even Steven is an expression used when someone has repaid a debt. It's clear that this name has been used because it rhymes with "even". Now that you have given me back the money I lent you, we are even Steven.
• John Doe or Jane Doe are names used for a man or a woman whose real name is unknown. 
• John Bull is a character who represents the typical English man. He is usually pictured as a stocky figure wearing a waistcoat with the British flag on.
• Uncle Sam is the government of the United States and, by extension, the American people. The name is an expansion of the abbreviation U.S.

John Bull	Uncle Sam

 Johnny-come-lately by Eagles. At the beginning of the video there's a grammar mistake. Can you spot it?

Jack of all trades by Bruce Springsteen



Exercises:

• Drag the endings to the corresponding sentences
• Exercise with names of people and places

Finally, try to complete the idioms in this presentation:

Vocabulary: crime and punishment

Today we are going to have a look at the vocabulary related to justice: crimes, criminals and how they are punished.

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First of all, this Prezi presentation will show us the most important terms and then we'll look into the ones that need further explanation.


As you can see, many names of criminals derive from the crime words, or the other way around. There are also verbs associated with them:

CRIME	CRIMINAL	VERB
burglary	burglar	burgle
robbery	robber	rob
murder	murderer	murder
mugging	mugger	mug
kidnapping	kidnapper	kidnap
smuggling	smuggler	smuggle
bribery	briber	bribe
shoplifting	shoplifter	shoplift
pickpocketing	pickpocket	pickpocket
forgery	forger	forge

For the difference between rob and steal, have a look at this blog post.

Murderer and killer both mean "someone who deliberately kills a person". A serial killer (but not *serial murderer) is someone who has killed a number of people over a period of time, usually in the same fashion. An assassin, on the other hand, is someone who kills an important or famous person for money or political reasons.

In the next 80s song by Bananarama we can hear a few expressions related to the topic we are dealing with today.



Finally, let's do some exercises:

• Types of crimes
• Choose the correct option (easy)
• Choose the correct option.
• Complete the sentences.
• Criminal offenses

The environment. Vocabulary

Droughts, floods, hurricanes, typhoons... While these natural disasters have always happened in the world, there is no doubt that they are becoming more and more frequent these days. The world is warming up and this is having an effect in the climate. Can this be blamed just on nature or is it man-made? There is a great deal of controversy among scientists about this issue, but it's not for me to go into it today. Instead, what I would like to look at in depth is the vocabulary about climate change and the environment.

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In order to learn the vocabulary related to the environment, let's have a look at this presentation:


Let's see some words and expressions that need further explanation:

• Biodiversity is the variety of plants and animals that can be found in a geographical region. This variety needs to be preserved, as these organisms depend on one another to survive.
• Our development will be sustainable if we can cover our present needs without putting at risk the ability of future generations to do the same. That is, we shouldn't use up all the resources today because we are not leaving enough resources for our children and grand-children.
• If we don't want to cause any harm to nature, we should be carbon neutral, that is, we shouldn't throw carbon dioxide to the atmosphere or, in any case, try to compensate it by recycing, planting trees or giving money so that other people can do that for ourselves. In that way, we would be offsetting our carbon footprint.

Reduce your carbon footprint
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Though it's true that industries are greatly responsible for polluting the environment, we are not too small or unimportant to fight pollution. There's a saying in English: "Every little helps". Have you ever thought about what you can do to help the environment? In this video there are a few ideas. After watching it, you can do the comprehension questions below.

Finally, here are some exercises:
Choose the correct option.
Match the words and the definitions.
Reading comprehension.
"Save tropical rainforests". Choose the right option to fill in the gaps.
A complete exercise about global warming.

Music vocabulary

Today we are going to have a look at words related to music, not from the point of view of the musician but from that of the listener. In the next presentation, we'll revise the musical instruments, types of music, musicians and equipment needed to listen to music, as well as adjectives related to sounds and a few idioms that will be very useful for the learner of English.

Let's look deeper into the adjectives for sounds, as I think they need further explanation:
Sounds can be loud (strongly audible) or soft (quiet and pleasant to listen to). Synonyms for loud are: earsplitting (extremely loud), deafening (so loud that you can hear nothing else because it makes you deaf!), piercing (loud and unpleasant) or shrill (high and unpleasant).

Ear-splitting sound
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Synonyms for soft are: quiet (making very little or no noise), muffled (not easy to hear because it is blocked), inaudible (difficult to hear).
According to the pitch, a sound can be high-pitched (like the cry of a baby) or low-pitched (like a tigers growl)
Sounds can also be lively or energetic if they fill you with energy, or soothing, calm and relaxing if they make you less nervous.
Finally, they can be melodious or tuneful if they are pleasant to listen to, or tuneless, if they are unpleasant, catchy if they are pleasing and easily remembered or bland if they are uninteresting.
Let's see some examples:

• He lowered his voice so much that it was almost inaudible.
• We coud hear muffled voices from the next room.
• The noise of the machine was deafening.
• I love listening to soothing music when I come back home from work.
• "Call me maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen is a catchy song.

In the following presentation there are several questions. See how many you can answer correctly. 

Did you pass that test?

Finally, let's listen to this song about music by Abba.

Family words and idioms

A family is a group of people related to each other by blood or marriage. There are several types of family:

• The nuclear family consists of only the parents and their children.
• The extended family is formed by parents, children, uncles and aunts, grandparents, etc.
• In a one-parent or single-parent family there is only one parent living with the chidren, either because they are divorced or because they have decided to raise their children single-handedly.

Nuclear family	Extended family	single-parent family

Let's see the most common family words in English in the following presentation:

Other words related to the family:

• A relative is someone who belongs to your family. Relatives can either be close or distant: She inherited the money from a distant relative she had never met. 
• Relation is another way to say "relative", especially in spoken English. A blood relation is someone who is related to you by birth, not by marriage. 
• Your next of kin is your closest relative: My brother is listed as my next of kin on all my emergency forms.
• Kinsman is an old-fashioned word to say "relative", but also, by extension, a person of the same nationality or ethnic group: She may marry her late husband's brother or some other kinsman of his.
• Ancestors or forefathers (notice that you cannot say foreparents) are the people from whom you are descended.
• Descendants are the relatives of a person or group of people who are born many years after them: He claims to be a direct descendant of Napoleon.
• Folks (usually plural) is an informal word meaning your family, especially your parents: I'll go home this Christmas to see my folks.

There are many idioms related to the family. Let's see a few of them in the following presentation:

You can see more family idioms in the BBC World Service page.
Exercises:

• Play hangman with the descriptions of members of the family.
• Family tree exercise.
• Family idioms exercise.

That's all folks!
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Idiomatic pairs of adjectives

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.

Cut and dried
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• 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!

Spik'n'span
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• 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:

Alive and kicking by Simple Minds

Sick and tired by Anastacia

High and dry by The Rolling Stones or Radiohead, and also in the song "Water of love", by Dire Straights.

Safe and sound by Capital Cities or by Taylor Swift:

Do you know any other song in which any of these idioms can be heard? 

Edit: an anonymous reader suggested "That's me", by Abba, in which you can hear the idiom mild and meek.

Raise or rise?

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.

The little girl raised her hand
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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.

The sun rises in the east
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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.
• Raise the salary.
• Raise the flag.

Raise your glass
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RISE

• Rise early: He rises early every day.
• Rise to one's feet is to stand up.
• Rise to the occasion / challenge: to show that you are able to deal with an unexpected situation.
• A river rises where it begins to flow. The Thames rises in the Cotswolds.
• If mountains rise in the distance, they become visible.
• Rise from the ashes is to come to life again.
• Rise to power. Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in 1919.
• Rise and fall. Today we've studied the rise and fall of the British Empire in our History class.
• Rise through / from the ranks is to work one's way to the top. She rose through the ranks to become managing director.
• Your hair rises when you feel cold or frightened.
• If your spirits rise you get happier.

Check what you have learnt by doing this exercise:

Note: if you cannot see the exercise above, try this link.

Finally, let's relax with this beautiful song by Craig David, featuring Sting, called "Rise and fall"

Collocations: do, play or go with sports and other activities

In British English, you can "do sport". In American English you can "play sports".

A typical mistake Spanish speakers make is using the verb practise for sports:

*I love practising sport. This should be: I love sport.

*I usually practise sport every evening. This should be: I usually do sport every evening.

However, in American English you can use the verb practise or practice (as it is spelt there) to mean "to train": The team is practicing for tomorrow's competition.

When other words related to sports are used, we may use other verbs:
"What sports do you do?"
"I play tennis".
Observe these pictures:

Go skiing	Do karate	Play tennis

There are three verbs that collocate with sports and other free time activities: go, do and play, but they are not interchangeable:

• Go is used with activities and sports that end in -ing. The verb go here implies that we go somewhere to practice this sport: go swimming.
• Do is used with recreational activities and with individual, non-team sports or sports in which a ball is not used, like martial arts, for example: do a crossword puzzle, do athletics, do karate.
• Play is generally used with team sports and those sports that need a ball or similar object (puck, disc, shuttlecock...). Also, those activities in which two people or teams compete against each other: play football, play poker, play chess.

In this table there is a list of sports and activities that collocate with these verbs:

Go	Do	Play
riding	aerobics	badminton
jogging	gymnastics	table-tennis
hitch-hiking	taekwondo	football
fishing	judo	basketball
sailing	karate	chess
windsurfing	kung-fu	cricket
skiing	ballet	board games
snowboarding	exercise	snooker
swimming	yoga	hockey
dancing	athletics	baseball
skating	archery	rugby
cycling	a crossword puzzle	volleyball
running	tai chi	squash

Some exceptions to the rules:

• You use do with three activities that end in -ing: do boxing, do body-building and do weight-lifting because they don't imply moving along as the other activities ending in -ing.
• Golf: if there is an idea of competition, you use the verb play. However, you can say go golfing if you do it for pleasure: Tiger Woods plays golf. We'll go golfing at the weekend. 

Tiger Woods
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Now try doing these exercises:

• Easy
• Choose the correct verb

Special constructions with the comparative

In a previous post, we saw the formation of the comparative and superlative in English. Today, we are going to deal with two special comparative constructions:

• The comparative of gradation or double comparative: two comparatives of the same adjective connected by and. This structure is generally used with the verbs get, grow and become and it implies constant change. (In Spanish it translates as “cada vez más...”)
• -er and -er: It’s growing darker and darker. I’m getting fatter and fatter.
• more and more: This situation has become more and more difficult. Note that when we use more and more we don’t repeat the adjective or adverb.
• less and less: Fortunately, her headaches became less and less frequent, until they ceased altogether.
• Comparative of proportion: two comparatives preceded by the forming parallel sentences. It is used to express proportional increase or decrease, or two changes that happen together. (In Spanish it translates as “cuanto más... más...)
• the  -er... the -er: The older you are, the happier you get. The sooner, the better.
• the more... the more.../ the more... the less... / the less... the less...:  The more I study, the less I know.

The more I study, the less I know
Image by betta design in Flickr

Idioms with comparisons
The comparative of equality as....as..., (not) so....as... is not a special construction as such, but there are many idioms that contain a comparison of this kind. They are mostly used in the description of people, and as all idioms, they cannot be translated literally, but a similar expression must be found in the other language. For instance, in Spanish, most of these comparisons will translate as comparatives of superiority (más... que) rather than equality: As black as coal (más negro que el carbón), as quick as lightning (más rápido que una centella), as pleased as Punch (más contento que unas pascuas). A literal translation will not have any meaning at all.

As pleased as Punch
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These comparisons usually follow the pattern “as + adjective as + noun” where the adjective generally expresses the quality that the noun is known to possess. But there are many of them in which adjective and noun rhyme (as loose as a goose) or there is alliteration, that is, repetition of a sound (as busy as a bee).
As a learner of English that wants to excel, you should try to use these idioms whenever necessary, but try not to overdo it, as you may not sound natural and the result may be the opposite of what you expected to achieve. Let’s try to learn a few of these comparisons in the following presentation. Then you can do the exercises below to check how much you have learnt.

More idioms here.

More exercises here.

In The phrase finder you can see the origin of some of these idioms.

Collocations: spend and waste

Both verbs spend and waste are related to time and money, but there is a big difference in meaning:

• You can spend your money on things, but if you buy more than is necessary or things that are not useful, you are wasting your money. She has spent a lot of money on her wedding dress. (and she thinks that’s money well spent). She wastes lots of money on clothes she doesn´t need. (that money is not well spent)
• Likewise, you can spend time doing something, which is possitive, but if you feel that the time passes in a negative, unproductive manner, then you’re wasting your time. You spend a lot of hours watching TV and I think you are wasting your time. Go on, do something useful!

Picture by 401(K) 2012

So, both spend and waste can form collocations with words related to money and time. Here are a few: spend your free time, the day, the weekend, an hour, a fortune, thousands,...

Apart from these, they can also be found in other collocations which are not related to time or money:

• Waste an opportunity. Never waste an opportunity to say “I love you” to someone you really like.
• Spend (a lot of) effort. You spend too much effort on things that are not important.

Waste is also a noun that refers to an unusuable or unwanted substance or material. In this case, we can find expressions such as: industrial waste, nuclear waste, waste disposal, waste pipes,...

A Complete Waste of Time

There are also some idioms and proverbs:

• Waste one’s breath: to waste time talking trying to persuade someone.  Don’t waste your breath, you’re not going to make me change my mind.
• Waste not, want not is a proverb which means that if you use your resources wisely, you will never be poor or needy.
• Go to waste: to be unused and therefore thrown away. If you don’t eat the meat in your fridge today, it will go to waste.
• A waste of space: a thing or person that is not useful. Her husband is a complete waste of space.
• Spend a penny means to go to the toilet. In England, public toilets for ladies used to have coin operated locks, and if someone wanted to use them they had to introduce a penny coin in the slot. This idiom is a bit old-fashioned these days.

Penny slot toilet door lock

Finally, let’s watch an excerpt from Fawlty Towers that always comes to my mind when I hear the expression “a waste of space”. Poor Manuel! Always being bossed around by Basil!

The names of the days of the week

While it is rather clear that Sunday is the day of the sun and Monday the day of the moon, where does Tuesday or Wednesday get their names from? Are they all related to the names of the planets?

The first thing that springs to my mind is why there are seven days in the week. We are so much used to it that it may seem natural to us, but nothing related to the calendar is natural. It’s just a convention, a system humans invented to divide time, and it’s not perfect, as most things made by humans.

A T-shirt for each of the seven days of the week.
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The seven day week came into use in Roman times after the Julian calendar was introduced in 46 BC. However, both the Jews and the Babylonians had used it before: in the Bible, God is said to have created the world in six days and needed the seventh to have a rest, while the Babylonians divided the lunar month in four seven day periods.
It was the Greeks and later the Romans, who always followed in the steps of the Greeks, who started to call the days of the week after the main celestial bodies that were seen from the earth, and of course, these bodies were called after their main gods and goddesses.

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Apart from the day of the sun (dies solis) and the moon (dies lunae), they had dies martis for Mars, god of war, dies mercurii for Mercury, god of commerce, dies iovis for Jupiter, the father of the gods and responsible for thunder and lightning, dies veneri for Venus, goddess of love, and dies saturni for Saturn, god of agriculture.
Most of these names still survive in Romance languages, with some exceptions such as the change of Sunday for “the day of the lord” or dominicus dies, which gave “domingo” in Spanish or “dimanche” in  French. A different case is Portuguese, which changed the names of these pagan gods for ordinal numbers.
The Germanic peoples, however, substituted the names of Roman gods with their own, forgetting in this way that week days owed their names to the planets. They also used their own words for sun and moon. English being a Germanic language, it kept the names of these, and so we have:

• Tuesday: the day of the god Tiw or Twia, the god of war.
• Wednesday: the day of Woden or Odin. He was the carrier of the dead.
• Thursday: the day of Thor, god of thunder.
• Friday: the day of Freya, goddess of love, beauty and fertility.
• Saturday: the day of Saturn, the only Roman god they kept.

Finally, remember that it’s not the same to say “day of the week” or “weekday”. The former is any day of the week, while the latter is used for work days, that is from Monday to Friday, excluding Saturday and Sunday.

A good song to practise the days of the week is “Friday I’m in love” by The Cure. Enjoy!

Meals and food

My students usually get confused with the words meal and food because they both translate as “comida” in Spanish. To help them understand the difference, I tell them that food is what you eat and the meals are breakfast, lunch, dinner... that is, the portions of food taken at a particular time. Thus, breakfast is eaten in the morning, and as its name suggests, it is the meal that breaks the “fast” or period in which you abstain from food (the night); lunch is eaten at midday and it is usually a light snack; and dinner is the main meal of the day and is eaten between six and eight at night. Some people use the word supper for the main meal of the day, but for others, supper is a light meal eaten shortly before going to bed.

Full English Breakfast
credits

Apart from these meals, you can also have a snack in between meals, and on Sunday an American custom that is catching in Britain is the brunch, which is a late breakfast or early lunch that is usually eaten in the late morning, making it perfect for those people that after a long night out want to stay in bed a little longer on a Sunday morning. The word brunch is a portmanteau of “breakfast” and “lunch”.

Brunch

Meals can consist of one, two or three courses (or sometimes more!). These are the parts of the meal that are served in different dishes and one after the other. A good meal can have an appetizer, a first course (soup or salad), a second course (meat or fish with vegetables and potatoes) and the third course, the dessert (sometimes called “pudding”), which is usually something sweet such as ice-cream, cake, trifle... Please, do not confuse dessert /dɪˈzɜːt/ with desert /ˈdɛzət/. Have a look at the pictures.

As we have seen in a previous post, you can “have” or “take” a meal, being the verb have more widely used in Britain, while the use of take in this context is more American.
There are quite a few adjectives that you can use with food. If you don’t like it you can say it is disgusting, yucky (slang) or unsavoury, but if you like it you can say that it is tasty or savoury, or, if you like it a lot, delicious, scrumptious, yummy (slang), or finger-licking good.

Let’s have a look now at this presentation about food and meals.

If you want to know a bit more about the traditional British dishes, go to this page.

Now you can do this exercise to see how many of the words we have seen today you can remember.

Well, all this writing about food has whetted my appetite. I’m going to the kitchen to see what I can tuck in. Fancy some scones? Enjoy your meal, or as the French say “Bon appétit!”.