Dear Comrades,
During 1980
& 1990s, the Hindu newspaper published in its Tuesday supplementary called
as Open Page the Know Your English written by Sri Upendra. It was really
interesting and I used to cut the relevant portion and pasted them in sheets
and still I am preserving them. It contains more than 1000 episodes. I want to
share the collections of Dr Upendra who is till doing the yeomen service
through private channel. Thanks to him. Readers are requested not to repost the
matter in any group since I don’t know whether the author got any copyright. I
am sharing this with closed circulation in my website for the postal fraternity
just for reading and enjoy. The following is the collection published in one
month in four Tuesdays . Hope you will enjoy.
Kayveeyes
The ‘au'
in the first syllable sounds like the ‘o' in ‘go', ‘so', and ‘no', while the
‘eur' in the final syllable is like the ‘ir' in ‘birth', ‘bird', and ‘first'.
The word is pronounced o-TIR with the stress on the second syllable. In French,
the word means ‘author'; nowadays it is mostly used in relation to films. We
know that all well-known directors have a distinctive style of making movies.
It is possible to watch a couple of scenes from a film and guess who the
director is. Dictionaries define this distinctive style which enables a
director to keep creative control over his work as ‘auteur'. This is just one
of the meanings of the word.
14. How
is the word ‘chauffeur' pronounced?
There seem
to be different ways of pronouncing this word of French origin. One simple way
is to pronounce the first syllable ‘chau' like the word ‘show', and the ‘er' in
the second like the ‘a' in ‘china'. The British pronounce the word ‘SHOW-fe'
with the stress on the first syllable. A ‘chauffeur' is someone who drives a
car for rich people. When used as a verb, the word means to drive someone
around.
*The
Ambanis went to the airport in a chauffeur-driven limousine.
*The
mother spent the afternoon chauffeuring her son from one mall to another.
The word
‘chauffeur', which in French means ‘stoker', was in use long before automobiles
came into being. A stoker was someone who worked in the engine room of a ship,
and his job was to shovel coal into the boiler. The first automobiles did not
run on petrol, but on steam. The engine had a firebox and a boiler, and one of
the functions of the driver was to keep the fire in the engine going.
15.
What is the difference between ‘demise' and ‘death'?
While both
words mean ‘end or ending of life', demise is mostly used in formal contexts to
refer to the death of someone or something very important or well known. One usually
talks about the demise of a Prime Minister or a celebrity; the word is seldom
used with ordinary people.
*The
sudden demise of the Prime Minister created a political vacuum.
The word
can also be used to indicate the failure of an enterprise.
*The demise
of the well-known company had many investors worried.
‘Death' is
a much more general term, and unlike ‘demise', can be used with things and
animals.
*Neelam
became very upset when she heard about the death of her puppy.
*It was
the death of all her plans.
16.
What is the meaning and origin of ‘windfall'
The amount
of money that you win or receive from someone rather unexpectedly is called
‘windfall'. It's a sudden stroke of luck.
*When
Gayathri visited her uncle after her marriage, she got a windfall of Rs. 75000.
Fruit that
falls down from a tree because of heavy wind is also called windfall. In this
context, we can also say ‘windfalls'.
*Sameer's
garden was covered with windfalls.
In the old
days in England, landowners were not allowed to cut down trees which were on
their property. The law stipulated that all trees were the property of the
Royal Navy, and the wood was to be used in the building of ships. If however,
heavy wind made a tree fall, the ‘windfall' became the owner's property. Since
in the old days such ‘windfall' was not common, the word began to mean
unexpected good fortune.
17. Is
it okay to say, ‘bouquet of flowers'?
Some
people would argue that ‘of flowers' is unnecessary because bouquet means an
attractive arrangement of flowers. But there is nothing wrong in saying
‘bouquet of flowers'. The ‘ou' in the first syllable, by the way, is like the
‘oo' in ‘fool', ‘cool', and ‘school'. The following ‘q' is like the ‘k' in
‘king' and ‘kiss', and the final ‘uet' rhymes with ‘say' and ‘bay'. The word is
pronounced ‘boo-KAY' with the stress on the second syllable.
18. “What is the meaning of
New York minute?”
“An extremely short period of
time. It's actually less than a minute. It took the students less than a New
York minute to find a solution to the problem.”
“The new CEO arrived at a
decision in a New York minute.”
“Tell me what you want. I'll
give you a New York minute.”
“But why New York and not some
other city?”
“When people from other cities
came to New York in the late 19 {+t} {+h} century, they found that life in this
city was extremely fast. New Yorkers seemed to be constantly rushing from one
place to another without having any time to relax.”
“It's the same feeling that
some of us have today when we visit Mumbai.
19. Anyway, did you take a
look at the document I gave you? Are the instructions clear?”
“The instructions are clear as
mud.”
“Clear as mud? But mud isn't
very clear.”
“It isn't, and that's the
point. When you say something is clear as mud, you mean it isn't clear at all.”
“So what you are saying is
that the instructions are difficult or impossible to understand.”
“Exactly! The directions that
Sujatha gave to reach her house were clear as mud.”
“I've read his chapter twice,
and it's as clear as mud to me.”
“Alok's presentation was clear
as mud.”
20. “Talking about mud, there
is some good news! The weatherman says we'll have a heavy downpour tomorrow.”
“If the weatherman says that,
it'll probably rain kittens and puppies.”
“Kittens and puppies? You mean
cats and dogs, don't you?”
“When you say it's raining
cats and dogs, you mean that it is pouring or raining heavily. When the rain is
light, it is possible to say...”
“You can say that it's raining
kittens and puppies.”
“That's right! Now then...”
“Does the expression really
exist or are you trying to fool me?”
“The expression does exist.”
“I see. How about this
example, then? Forget the umbrella, it's just raining kittens and puppies.”
“That's a good example. To
solve the water problem, we need it to rain cats and dogs. Not kittens and
puppies.”
I was very much attracted for your writing skills on those days letters written in aipeup3chq blogspot. Naturally I am interested in posting of know your English. surely I will regularly watch it sir
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