Phrase Lists

Holidays collocations!

The end of December in the U.S. is known as "the Holidays".

The word "holiday" can mean any holiday, from religious holidays to national holidays like (in the U.S.) Independence Day and Memorial Day. However, "the Holidays" means the time around the end of the year. 

One reason that English speakers call this time of year "The Holidays" is to avoid simply calling it "Christas". "The...

How to describe a funny person in English (Part 2: talking about humor negatively)

In the last article, I presented some phrases that you can use to describe a funny person. Of course, there are a lot of ways that humor can go wrong. Here are some things that you can say about people who try to be funny but fail, or who joke about bad things.

Unfunny humor

• Corny jokes are supposed to be funny, but aren't. They're too silly, too predictable, or too dumb. Puns...

How to describe a funny person in English (Part 1)

How do you describe someone who's funny in English? Of course you can say something like:

She's funny.

He's hilarious.

But there lots of different ways that a person can be funny. They may tell funny stories, act silly, say odd things, tell jokes that they've heard, etc. So how do you explain exactly how someone is funny?

Talking about a normal funny person

First, let's learn how to talk...

English phrases for describing elections

How can you describe what happens in an election in English? Here are some phrases to help you talk about them.

People cast their votes for their preferred candidates in an election. Most candidates belong to a political party. In the United States, the two main parties are the Republican Party (Republicans) and the Democratic Party (Democrats).

For each government position, called a "...

25 more famous English movie quotes

The previous week's post on the 25 most famous English movie quotes was quite popular, so here are a few more.

These movie lines are not quite as well-known as the first group, but a lot of people will recognize them. 

1. “I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries (Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

   These are just silly...