Search results for 'tag:Expressions tag:Colloquialisms' matching tags 'Expressions' and 'Colloquialisms'

Re: don't be a stranger.

Clive — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:53:06 GMT

Hi,

Don't be a stranger!.

I always hear it on TV but have no clue why one would say that to their friends.What does the expression mean?

It means 'Don't act like a stranger, come and see me any time you want to'.

It's a rather folksy colloquialism that is used, regionally I think, in the USA.

Best wishes, Clive

Re: What does "Get in!" mean?

Laurenmichelle — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:25:35 GMT

No. I do undertsnad the correct grammatical usage of the phrase 'get in' as in, as you said- 'get in the bus.'

The expression 'get in!' I hear is used as slang, as a colloquialism, as a reply to something someone has said, or to something they are doing.

I hope someone can resolve it for me,

Thanks very much indeed,

Lauren

Re: Over the left.

Teo — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 05:29:47 GMT

Over the left shoulder, or Over the left, an old but
      still current colloquialism, or slang expression, used as
      an aside to indicate insincerity, negation, or disbelief;
      as, he said it, and it is true, -- over the left.

http://dict.die.net/over%20the%20left%20shoulder/

Re: Poetic expressions

Damiana — Sat, 27 May 2006 11:05:36 GMT

Thank you so mush. I've found such synonyms for "daydreaming" as "to be lost in reveries" and "to have one's mind wandering". Generally I use Google to make sure if a certain expression exists in English, for the word-for-word translation of Russian idioms, colloquialisms and metaphors of my own can be really tricky: when I come up with something colorful, the English equivalent may appear completely nonsensical. But those quotation resources are a gold-mine indeed. Now, the objective is not to plagiarize =) Iâll try to be creative, thus using what Iâve found as samples and patterns only.

Fowler's

ranchhand — Sat, 11 Jun 2005 07:16:13 GMT

FROM: "Re: The reason is because ~" Posted 06-10-2005 06:23 AM

===============
Authority: The New Fowler's Modern English Usage edited by R.W. Burchfield. Clarendon Press: Oxford, England. 1996. Used with the permission of Oxford University Press. (under "because")
================

RanchHand:
"authority"; that's a strange word to use when talking about Fowler's. As a source for describing the English language, it is highly suspect.

=============
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97mar/ha...ern/nunberg.htm

Professor G Nunberg

Take Modern English Usage, by that good man H. W. Fowler, "a Christian in all but actual faith," as the Dictionary of National Biography called him. Despite a revision in 1965, it is out-of-date, yet it still has a coterie as devoted as the fans of Jane Austen or Max Beerbohm, who prize its diffident irony, its prose cadences, and, above all, the respect it shows for its readers' intelligence and principles.

Here, for example, is Fowler on the insertion of quotation marks or an expression like "to use an expressive colloquialism" to mark off a slang word from which the writer wants to dissociate himself:

"Surprise a person of the class that is supposed to keep servants cleaning his own boots, & either he will go on with the job while he talks to you, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, or else he will explain that the bootboy or scullery-maid is ill & give you to understand that he is, despite appearances, superior to boot-cleaning. If he takes the second course, you conclude that he is not superior to it; if the first, that perhaps he is. So it is with the various apologies to which recourse is had by writers who wish to safeguard their dignity & yet be vivacious, to combine comfort with elegance, to touch pitch & not be defiled. . . . Some writers use a slang phrase because it suits them, & box the ears of people in general because it is slang; a refinement on the institution of whipping-boys, by which they not only have the boy, but do the whipping."

This passage would not be out of place in the company of Addison and Steele. It is apt, amusing, and above all instructive. It obviously has done little to stem the mania for quotation marks (WE ARE "CLOSED," I saw in the window of a shoe-repair shop the other day), but it did at least persuade me to remove the quotes from around the word life-style in a review I was writing, and I am a better person for it.

Re: Need an idiomatic translation

Usenet — Thu, 13 Nov 2003 15:10:30 GMT

[nq:1]Hello, I need help with an expression. What do you call a person (most often a child) who is a ... where the latter one is equivalent to barrel. Is there an or are there any expressions for this in English?[/nq]
Small and powerful only? Without the implication of mischief?

English uses the French phrase 'enfant terrible' which means a child whose inopportune remarks cause embarrassment or a person known for shocking remarks or outrageous behavior It is also used to refer to a young and successful person who is strikingly unorthodox, innovative, or avant-garde

There's also the colloquialism "he's a pistol" meaning a forceful, uncontrollable person you'd better beware of, but that has no connotation of size or youth.

Then there's the German expression 'wunderkind' often used in English (ours is a magpie language)

There's 'hotshot', meaning a person who is conspicuously talented or successful, but that has no connotation of size or youth either.