執筆者 Modern English | 2014年01月15日 | Idioms
“Let’s kick off this party with a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.” “Kick off” means start. A football game starts with a real kick, but you can kick off any event. The first activity at this party is a game where blindfolded players must attempt to attach the tail...
執筆者 Modern English | 2014年01月14日 | Words
“He says he saw an alien, but I’m skeptical of his story.” Someone who is skeptical overall does not believe things too easily. A skeptic probably doesn’t believe in aliens, the Loch Ness Monster or ghosts. You can also be skeptical about only a certain instance: “I...
執筆者 Modern English | 2014年01月11日 | Phrases
“Hello. This is Bob Johnson. I’m not in right now, so please leave a message after the beep.” This phrase is a common way to end the recorded message played by an answering machine. Another common phrase is, “Please leave your name and number,” because with that...
執筆者 Modern English | 2014年01月10日 | TOEIC
“We need to ________ the inconvenience to our customers from this renovation.” Fill in the blank. A. ensmallen B. minimize C. minimal D. smallify 「この改築によるお客様への不便を最小限に止めないといけません。」 AとDは「small」で言いたいことはわかりますが、実在する単語ではありません。BとCでは、Bが動詞でCが形容詞です。この場合「need...
執筆者 Modern English | 2014年01月09日 | Trivia
The English language has many words with the same or similar meanings. But sometimes when writing, we can’t think of a different word so we use the same one over and over. This is not considered good writing. In this situation, we can use a thesaurus. It is a book...
