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Vocabulary: Hampstead Saturday 31st May 2014

5/6/2014

1 Comment

 
Dear all
Thank you joining me in Hampstead last Saturday and making it such an enjoyable English conversation walk. Isn’t Hampstead lovely? I hope you all enjoyed it. Your research and participation in speaking English was very welcome … thank you.

Some of the vocabulary that we went over at the end is below.

Best Wishes

Gail


To rattle (something) (verb): To make a noise like hard things hitting each other. E.g. The windows were rattling all night in the wind. E.g. He rattled the money in the tin.

To get rattled (inf): To become a bit angry or worried. E.g. The news of his arrival really rattled her. E.g. When he opened his wallet and saw all the money gone, really rattled him.

To get tanked up (informal expression): To drink lots of alcohol. Get drunk.

A graveyard (noun): In English, it is more common to use the word ‘graveyard’ than cemetery. ‘Cemetary’ tends to be used more by other European countries.

Foul (adjective): a) When something smells or tastes disgusting E.g. this coffee tastes foul. E.g. Their kitchen smells foul!

b) We also use the word ‘foul’ to describe how we feel. E.g. He’s in a foul mood/temper. E.g. this weather is foul.


To drown (verb): To die in water because it is not possible to breath. E.g. Last year a woman drowned in one of the Hampstead ponds.


To grind (something down/up, something into something) (verb): To press and break something into very small pieces or into a powder between two hard surfaces. E.g. When there was a windmill in Hampstead, it ground the wheat into flour.

A grinder (noun): A machine for grinding. E.g. A coffee grinder.

Expressions using ‘grind’:

Life is a hard grind: difficult, hard work

To feel ground down by something/one: Exhausted. E.g. I worked for 12 hours a day for a month. By the end I felt ground down.

To sneak (into, out of, past etc) (verb): To go very quietly so that nobody can see or hear you. E.g. She sneaked out of the room before the meeting finished.

Sneaky (adjective): E.g. She had a sneaky cigarette (when no-one was looking).


Sneakily (adverb): E.g. They ate their sandwiches sneakily.

To sneak up (on someone) (phrasal verb): Go near somebody very quietly, especially so that you can surprise them.


To talk (something) over (phrasal verb): To get control of something or responsibility for something. e.g. The firm is being taken over by a large company. E.g. Can you find somebody to take over my English class next week, please?

To deceive (verb): To try to make somebody believe something that is not true. (see ‘to fall for something’ below)

To fall for somebody (phrasal verb) (inf): To be strongly attracted to somebody. To fall in love with somebody. E.g. Keats fell in love with Fanny Brown.

To fall for something (phrasal verb): To be tricked into believing something that is not true. E.g. Don’t fall for anything he says. He’s deceiving you!


An eyesore (noun): something that is ugly and unpleasant to look at. E.g. To some people, The Shard is an eyesore.

Cross your ‘t’s and dot your ‘i’s (idiom): Take care of all the details of what you are doing, even the smallest ones.

To take one day at a time (idiom):  To deal with things as they happen, and not to make plans or to worry about the future. E.g. While he lived in London, he took one day at a time. He didn’t know when he’d return to his own country.

To riot (verb): A situation in which a group of people behave in a violent way in a public place, often as a protest. E.g. The riots in London in 2011 were mostly young people fed up with having no jobs.

To have a riot (inf): To enjoy yourself and have a good time. E.g. How was the party last night? Oh, it was a riot!

Glad rags (noun) (inf): Clothes for a special occasion.

To keep your eyes peeled (idiom): To watch carefully for someone or something. E.g. Keep your eyes peeled so we get of the bus at the right stop!


1 Comment

Vocabulary: Hampstead Village & Heath Saturday 18th May 2013

20/5/2013

0 Comments

 
Hello all
What a lovely way to spend a day ... Hampstead is such a pretty place and the Heath is spectacular! You all worked so hard so thank you.

Here is some of vocabulary that we did at the end. Wasn't it great to be sitting in someone's home sipping our tea while we did this?!

Vocabulary:
An outside (noun): A person who is not accepted as a member of a particular group or community. E.g. In the 1640s, local residents complained about ‘outsiders’ moving to Hampstead to avoid the plague.

Some wild flowers that we saw:

Bluebells

Dandelions

Buttercups

Forgetmenots.

A Yew tree (noun): We looked at a Yew tree in the graveyard. It is common to find yew trees in graveyards. They can live for hundreds of years.

To scrape (verb): to remove something from a surface by moving a sharp edge across it. E.g. He scraped the mud off his boots before he came in.

A boot scraper (noun): We saw a boot scraper outside a house. Old houses had boot scrapers built into the entrances to visitors could scrape the mud off their boots before entering.

To scrape through something (expression): To succeed in doing something with difficulty. E.g. I just scraped through that exam!

A graveyard (noun): In English, it is more common to use the word ‘graveyard’ than cemetery. ‘Cemetary’ tends to be used more by other European countries.

A burial ground (noun): a graveyard.

A parish (noun): An area or district which has its own church. The people who live within this area were traditionally called ‘parishioners’. A parish was traditionally responsible for the welfare of its parishioners, the poor, education and the land it owned.

Parochial (adjective): Traditionally it referred to the church parish. Today, we use the word to mean people who have narrow, limited attitudes and outlooks.

Foul (adjective): a) When something smells or tastes disgusting E.g. this coffee tastes foul. E.g. Their kitchen smells foul!

b) We also use the word ‘foul’ to describe how we feel. E.g. He’s in a foul mood/temper. E.g. this weather is foul.

Illness (noun): the state of being physically or mentally ill. We tend to use the word ‘illness’ as a generic term when we talk about being ill. E.g. She’s missed a lot of work through illness. E.g. He’s just getting over his illness. Note: when we use the word ‘illness’, we don’t know specifically which illness a person has got.

Disease (noun): An illness of the body in humans, plants or animals. It is usually an infection or an illness that is contagious (spreads). E.g. She had a rare disease. E.g. Smoking causes heart disease.

The dictionary says: Disease or illness? A disease is a medical problem which has a name and may be caused by bacteria, viruses, etc. Diseases can often be caught and passed on to other people. An illness is a medical problem, or a period of ill health.

Sick (adjective): a) Not well. E.g. a sick child. E.g. You’re too ill to work today. You should phone in sick.

b) a sick society: refers to things that we don’t like morally or ethically in society. E.g. child prostitution, slave labour etc. It means that something is deprived.

c) It’s sick! = it’s deprived. OR: it’s wonderful! (this depends on your age!!)

d) To make somebody sick: to make somebody very angry. E.g. Shut up! Your attitude makes me sick!

e) be sick to death of something/body: When we feel tired of or annoyed by someone/thing. E.g. I’m sick to death of his greed.

A slip-up (informal): to make a mistake

Phrases:

It doesn’t feel like London

A: Do you want to come to Hampstead on Saturday?

B: No, I don’t feel like it/going



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