Just a little bit of entomology.

20 Most Common Idioms in English...and What They Mean!

*The English language is one of the vastest and most vivid languages in the world. It is made up of over 1.5 million words. Over and above that, the same word can have a variety of different meanings depending on the context it is put in; two (or more) words can have the exact same spelling but are pronounced differently, depending on their meanings.
Today's article will mainly focus on those combinations of words which are commonly referred to as idioms or idiomatic expressions . It is important to point out that idioms use language in a non-literal (and sometimes metaphorical) way.

This implies that ‘the meaning of the idiomatic expression cannot be deduced by looking at the meaning of the individual words that it is made up of' (Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language, David Crystal). Another important feature to point out is that idioms are fixed, which means that people cannot just decide to make up their own.
The following is a list of some of the most widely-used idioms in everyday English and their meanings. This will hopefully help to illustrate Crystal's point in the previous paragraph clearly.

Idioms, can you guess their meanings? (Answers below)

1. A penny for your thoughts
2. Add insult to injury
3. A hot potato
4. Once in a blue moon
5. Caught between two stools
6. See eye to eye
7. Hear it on the grapevine
8. Miss the boat
9. Kill two birds with one stone
10. On the ball
11. Cut corners
12. To hear something straight from the horse's mouth
13. Costs an arm and a leg
14. The last straw
15. Take what someone says with a pinch of salt
16. Sit on the fence
17. The best of both worlds
18. Put wool over other people's eyes
19. Feeling a bit under the weather
20. Speak of the devil!

Meanings

1. This idiom is used as a way of asking someone what they are thinking about.
2. When people add insult to injury, they make a bad situation even worse.
3. This idiom is used to speak of an issue (especially in current affairs) which many people are talking about.
4. This is used when something happens very rarely.
5. When someone finds it difficult to choose between two alternatives.
6. This idiom is used to say that two (or more people) agree on something.
7. This means ‘to hear a rumour' about something or someone.
8. This idiom is used to say that someone missed his or her chance at something.
9. This means ‘to do two things at the same time'.
10. When someone understands the situation well.
11. When something is done badly to save money. For example, when someone buys products that are cheap but not of good quality.
12. To hear something from the authoritative source.
13. When something is very expensive.
14. The final problem in a series of problems.
15. This means not to take what someone says too seriously. There is a big possibility that what he/she says is only partly true.
16. This is used when someone does not want to choose or make a decision.
17. All the advantages.
18. This means to deceive someone into thinking well of them.
19. Feeling slightly ill.
20. This expression is used when the person you have just been talking about arrives.

Courtesy of Elanguest Language School. 

*http://www.englishforums.com/content/lessons/20-most-common-idioms-in-english-and-what-they-mean.htm

1. 
   

Selfie: A Portrait of a Word

Amanda - Selfie

*As Word of the Year decisions approach, the lexicography team at Dictionary.com has been reflecting on words that have risen in popularity this year. One such word is selfie.

In case you’re unfamiliar with this term, selfie means “a photo that one takes of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam, especially for posting on a social-networking website.” Though self-portraits are far from a novel concept, the term selfie is relatively new, only surfacing in the last few years. The precursor of the selfie is the “MySpace pic,” or a poorly lit self-portrait, often taken with the aid of a bathroom mirror and used as a profile photo on a site like MySpace (remember, this was before phones had self-facing cameras). As the ease of access to camera phones and webcams has increased, and the technology has improved, the selfie has become a mainstay on the many screens we interact with on a daily basis.

In an October 2013 New York Times piece titled “My Selfie, Myself,” Jenna Wortham reflects on the selfie trend, positing that these photos give a “human element” to primarily text-based interactions. She continues, saying that at first she was selfie-shy, but after seeing all her friends turn the camera on themselves, she followed suit. And she was rewarded: “…the occasional selfie appears to nudge some friends who I haven’t seen in a while to get in touch via e-mail or text to suggest that we meet for a drink to catch up.” By the simple act of sharing a photo of her face on a social-networking site, Wortham has noticed increased social interaction in real life.

“If you’re not in the photo, it didn’t happen.” That’s what John Shahidi, CEO of the company that released the selfie-only photo-sharing app Shots of Me (backed by pop star Justin Beiber), told TechCrunch this week. This is not the only app on the market in which selfies play a large role. There’s also Frontback, which allows you to take simultaneous photos with both your front-facing and self-facing cameras to capture your expression as you look at something. Even Vine, which originally didn’t support shooting with the self-facing camera, found its users gravitated to this option as soon as the company added it as an update. As Kate Losse notes in the New Yorker, for social-networking sites like Instagram and SnapChat “the self is the message and the selfie is the medium.”

Since gracing the Internet, the word selfie has even had its own spinoffs. There’s the legsie, which is a selfie of legs. There are also bookshelfies, which are selfies taken in front of one’s bookshelf. Perhaps the most perverse type of selfie are funeral selfies, which are selfies taken on the way to, during or after a funeral, naturally. The fact that the word selfie has, in its short existence, already developed its own subcategories gives it the potential staying power that lexicographers look for when choosing whether or not to add a new word to the dictionary.

What do you think of this selfie phenomenon?

* http://blog.dictionary.com/selfie/