Phrase of the Week: Make a Living

執筆者 | 2013年08月31日 | Phrases

Teenager: “I’m going to be an artist!” Parent: “You’ll never make a living doing art!” Making a living is earning enough money to live on. If someone has a job that they do not enjoy, but it makes them enough money to pay all their bills, they might say, “Eh, it’s a...

Phrase of the Week: Wrong Side of the Bed

執筆者 | 2013年08月24日 | Phrases

“You sure are crabby today. Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed?” The story is that if you get up on the wrong side of the bed, you will be in a bad mood for the rest of the day. It is not clear which side of the bed is wrong. If you are grumpy all the time,...

Phrase of the Week: All But

執筆者 | 2013年08月10日 | Phrases

I told you not to ride so fast. You’ve all but killed that poor horse!” “All but” means “almost” or “very nearly”. It’s used to say you have come just short of doing something, or something that is very close to true. For example, “all but impossible” means something...

Phrase of the Week: How come? What for?

執筆者 | 2013年08月03日 | Phrases

Child: How come things fall down and not up? Parent: Are those my keys? Don’t drop them down there! Argh! What did you do that for? Child: I wanted to see if it would fall up. “How come?” is another way to ask “why?” It asks the reason something happens. “How come the...

Phrase of the Week: All bets are off.

執筆者 | 2013年07月27日 | Phrases

Commentator: “Normally I would expect the Tigers to win this game easily, but with their star player injured, all bets are off.” When something unusual makes it impossible to predict what will happen, we say “all bets are off”. When you bet on a sport, you can see how...