Skip to main content

Popular Idioms and Usages Part E

I have already published the first four parts of this series of popular idioms, and you can access them and comment on from the category link on the right. There are not many comments coming; hope you will comment more on the blog, and will let me know of the flaws if any. Here goes the part E.

  1. Ears burn: Feel unhappy hearing the talk about oneself. Jack’s ears burned when he overheard his colleagues talking about his dressing manners.
  2. Eat humble pie: Surrender with humiliation. Despite his status in society, he had to eat humble pie.
  3. Eat one’s words: Behave against one’s word. Joe ate his own words when he went out and published the story, meant to be kept secret.
  4. Elephant’s trunk: Drunk. Cockney rhyming slang.
  5. Eleventh hour: In the last helpless minute. They were trapped in the airtight column and the help reached in the eleventh hour.
  6. End of story: The talking is over.
  7. End of the road: The last point of journey. There were hard times, which made Oliver think that the end of the road had reached.
  8. Every dog has a day: There is a time of importance for every trifling fellow.
  9. Every now and then: Frequently. Sarah kept calling every now and then when she heard Joe’s plain crashed.
  10. Eyes in the back of one’s head: The power to realize what is hidden. Jim is beyond cheating, for he has eyes in the back of his head.
  11. Eyes open: With full awareness. Thinking of the old days, I guess I should have taken those dangerous jobs with eyes open.

These and more will be added in the coming days of post refinement. I hope you will comment more and voice your doubts and queries in grammar, punctuation, and style. Also, please let me know of any mistakes that have encroached into the writing due to carelessness. I can be a real lousy editor sometimes. By the way, to know more about Cockney rhyming slang, if you are seeing this for the first time, please read some of the previous entries in the series.

History Today

I have decided to include some important happenings in history that happened on the day of publication of the post, as now, I am dedicated to writing one post per day here. In all the coming posts, I will be adding this small section. The section will include important happening in the domain of Writing and Literature.

The only major event is the birth of Polish author and Nobel Prize laureate, Henryk Sienkiewicz that happened in 1846 on this day.

Copyright © Lenin Nair 2008

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Power of Short Sentences

Post dedicated to Thomas Hardy (see History Today below). There are monster sentences like the one you encounter as the first paragraph of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens . One of my friends, whom I am getting equipped for his IELTS ( what is this? ), told me that the examination recommends long sentences. In writing classes also, I guess it’s longer sentences most tutors promote. But indubitably shorter sentences are more powerful . We will see why. Take a long sentence for instance: Tom Cruise, one of the finest actors in the whole world, is perhaps the most powerful celebrity to exist ever according to Time Magazine, but many people still dispute this fact and point out that there are more powerful and popular actors than Cruise, though they were unsuccessful in providing the total number of fans, who liked the films of those actors. This is a long sentence and it is very confusing . Though it has a logical construction and conveys a meaning, it falters in many occasions and seems ...

Creative Writing: Crafting Characters With Emotional Appeal in Mind

When you read the greatest fiction works ever, have you ever asked what was so compelling about them that you not only kept reading it, but you ended up reading all other major works of the writer? It may well be because the writer touched your emotional quotient quite a bit. Every reader has a unique taste . Some like to read suspense thrillers , some tender love stories, and some others dark horror and bloodshed stories . That’s why there are all sorts of genres out there. When a writer gives you what exactly you want, you will keep reading. Here we come to the emotional appeal. Character Imperfection Perfect characters may not always be the upshot of a writer’s deliberation. It may well be due to ignorance . Usually the upcoming writers take it for granted that if they create perfect characters, they will be able to garner a bigger audience . It is not true. You have to ask yourself what a character would do in a particular situation. Perfect characters—perfect gunmen, perfect...

En Dash, Em Dash, and Hyphen

We have three types of dashes in use: The hyphen, En Dash, and the Em Dash. In this post, we will see how to use them all correctly. Hyphen (-) The hyphen is the minus key in Windows-based keyboards. This is a widely used punctuation mark. Hyphen should not be mistaken for a dash . Dash is different and has different function than a hyphen. A hyphen is used to separate the words in a compound adjective, verb, or adverb. For instance: The T-rex has a movement-based vision. My blog is blogger-powered. John’s idea was pooh-poohed. The hyphen can be used generally for all kinds of wordbreaks . En Dash (–) En Dash gets its name from its length. It is one ‘N’ long (En is a typographical unit that is almost as wide as 'N'). En Dash is used to express a range of values or a distance: People of age 55–80 are more prone to hypertension. Delhi–Sidney flight was late by three hours. In MS Word, you can put an En Dash either from the menu, clicking Insert->Symbol or by the key-combinatio...