Bavar Faraz Institute

Confusing Words: Raise vs. Rise, Job vs. Work The difference between Raise & Rise; Job & Work in English

150+ Essential English Idioms for Sounding Like a Native - ESL Buzz An idiom is a word or phrase which means something different from its literal meaning...

the American dream: The American dream is almost impossible to define, meaning as it does so many different things to so many different people. These words go back at least to de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835) and are usually associated with the dreams of people new to these shores of freedom, material prosperity, and hope for the future.

America: Many writers have assumed that the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci (whom Ralph Waldo Emerson called “a thief” and “pickle dealer at Seville”) was a con man who never explored the New World and doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Christopher Columbus, much less have his name honored in the continent’s name. Deeper investigation reveals that Vespucci, born in Florence in 1454, did indeed sail to the New World with the expedition of Alonso de Ojeda in 1499, parting with him even before land was sighted in the West Indies. Vespucci, sailing in his own ship, then discovered and explored the mouth of the Amazon, subsequently sailing along the northern shores of South America. Returning to Spain in 1500, he entered the service of the Portuguese and the following year explored 6,000 miles along the southern coast of South America. He was eventually made Spain’s pilot major and died at the age of fifty-eight of malaria contracted on one of his voyages. Vespucci not only explored unknown regions but also invented a system of computing exact longitude and arrived at a figure computing the earth’s equatorial circumference only fifty miles short of the correct measurement. It was, however, not his many solid accomplishments but a mistake made by a German mapmaker that led America to be named after him—and this is probably why his reputation suffers even today Vespucci (who had Latinized his name to Americus Vespucci) wrote many letters about his voyages, including one to the notorious Italian ruler Lorenzo de’ Medici in which he described “the New Word.” But several of his letters were rewritten and sensationalized by an unknown author, who published these forgeries as Four Voyages in 1507. One of the forged Letters was read by the brilliant young German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller, who was so impressed with Vespucci’s account that he included a map of the New World in an appendix to his book Cosmographiae Introductio, boldly labeling the land “America.” Wrote Waldseemuller in his Latin text, which also included the forged letter: “ By now, since these parts have been more extensively explored and another 4th part has been discovered by Americus Vespucius (as will appear from what follows); I see no reason why it should not be called Amerigo, after Americus, the discoverer, or indeed America, since bout Europe and Asia have a feminine form from the names of women. Waldseemüller’s map roughly represented South America and when cartographers finally added North America the original name; the great geographer Gerhardus Mercator finally gave the name “America” to all of the western hemisphere. Vespucci never tried to have the New World named after him or to belittle his friend Columbus, who once called him “a very worthy man.” The appellation America gained in usage because Columbus refused all his life to admit that he had discovered a new continent, wanting instead to believe that he had come upon an unexplored region in Asia. Spain stubbornly refused to call the New World anything but Columbia until the 18th century, but to no avail. Today Columbus is credited for his precedence only in story and song (“Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean”), while Amerigo Vespucci is honored by hundreds of words ranging from American know-how to American cheese.

All roads lead to Rome: The ancient Romans built such an excellent system of roads that the saying arose all roads lead to Rome, that is, no matter which road one start a journey on, he will finally reach Rome if he keeps on the traveling. The popular saying came to mean that all ways or methods of doing something end in the same result, no one method being better than another.

all in the same boat: Just more than a century old, this saying means that two or more people are sharing the same risks or living under similar conditions. It may derive from some unknown situation when two or more people were adrift in the same lifeboat, or it may even come from the earlier expression “to stick” or “have an oar in another’s boat”; that is, to meddle in someone else’s affairs, which dates back to the 16th century.

alligator: The biggest lizard that the Romans knew was about the size of the forearm and was thus named lacertus “forearm”), which eventually came into Spanish use as lagarto. When the Spaniards encountered a huge New World saurian that resembled a lizard, they called it el lagarto “the lizard,” putting the definite article before the noun as they are accustomed to doing. Englishmen assumed this to be a single word, elagarto, which in time became corrupted in speech to alligator. This is probably the way the word was born, but much better is an old story about an early explorer sighting the creature and exclaiming, “There’s a lagarto!” Less dangerous than the crocodile, the alligator does have a worse “bark”: it is the only reptile capable of making a loud sound.

album: The Romans called the white table on which edicts were written an album, from the Latin albus, “white.” In English album came to mean any empty book for entering or storing things, especially photographs, the wedding album still being traditionally white. A record album, a collection of songs, derives from the same root.

act your ag:. Perhaps act your age! originated as a reproof to children, but it is directed at both children and adults today, meaning, of course, don’t act more immature that you are, or don’t try to keep up with the younger generation. The expression originated in the U. S., probably during the late 19th century, as did the synonymous be your age!

Alaska: Seward’s folly, Seward’s icebox (qq.v.), Seward’s iceberg, Icebergia, and Walrussia were all epithets for the 600.000 square miles now known as Alaska. All of these denunciations today honor one of the great visionaries of American history, William Henry Seward. Seward’s most important work in Andrew johnson’s administration was the purchase of Alaska, then known as Russian America, from the Russians in 1867. Negotiating with Russian Ambassador Baron Stoeckl, the shrewd lawyer managed to talk the Russians down from their asking price of $10 million to $7.2 million, and got them to throw in a profitable fur-trading corporation. The treaty was negotiated and drafted in the course of a single night and because Alaska was purchased almost solely due to his determination—he even managed to have the treaty signed before the House voted the necessary appropriation—it was widely called Seward’s folly by irate politicians and journalists. Seward himself named the new territory Alaska, from the Aleut A-la-as-ka, “the great country.”

agony: the Greek word from which agony derives first meant an athletic contest, next came to mean a struggle for victory in an athletic contest, then any struggle, and finally mental struggle or anguish like Christ’s in gethsemane. The idea of physical pain and suffering isn’t recorded for agony until about the 17th century, but it’s hard not to think of an athletic contest when contemplating meaning. As one writer notes: “You only have to look at a photograph of anybody running the 100-yard dash to understand how it [the athletic contest] came in its English version to have the sense of ‘agony.””

Aftermath: the after mowth, which later came to be pronounced aftermath, is the second or later mowing, the crop of grass that springs up after the first hay mowing in early summer when the grass is best for hay. This term was used as early as the 15th century, and within a century aftermath was being applied figuratively to anything that results or follows from an event.