Some people just seem to have a screw loose. Skittish as you might be reading this, bide your time to interrupt and while you do so piggyback on this post, whose contents run the gamut from commonplace to the tech-related vocabulary.
So what about it? Could you follow me? If so, please head to another blog—I don't suppose there is something new for you below. Otherwise, c'mon fellow, let's have a bit of fun.
Firstly a word or two, as usual, on the provenance of such a flood of unusual expressions (here I am imagining you've never seen them), for the whole lot (sic) was found at the same place—the book Computer Networks, written by Andrew Tanenbaum.
I am still surprised to have found such a fountain of unknown at a tech-book. Delightedly surprised. Customarily, the most those books offer, after you've read some of them, is some there-and-there new expression, for generally there are few completely new ideas being presented. (Books on programming, I must say, tend to display a more informal tone, which leads to a higher density of new expressions per chapter...)
But let us pull up our sleeves and get down to work. What is a screw? My dictionary (Cambridge Advanced Learner's) brings a rather funny definition (there's more to it than I actually transcribed below. the main point here is to give you folks an idea of the feeling which stuck me at the time I read it),
A thin pointed piece of metal with a raised edge twisting round along its lenght and a flat top with a cut in it, which is used to join things together, especially pieces of wood.
After that, I was on the verge of turning o google's image search when the penny finally dropped. (I did the search anyway, it couldn't hurt...) The description was fine, and the expression is identical to one in portuguese: to have a screw loose is to be mad, or to have lost the ability to reason well.
Heading on, I can say someone (or some animal) is skittish if he or she is nervous and easily frightened, or (only for people) if they're likely to change their minds frequently.
When you bide your time for doing something, you wait patiently until ou have the opportunity to act; by its turn, to piggyback is to be carried on the back of someone, with your arms round their neck and your legs round their waist (I used that expression figuratively, above). Finally, as for run the gamut, it is used to refer to a range of things (read the first paragraph again if you didn't graspt it, and I am sure you will then).
Surprised? I was, when I learned these expressions' meaning at first (then a second and a third time, as I couldn't help forgetting them... an issue I think is now solved as I have myself written them down). What is really awesome is that I happened to come across two of those very brand new (to me) expressions elsewhere the same week I've seen them for the first time! I heard run the gamut on an Obama's interview, while a professor at university happened to say piggyback during a lecture!
Small world, that's all I can say, for so many expressions... and yet that's a big stimulus to keep to studying English, don't you think?
Hi everyone,
I can say I have been saving things too much for too long now. Perfectionist as I may be, there is surely a sort of ultimate extent to which I can delay posts in order to come up with something innovative and interesting.
But that limit is far gone and I still didn't want to publish anything. Then the gods decided to make something happen, and a divine poke woke me up. Thanks Dio!
Before I go ahead with the main content of this post, I'd like to update you on what has been my recent English activity. Well, I have recently finished reading The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (fabulous book by the way, wrote by Robert Louis Stevenson) and dove into a (unexpected) reading, The Road to Reality—A complete guide to the laws of the universe, by Roger Penrose. As the latter author was a complete strange to me, I decided to do a little search on his background.
Penrose (Sir Penrose, as I happened to learn) happens to be a little more famous than I expected. There's even (sic) a page on him at Wikipedia. The "praise for the book" (section in a book where quotes of newspaper and magazines telling us how great the book is are displayed) as well as a section on the author told me a little about him— for example, that he has worked with Stephen Hawkings, and he lectures at Oxford. All in all (and as far as I can tell just by its beginning) this seems to be a enriching reading experience. Future will tell.
Now back to the main point of this post (which will seem rather short when compared to all the talking about books above)—nuts.
I learned two expressions with the word nuts (more precisely, nut) recently. I must tell that by then the only thing I could remember was that going nuts is the same as going mad, plus that The Nutcracker's Suit is the name by which I recognise the geat work of Tchaikovsky.
At first they startled me, really, because I couldn't make out their sense. These expressions were of the sort of words that are a nut to crack. There are some people as well (coming to think of it), which are a (hard or tough) nut to crack.
In a nutshell, if something is a nut to crack, it is a difficult problem to solve, or a person (difficult) to understand. I could say, for example, that throughout my life some girls have been a nut to crack to me.
On the other hand, in a nutshell is used to say in one (or the smaller possible number of) word(s), as in
There is more to playing go than just reading variations. It is required that the good player displays a sharp judgment of the equilibrium of the positions, a certain patience when pondering, and yet the energy necessary to pursue eagerly and passionately the counterattack when under disadvantage—something that a computer cannot achieve. If we then bear in mind that the mere reading of sequences is out of question (given the astronomical number of them), we could say, in a nutshell, that a good go player needs to have instinct tempered with wisdom.
And that's all for now, folks!
