English language Category
Cat idioms
An idiom is a phrase which should not be taken literally but whose meaning is alluded to…
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400) was a poet, translator and writer in his spare time. This is probably why…
Johnson’s dictionary
Samuel Johnson (1709-84) grew up in Staffordshire with a bookshop on the ground floor of his home,…
‘Beowulf’
‘Beowulf’ is the oldest surviving and longest epic poem written in Old English, having 3,182 lines of…
English words of Indian origin
The Oxford English Dictionary currently includes around one thousand words of Indian origin and the number continues…
British surnames
In the UK, surnames are passed down the generations and are the last part of a person’s…
The Globe Theatre
The Globe Theatre in London was built by Sam Wanamaker as a replica of the theatre in…
Nursery rhymes
Traditional nursery rhymes such as ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’, ‘Three blind mice’, and ‘Mary…
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens remains one of Britain’s most influential writers, producing Victorian classics such as A Christmas Carol,…
“Shanks’s pony”
The expression to “go by Shanks’s pony” means to walk. It usually implies that there is no…
What’s the weather like today?
Weather forecasts in the UK are sometimes wrong, due to the ever-changing nature of the jet streams…
The CILIP Carnegie medal
“Words are mastered by meeting them, not by avoiding them.” This was Geraldine McCaughrean’s advice to publishers…