Skip to main content

Popular Idioms and Usages Part XYZ

By VJ
We are here at the end of the series, Popular Idioms and Usages. This part of the series incorporates all the idioms starting with letters X, Y, and Z. Please read the whole series from the category entry, Idioms and Usages Reference.

X-rated: With pornography, or not suitable for minors.
Year round: Throughout the year
Yell blue murder: To shout at the top of one’s voice
Yellow-bellied: Timid and cowardly
Yellow press: Sensationalist newspapers
Yellow streak: Somebody with no courage to do something
Yen: Desire
Yeoman service: Very good or great service.
Yes-man: Henchman
You are what you eat: To tell that you need to eat well to be healthy
You can’t have your cake and eat it: To mean that you can’t get everything.
You can’t unring a bell: If you have done something, it’s final
You look as if you have been dragged through a hedge backwards: Used to say that your hair needs treatment.
You reap what you sow: You get the consequences of your actions
You said it!: To say that you agree with someone completely
You are toast: To speak that you are in trouble
Young Turk: A young rebellious person
Your money or your life: To survive from me, give me your money.
Your name is mud: You are unpopular
Your sin will find you out: To mean that the consequences of your evil actions will come to you eventually
Zero hour: Time when something prominent is to happen.
Zero tolerance: An enforcement that warrants no mistakes
Zigged before you zagged: Things done in wrong order
Zip it or Zip your lip: To say to someone to be quiet.

That’s all, folks. The idioms series ends here. Hope you found the journey interesting and informative. What I lack, however, are your comments and suggestions for improvement. I expect to see many of them.

Copyright © Lenin Nair 2008
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 20, 2008 at 1:25 PM

    You are what you eat: ... my Lithuanian-English may play a trick now, but I will risk to say we eat what we are in sense we live not for to eat, but eat for to live and have the fellowship. Eating (the writing in the concrete) is sharing the light that fills our hearts and thus our comments are steps of the gratitude. While Reading your post, I was not alone and grew in my understanding of English- thus you improved me - Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. VJJuly 20, 2008 at 1:34 PM

    Hi Candleday, thanks a lot for the comment.

    Lenin

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated very strictly

Popular posts from this blog

Power of Short Sentences

By VJ
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 ...
1 comment
Read more

Creative Writing: Crafting Characters With Emotional Appeal in Mind

By VJ
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...
1 comment
Read more

En Dash, Em Dash, and Hyphen

By VJ
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...
11 comments
Read more