de aurelian | mart. 2, 2016 | Blog
Hello! Today I’ll be looking at two commonly confused verbs: fit and suit. Both are used in reference to clothes, shoes or other personal things, but they aren’t interchangeable. Fit means to be the right size and shape for someone or something: The dress fits perfectly.| The jacket fitted me pretty well but the trousers were too small.
Suit means that clothes or other personal things are the right style, colour etc for someone. If that’s the case, you say they suit that person: Casual clothes really don’t suit her. | A green dress won’t suit me.
In British English the usual past form of fit is fitted, but you can also use fit in more informal English: Two years ago, these knickers fit me perfectly. In American English, the usual past form is fit, but you can also use fitted.
de aurelian | feb. 14, 2016 | Blog
Hello. Last week I looked at the difference between get dressed, dress, and put on. Now we’re turning our attention to their opposites: get undressed, undress, and take off. Here are some examples: Why did you get undressed, girls? I told you, no bath tonight. You’re going straight to bed! (a parent to his/her young daughters). James came home really tired and didn’t even have a meal. He undressed quickly and went to sleep. As you’ve probably worked out, undress
The opposite of put on is take off: Take off your jumper if you’re too hot.
(mai mult…)
de aurelian | feb. 3, 2016 | Blog
Hello! Today I’ll be looking at dress, get dressed, dress up, dress yourself, and put on.
If you dress (slightly formal) or get dressed (more informal) you put on all your clothes. But you usually use put on if you are talking about just one piece of clothing or things like glasses or jewellery. Here are some examples: It’s ten o’ clock – time to get dressed! We had to wash and dress in a freezing bathroom. OK, you can put your shirt back on.
You dress up only in special clothes or for a special occasion. These may be particularly good or formal ones: What kind of party is it? Will we have to dress up? Or they may be unusual clothes that make you look like someone else, for example if you are acting in a play: He had to dress up as a clown.
You only talk about someone dressing themselves if a special effort is involved: Can Tara dress herself yet? (Tara is a small child) or Since the accident he can’t feed or dress himself.
de aurelian | ian. 19, 2016 | Blog
Hello! In this post I’d like to look at the difference between clothes, clothing, and cloth, which may be confusing for some English learners.
Clothes is the usual word for things we wear: She’s got some beautiful clothes (NOT cloths).
Clothing is a more formal word for clothes in general. And it’s uncountable, i.e. it doesn’t have a plural form: The workers here all have to wear protective clothing (NOT clothings).
Clothes is not used with numbers, and in conversation if you want to talk about one piece/item of clothing you would usually call it by its name: I want to buy a new coat (NOT a new cloth/clothing).
Clothes are made from various kinds of material, fabric or cloth, such as woven wool, silk, cotton or acrylic: I brought back a lovely piece of cloth from Thailand to make a dress out of.
A cloth (with plural cloths) is a piece of cloth, used for cleaning surfaces, dishes etc: Oh dear, I’ve spilt my coffee – have you got a cloth?
Right. Time to tidy up the living room now. It’s quite a mess with all those clothes scattered about 🙂
de aurelian | dec. 28, 2015 | Blog
Hello.
(mai mult…)
de aurelian | nov. 28, 2015 | Blog
Hello. As usual, every month I have a little phrase to help you improve your English. Today I’d like to introduce two phrases with the word smart. You’re probably familiar with one meaning of this word, i.e. clever, intelligent. For example, Tim’s really smart or The smart kids get good grades and go off to college. However, ‘smart’ can also mean well-dressed, wearing neat attractive clothes, having a tidy appearance. For example, Tom looks really smart in his new grey suit or Do you like wearing smart clothes? You can make it into an adverb in combination with the adjective ‘dressed’ – e.g. smartly dressed. Next time, try using it yourself in an appropriate context.
de aurelian | nov. 12, 2015 | Blog
Hello. I’ll stick with last month’s topic, i.e. clothing. Today’s collocation is knit a sweater/jumper. Knit is a verb. It means ‘make clothing out of wool using knitting needles‘. You can make other things with knitting needles: socks, scarves, etc. Your grandma probably used to knit those things for you when you were a kid. And here’s a picture of knitting needles.
Hope you found it useful.
de aurelian | nov. 3, 2015 | Blog
I’ve decided to start a monthly post series and put it up on the blog as a way of helping learners of English enrich their vocabulary. Today’s phrase is a wooly jumper. The adjective wooly means ‘made of wool’, while jumper is another word for ‘sweater’ used especially by British people. Thus ‘a wooly jumper’ = ‘a sweater made of wool’. And now for a joke: What do you get if you cross a sheep with a kangaroo? The answer is: a wooly jumper. It’s word play, of course. We know about kangaroos that they’re great jumpers. We also know that sheep give us wool.
Hope you liked the joke and found the information helpful.
