By Idioms, Constructions

Phew, I didn't get scolded much, I see! I perfectly understand whay you, CB, and MrPedantic are saying. But I see that we disagree on some points mainly because we are considering the same things form completely different point of views. So in the end it's ok if we disagree! I noticed MrP said:...

They are different constructions. In the first, the idiom "a piece of cake" could be replaced by the word "easy", and so no agreement with the subject is needed.

Hello, I've made a few corrections for you. the highlighted areas also need re-writing - they either do not make sense at all in English (especially the section 'flour..for?' Is this a translation of a chinese idiom? It makes no sense at all to me) or just need completely rewriting rather than...

I am afraid it's not an idiom. I just found it in my TOEIC testbook. A picture shows few workers are digging a hole at a construction site. Here come the four choices and I must choose the best answer relevant to this picture. A) The men are digging a trench.B) The worker fell into a hole.C)...

The other day I was listening to a BBC Radio 4 podcast during which they interviewed an American Senator; forgive me but I can't remember his name. Anyway, at one point he mention the expression: "in the near term" Now initially, I thought that as he was speaking 'live' he had confused two...

In #2 the operative verb is was, in concord with the subject he. To have been is the infinitive perfective of be, here used in a passive construction. (To be to + infinitive is a modal idiom and we have it here in the past tense.)

across with my legs isn't OK/idiomatic Just make a search at Yahoo for "across with my legs" (quotation marks are important) and you'll see a very low number of hits The rest seems OK. Now you have some work to do ------ across with is seen only in some constructions, such as:...

>What is " idiomatic"? In short, good English, using the same idioms/constructions as spoken/written by the native speakers.

I guess you don't get out much, Anon. Here is a sampling of respectable online sources. Doing a bit of Google research yourself will turn up many, many more.The American Heritage Dictionary: Grammarians have sometimes objected to the so-called double genitive construction, as in a friend of my...