The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald

Six Idioms with Dozen

Six Idioms with Dozen Six Idioms with Dozen Six Idioms with Dozen By Maeve Maddox The English word dozen comes from French douzaine, which in turn comes from Latin duodecim: â€Å"two plus ten.† It occurs in several English idioms. 1. cheaper by the dozen: costing less when bought in quantity. The expression appears on the Google Ngram Viewer in the 19th century, but its usage rises significantly beginning in 1942. The novel Cheaper By the Dozen by Frank Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey was published in 1948, and the popular movie version based on it (starring Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy) was released in 1950. 2. a baker’s dozen: thirteen instead of twelve In the Middle Ages, bakers were discouraged from cheating their customers by strict weights and measures laws. Lacking precise modern equipment, medieval bakers couldn’t be sure that every loaf that came out of their ovens would be identical in weight. To protect themselves from being fined, they threw in a little extra with each order. Two other expressions used to mean â€Å"thirteen† are devil’s dozen and long dozen. 3. by the dozen: in large quantities, not necessarily in units of 12. For example, the following headline uses the expression to mean â€Å"in large quantities: â€Å"Applications by the Dozen, as Anxious Seniors Hedge College Bets† 4. daily dozen: a short set of daily physical exercises, performed in sets of 12. The phrase originally referred to a set of 12 callisthenic exercises devised by Yale football coach Walter C. Camp (1859-1925). The Google Ngram Viewer shows the phrase peaking in 1928 and then dropping off. 5. to talk nineteen to the dozen: to talk endlessly or at great speed. The fast talker says nineteen words for every twelve that a person speaking at normal speed would say. Although not an idiom, a commonly heard expression is â€Å"the Dozens.† 6. the Dozens: a game of spoken words between two contestants in which participants insult each other until one gives up. The insults may refer to the other player’s intelligence, appearance, and character, or to family members, particularly the other person’s mother. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Expressions category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:35 Synonyms for â€Å"Look†Latin Words and Expressions: All You Need to KnowPreposition Review #1: Chance of vs. Chance for

Critique On chapter 5 based on hand out Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Critique On chapter 5 based on hand out - Essay Example t did not take for granted very much technical knowledge, but there was frequent mention of commercial products and advertising from an American cultural context. This is fine for readers who are familiar with this culture, but it could pose problems for readers who cannot visualise a Taco Bell advertisement, and hear its sound. 2 There was not very much in the way of new ideas in this chapter, but there was a range of technical vocabulary such as haptic, and affordance. Reference to different branches of linguistics were too brief, and more could have been done to explain Saussure’s work and the discipline of semiotics. I am still not quite sure how this fits in with media studies work and so it is difficult to judge how relevant this topic is. The analogy of a horse walking, trotting and galloping was a very good way of explaining the difference between objects, representations and symbols, highlighting how they were in some ways similar, but in other ways very different. 3 I would like to have seen a separate section on the linguistics aspect of this subject. The text concentrated on the way humans process objects, representations and symbols but there must be a significant role played by language and it was not clear what this role is. 4 There is clearly a range of possibilities in the use of symbols, and we discussed in class the Apple Mac symbol. One of the interesting things about such common symbols is that they have many layers of meaning, from the connotations with fruit of the tree of knowledge, to the nutritional value, and the pleasure of eating it, and this is tied to the culture of the people making the symbol and those using it. This is something that could be a problem in marketing, as for example in the United States a pig can be a symbol of wealth, since children save coins in a piggy bank, but in Muslim countries the pig is unclean. This shows that symbols gather their effect from the beliefs of those who use them. 5 The chapter is very