Category Archives: Vocabulary

No comments

Fine

  By ,

Fine might be one of the first English words you ever learnt. If someone asks “How are you?”, there are lots of ways to answer, but one of the standard responses is “Fine, thanks.” In many situations, fine means something very similar to “OK”.

Jake: What do you think of that report I sent out?
Jeremy: It’s absolutely fine.

In the dialogue above, Jeremy has no problems at all with Jake’s report.

But fine doesn’t always mean just OK. In certain situations it describes something much better than that. However much you like McDonalds, you’d never call it “fine dining”. That expression is reserved for the experience of eating at fancy restaurants, where you’ll quite possibly also have some fine wine to go with your meal.

If you watch or listen to a weather forecast, and hear the word fine, that’s good news. Fine weather is bright and sunny. Not many clouds, and certainly no rain.

As I discussed last time, fine can also describe something made up of small pieces. It’s the opposite of coarse. We can use fine for anything that involves delicate work or attention to small details: “That painting must have taken ages. Look at all that fine brushwork!”

Finally (or should that be fine-ally?), fine can be a noun, with a completely different meaning from any of the above examples, in which fine was an adjective. A fine is a financial penalty for doing something wrong:

He received a $500 fine and a six-month driving ban.
Library fines are 50p per day, per item.

Like many English nouns, fine can also be a verb, meaning “to receive a fine”:

I got fined because my son wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
The police stopped me but luckily they didn’t fine me.

No comments

Coarse (with an “a”)

  By

The word coarse (with an “a”) is pronounced exactly the same as course (with a “u”), but isn’t as common.

We use the word coarse to describe something made up of large pieces. Something made from small pieces is described as being fine.

You might even describe somebody’s hair as being coarse (if the hairs are thick) or fine (if the hairs are thin). I personally have coarse, or thick, hair. I inherited that from my mother’s side of the family.

Coarse can also be used to describe somebody who lacks manners, or swears a lot. “I can’t believe the way your brother behaves at the table. He’s so coarse!”

We occasionally use coarse to describe a sound that is unpleasant and rough. “After smoking thirty a day since he was a teenager, his voice had become rather coarse.” We might also say that such a sound is harsh or grating.

Finally, coarse fishing is a mostly British term that means fishing in freshwater (not sea water) for fish that you won’t eat, should you be lucky enough to catch any. You just put the fish back in the water.

Next up: fine.

No comments

The great financial fry-up

  By ,

Has anybody else noticed that trying to make ends meet is like a traditional English breakfast?

A full English breakfast

You’re the breadwinner, the one who brings home the bacon. You work hard and try to build a nest egg, but at the end of the month you find you haven’t got a bean. Not a sausage. In fact the debt starts to mushroom.

There are a lot of idioms here. If you need help understanding any of them, please leave a comment!

No comments

What’s in a word? Trunk

  By

Hello. This is the first post where I discuss a word that has come up in one of my lessons. Today I’m going to talk about the word trunk. It’s an interesting word because it has several meanings, not all of which are used everywhere in the English-speaking world.


1. A tree trunk

The thick main stem of a tree is known as a trunk. The branches of a tree grow out of the trunk. In the same way, we sometimes call a main road a trunk road in British English (smaller roads branch off from it), and in medicine the main part of a vein or artery can be called a trunk.


2. An elephant’s trunk

The distinctive nose of an elephant is called a trunk.


3. A box

A large box with a hinged lid, and often coated in leather, is known as a trunk. It is usually used for storing and moving clothes and other items.


4. The storage compartment of a car

Americans call the main storage compartment of a car, usually in the back, a trunk. In Britain, Australia and New Zealand, it is called a boot.


5. A person’s body

A person’s upper body, excluding the head and arms, is called a trunk or torso.


6. Swimming trunks

Men’s swimming shorts are known as trunks. Note that trunks are an example of an item of clothing that only exists in the plural in English. It is incorrect to say *a trunk when talking about clothes. Other examples of plural-only items of clothing are trousers, shorts, pants and underpants (or undies). In Australia and New Zealand, trunks are often called togs. Here is quite an amusing advert that used to be on TV in New Zealand in summer.

Tight-fitting trunks are sometimes called Speedos after a well-known company who make them. Not all men can get away with wearing Speedos! I know I can’t. As for women, they sometimes wear a one-piece suit called a swimming costume (British English) or swimsuit (American English), but often they wear a two-piece suit which we call a bikini.

No comments

Too much!

  By , ,

When I ask my students what they think of an English lesson or exercise, sometimes they tell me it’s “too easy”. Wow. Too easy, huh? I can certainly do something about that. Except a lot of the time I don’t think “too easy” is what they mean.

“Too” before an adjective (like easy) or an adverb (like slowly) means that there’s a problem. If the weather is too hot, it doesn’t mean it’s a nice sunny spring day with the bees humming and the birds singing. No, it means you’re sweating, you’re thirsty, you’re uncomfortable, you can’t wait to have a cold shower. Too hot is a bad thing. Likewise, if something is too easy, it’s bad. Too easy means you want it to be harder.

Maybe you do mean “too easy”. But it’s likely you mean “very easy”, which implies that you’re a lot better at English than I thought and I should give you something harder, or perhaps you mean “quite easy”, which means just a little bit easy.

We sometimes also say “too many” or “too much”. Both of these expressions mean more than enough. They mean problem. They mean bad. If there isn’t a problem you should probably be using a lot or lots instead.

Here are a few sentences where too is being used correctly:

  • There is too much crime in America.
  • I have spent too much money this week.
  • I am too young to vote.
  • I’d like to live in Brisbane but it gets too hot in summer.

And here are some sentences where too is probably being used incorrectly:

  • Lionel Messi, my favourite footballer, scored too many goals last season.
    (It should be a lot of goals, or lots of goals.)
  • If I get that job, I’ll be earning too much money!
    (You want to say a lot of money, or lots of money.)
  • Romanian women are too pretty.
    (Too pretty means you wish they were uglier. You probably mean to say very pretty.)
  • Beer is too cheap in Romania.
    (Too cheap means you want to pay more for beer. You mean quite cheap or very cheap, depending on how cheap you think Romanian beer is.)
No comments

Making Do

  By , , ,

Welcome to my new blog! Over the coming weeks and months (and who knows, possibly years) I’ll post regular updates on topics of English vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation that crop up in my lessons. I hope you find this blog informative and, above all, enjoyable.

Today I’ll be looking at two extremely common English verbs: to do and to make. How do you know when to use do and when to use make? Your native language might only have one verb that can be translated as both do and make, or it might have two separate verbs that aren’t used in the same way as in English. So how do you decide? Unfortunately, as is usually the case in English, there’s no simple rule. However there are some general guidelines.

If you’re creating, building or contructing something, you’ll probably want to use make:

  • I’ve just made a pot of tea.
  • She made that dress herself.
  • I’m making dinner tonight.
  • Adams & Son make wooden furniture.

For other types of activity, we normally use do:

  • I’ve got to do the ironing now.
  • He does yoga every Tuesday night.
  • What are you doing tonight?
  • Jack is doing his maths homework.
  • Do you do judo? (This is a bit of a tongue-twister. I’ll write a post on tongue-twisters at some point in the near future. Stay tuned!)

We often use make when we’re arranging something, as in make a date, make an appointment, make a booking, make a reservation, or make an order. But you wouldn’t *make a meeting or *make a lesson; you’d arrange, book or simply have a meeting or a lesson.

  • Can we have a meeting tomorrow at eleven?

We often use do when talking about study or exams:

  • She’s doing geography at university.
  • I didn’t do French at school.
  • I’m doing an advanced English course.
  • To pass the course I’ll have to do an exam. (You can also take or sit an exam.)

We have a lot of set phrases in English that use do and make, and I’m afraid you’ll just have to learn them. You’ll find a comprehensive list of these phrases here. There are also a large number of phrases that don’t use do or make, but instead use other very common verbs like have or take. Here are some examples:

  • To take a photo (or a picture)
  • To take a risk
  • To have a party
  • To have fun
  • To have (or take) a shower
  • To have (or take) a look

Finally, to the title of this blog post. To make do is a phrasal verb meaning “to manage to live without something that you would like to have”. A couple of examples:

  • I’d love a new car but I’ll have to make do with the one I’ve got.
  • I grew up in a poor family. We had to make do with what we had.

I hope this post has been of some help, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.