Mastering English: Common Idioms and Special Terms
Common Idioms
- At last > Finally – We waited two hours, and then the train arrived at last.
- Find out > Investigate – I will call right now to find it out.
- On purpose > Intentionally – I pushed him down the stairs, and he did it on purpose.
- At all > Absolute – Mary isn’t shy at all about expressing her opinions.
- Look up > Search – Andres suggested that we look up Lee’s telephone number.
- So far > Until now – So far, everything is going as planned.
- Depend on > Count on – You can count on her to be on time.
- To give up > Quit – I’ve given up taking those vitamins.
- In the long run > Eventually – It will be a little bumpy at first, but in the long run, it will be well worth it.
- Pass out > To faint – I must have passed out.
- Clap/Applause > To give someone a big hand – Come on, give him a big hand for the band.
- Dry run > Rehearsal – Then again, it was just a charity preview and a dry run for the real thing.
- By the way > Incidentally – Mr. Rodriguez, who, by the way, is one of our best customers.
- To be had > Cheated – The angry customer complained about being overcharged at the store, asserting that this was the third time that he had been had.
- Because of > Due to – The flights were canceled because of the thunderstorm.
- Oversimplify > Exaggerate – She tends to oversimplify things.
Special Terms
- Struggle > Fight/Problem – The struggle to pass the immigration law lasted two years.
- Wage > Salary – He gambled his week’s wages.
- Backwards > Reverse – Some people like to walk backwards for exercise.
- Fortnightly > Twice a month – She’s never late with her fortnightly rent check.
- Indeed > In fact – I checked, and the wheel was indeed loose.
- Mardi Gras > Carnival in Venezuela – Debora, go to Mardi Gras in Brazil 2017.
Thomas Edison: A Story of Perseverance
It was the mid-19th century, and the following conversation took place in the offices of a primary school in a small town in Ohio, United States: “The child has a mild mental retardation that prevents him from acquiring knowledge on par with his classmates. You must stop bringing your child to this school.”
The woman did not seem much affected by the teacher’s judgment but took care to convey to her child that he did not have any delay and that God, whom he trusted faithfully from his youth, had not given her life to embarrass him but to be a successful man.
A few years later, this child, with only 12 years, founded a newspaper and was in charge of selling it at the railway station in New York. That was not all; he devoted himself to studying electrical phenomena, and thanks to his studies, he succeeded in refining the telephone, microphone, megaphone, and other inventions such as the phonograph, to name a few. How far the words of his teacher remained in the memory of the child.
Everything seemed to be conducted smoothly until one day he encountered a major obstacle. His biggest project was fading before his eyes. He had tirelessly sought ways to build a filament capable of generating an incandescent light but, at the same time, resisting the force of energy that lit it. His financiers were impatient, his competitors approached the solution before him, and even his colleagues were hopeless.
After three years of hard work, one of them said… “Thomas, abandon this project. We are already more than three years in and have tried more than two thousand different ways and know only failure in each attempt.”
The response was swift and addressed him with the same vehemence that his mother had about 25 years ago… “Look, I do not know what you mean by failure, but something I am sure of is that in all this time, I learned that before thinking about two thousand failures, I have discovered more than two thousand ways to do this filament, and that gives me the pattern that I am on track.” A few months later, he lit up an entire street in the city of New York using electricity.