English Speaking Skills: Come and Get It: Memorable Colloquial Phrases From All Sections of Newspapers

Don’t you love it when something you enjoy has an additional benefit? It’s like “Buy one, get one free”  or BOGO as our media likes to call it.

I love to read newspapers. Now colloquial phrases leap out at me when I am looking for them.

If you like popular television or movie media, get out your pencil and start writing down the colloquial phrases you hear.

Because sports sections are full of hero stories (the player or coach or team owner who has overcome trial and bad times to play like a champion), they are incredibly excellent for colloquial phrases.

The rest of the sections have wonderful current colloquial phrases also. Check these out (in other words, examine these) from “The Denver Post”:

• … and writing about the famous – such as lawyer Steve Farber and then-Denver Mayor Wellington Webb – and the nearly famous (“nearly famous,” in other words, people who did extraordinary things but did not stay in the news for long. In other words, “nearly famous” are people who are famous for  15 minutes.  “15 minutes,” in other words for a brief amount of time.  For example, if the local newspaper runs a picture of you getting a hug from President Obama, then you are “famous for 15 minutes” or are “nearly famous.”)
• “There have been efforts to attract minorities to public service, but the current roster still doesn’t come close to mirroring the city’s Latino community.” (“doesn’t come close to mirroring,” in other words, the numbers of minorities  of Latino descent who serve as policemen and women and firemen and women are not the same proportion  as (or mirror) those who live in the community.)
• With diversity will come trust. [In other words, when there are a good number of minorities serving as policemen and women, then the people of the community who are of that same ethnic diversity (say Latino, Asian, for example South Korean, Chinese, Middle Eastern, etc) will trust them more.]
• VR is going mainstream but most PCs can’t handle it (In other words, many Virtual Reality (VR) games are being readied to be launched in 2016 (“going mainstream”), but most personal computers don’t have the graphics capability to run them (“can’t handle it”).
• I noticed a few puzzled looks when I looked around the room. (In other words, there were people in the gathering who seemed to not understand what was going on or happening in the room.)
• Who brings live animals to a white elephant party? (“white elephant party,” in other words, a party where the major entertainment is people giving one another gifts that make people in this culture laugh. Typically those are items sold as gift items which are unusual in appearance (such as color or size or odor) or unusual in what they do (such as an electric or battery operated apple peeler).
• “All this would be fine except for how I somehow have become her own personal Google.” (“I have become her own personal Google,” in other words, another person is coming to me, an expert, and asking me to give her answers to lots and lots of factual questions.)
• … she’s using too much of my good nature (In other words, another person is asking me to do too much for her.  I like to do kind favors, but she is asking for too many favors.)

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Rerun from Jan 20, 2016