In Idioms^x, Grammar^x

Apparently, this is an exceedingly rare idiom. Your question is the first I've ever heard it. It seems to be used to refer to chaotic situations.Here is one of the very few quotes I was able to find where it's used in context. It describes the chaos of the U. S. evacuation from...

I'm not clear what you are asking here.As for your grammar questions, as always, I leave them to the grammar experts.

.1-- It takes practice. There are also long lists of phrasal verbs available in grammar texts and ON LINE.2-- Yes, they are a kind of idiom.

I mostly agree with your first grammar book. To my ear all should be omitted. Only #4 sounds acceptable to me both ways, and #5 is a maybe. I think #9 is a fixed idiom "to make do." I looked for synonyms which would definitely require the "to" and only found one: #10 - ...

Hi Barb, yes, but that's more related to style and "good writing" than grammar and idiomatic English, isn't it? I think native speakers are very likely to use unbalanced structures in everyday speech... Anyway, I wanted to ask a question about "not only... but also"...

Hi CB,I wouldn't know where to start! English grammar is pretty different from Italian grammar. However, there are a lot of similar words (one example: government - governo), and several similar structures and idioms. The problem is that there are also several false friends, and lots of...

Hi KotoI realise you may never read this but I'll post it just the same. Not all European languages are related. My native language, Finnish, isn't even an Indo-European language. It is related to Estonian and Hungarian but not to such Germanic languages as English, German, Danish,...

Hi FandorinYou seem to be mixing things up.Angliholic's sentence is not an example of the idiomatic "to have got", which means basically the same thing as "to have" or "to possess".In that idiom, it is not possible to change the word 'got' to...

Grammar Granny wrote:I was told by a professional editor that 'for free' was incorrect, no matter how much it is in common use.They must have a strange definition of "incorrect". In the first place it is redundant.Redundancy needs some better PR. These are all redundant:three different...

Hi Grammar Geek and Delmobile and other DH fans, I just finished the translation of the whole episode of DH 4x10. Last 10 minutes were a little hard..:-( , but there were a lot of interesting idioms I have never heard before...like - that apple pie just made my mouth water. - she promised it...