EmailHalloween is the night of the 31st October when people dress up in costumes as ghosts, witches, skeletons and devils, and try to frighten each other. According to tradition, Halloween is the night of the year when it was believed that ghosts and witches are very active and they return to the earthly world. People [...]
Making and keeping notes
October 21, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Word of the week: gamp
October 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Gamp is a colloquial word for an umbrella (in British English). The word comes from a character called Sarah Gamp in Charles Dickens’ novel Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-4). Sarah Gamp always carried a big umbrella. It’s an interesting word, but not one you will hear used very often. Charles Dickens was an English author who lived [...]
Idiom: send to Coventry
October 7, 2009 By Leave a Comment
To send to Coventry is to punish someone by not speaking to them. It is thought that this idiom might have originated in England in the seventeenth century during the Civil War between King Charles I and Parliament (1642-6). Royalist prisoners were sent to Coventry, where some of them were beheaded, and the expression 'sending [...]
