I’ve noticed this phrase a lot online recently. I haven’t heard it much in real life, with it being an American-English term, but it certainly seems to have cropped up a lot lately.
Eating Crow
etymology
The Gym
Some of you might go to the gym regularly, to keep fit. Good for you, if you do. You might know that gym is short for gymnasium, which would be quite a long word to say all the time, so the abbreviation makes sense.
Red-Letter Day
A red-letter day is a day of special significance for some reason or another. Why do we call it a red-letter day?
Give Someone an Inch…
… and they’ll take a mile. Or, how about…
Give someone a centimetre, and they’ll take a kilometre.
Only one of these is an actual phrase in English, but it doesn’t make reference to the system of measurement in use in every country except three.
Why do they Call it Google?
You may have never thought about this before. After all, the word is so common that we now use it as a verb without anyone batting an eyelid. I’ve thought about it now and then though. Mainly because that’s what I do, but also because I remember it from my childhood.
Whiskey Galore!
It was St. Patrick’s Day yesterday (two days ago, at least, by the time you get to read this), so I suppose it’s as good a time as any to look at a few of the words that have come from the Irish language, though I’ve looked at some before.
Score!
Score is another of those very common words that have a surprising number of different uses. The most obvious use is as a verb in sport: you can score a goal or a point, for example. Of course it can also be a noun in terms of sport, such as in What’s the score? Less frequently though, we also encounter score to refer to the music from a film or television programme, and as verb meaning to cut or scratch a line on a surface. And a score can mean twenty. Despite all these different meanings though, each use of the word actually shares the same origin.
English-Language Thoughts 