I came across a video somewhere on the internet today, of someone’s front-door security-camera footage. It showed a delivery man petting the homeowner’s cat, and the uploader had captioned it something like, Check out the UPS guy loving on my cat.
Well that’s a new one, I thought. Loving on. Hating on I’d heard of, but not loving on. Continue reading
At Chrismas.
But look, maybe you say on Christmas, and that’s probably OK too. I suppose it all depends on what you mean by Christmas, really. Continue reading
I was looking at some Christmas crackers today (it’s Christmas), and I realised how the word cracker can be used to refer to very different things. There are Christmas crackers, but then there are also crackers you can eat with cheese, and something that you generally think is great can be described as a cracker).
Before I go any further, I’ve just thought to myself that Christmas crackers aren’t really popular in the United States (I couldn’t even find a picture of one in WordPress’ free-picture library, so I went with the cute dog instead), and as about half of you reading this are from that part of the world, I should explain what they are. They look like this: Continue reading
Huh?
No it doesn’t. Yes, it took place in the past, but that was the past, so it doesn’t take place in the past. It did, but now it doesn’t.
I got the message that forms the title of this post from my Outlook calendar today, as I was looking for a document that had been attached to a meeting from Tuesday this week (18.12.18, today is 23.12.18). Naturally, it confused me a little. Continue reading
Last week I wrote about the word animator, and how we don’t use it in a general sense in English. Reading about the word though, I did discover that English features the word animateur. Continue reading
I heard someone use this expression the other day, and of course the first thing I thought was: Who’s Larry? Continue reading
At least not until you’re sure which one’s which. I often think about the two words to lend and to borrow, and how even native speakers often get them mixed up, even though they’re opposites.
Can I lend a pen from you?
Can you borrow me your pen?
I’ve often wondered why people would get them mixed up. But then these aren’t the only pair of opposites that are surprisingly close in the English language. Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 