Helping English language learners
Christmas is celebrated in many countries around the world. Different countries have different traditions. Here are some British traditions.
In the United Kingdom, ‘Christmas Day’ is celebrated on 25th December. Traditionally families gather together to exchange presents, to eat and to drink.
We use collective nouns to refer to a collection of individual people, creatures or objects. Examples: In British English, we can treat a collective noun as either singular or plural, depending on the context....
When you say “my foot!” you are telling someone that you don’t believe – or strongly disagree with – what someone has told you. It is an idiom used to express disbelief or incredulity....
You would normally say “I crave an apple pie”, and not “I crave for an apple pie”. One definition of the verb “to crave” is “to have a great desire for”. If you were...
“To cherish” is a verb meaning to value greatly or to hold in great affection. We can use it in the present, past and future tenses. Here are some examples. Present tense: She was...
“Well-heeled” is an idiom that is used to describe someone who has plenty of money. It probably originates from the idea that only someone with enough money could afford to have their shoes repaired...
Some people get very angry when they hear or read the word “literally” used in a way that they think is wrong. So, let’s try to understand what it means and how it should...
The idiom “to earn your keep” means to work in return for food and somewhere to live. It comes from the times when workers, usually on farms, were often given food and accommodation instead...
“Jubilee” is another word for “anniversary”. “Anniversary” can be used when celebrating something that happened one, two, three, four years ago and so on, but “jubilee” is normally only used when celebrating something that...
When someone gets cold feet, they become too frightened to do something that they had planned to do. Examples: He was going to enter the London marathon but got cold feet. She got cold...