Gobbets

Wkipedia states that a gobbet is an extract of text, or image, provided as a context for analysis, translation or discussion in an examination.

In the 2004 National Theatre play turned film The History Boys, the boys were up for Oxford and Cambridge and to prepare for this, their headmaster brought in a new teacher to polish their writing style and assure them a place in the sacred universities. He encouraged them to use gobbets, or in layman’s terms, quotations to lace their answers with.

I thought that apart from the idioms that I introduced recently, I’ll post some of my favorite gobbets here too.

Idioms

I love the English language. I can speak it fairly well as the medium of instruction from where I came from originally was in English. I am working on speaking it fluently, mind you I still get stumped with some of the words to use, (well, I wouldnt know all the words would I!) and I still need a bit of polishing in pronouncing some of the words, and also when I write them.

Another thing that fascinates me about the language is the use of idioms which of course may not just be limited to English. Anyway, an idiom, according to  Wikipedia, is an expression, that is a term or phrase whose meaning cannot be deduced from the literal definitions and the arrangement of its parts, but refers instead to a figurative meaning that is known only through common use.

Since moving to the UK almost 10 years ago now, my daily interactions with the English speaking people brings about a lot of these expressions. Some of them I can easily pick up on and some I have to admit I am absolutely clueless as to what it means so I have to ask and when I am told, sometimes with the idioms origins as well, I actually find it quite interesting. So what I thought would be a good idea was to blog about these idioms as I come across them and to share it with you. Most of the definition and background information of the featured idioms will come from The Free Dictionary. So look out for this new regular feature and feel free to participate!