November 2005
Expressions taken from the Bible
November 30, 2005
A reader asked me how "The scales fell from my eyes" should be translated in French. Very literally: "Les écailles me tombent des yeux". It is an expression taken from the Bible (Acts 9:18) and this led me to wonder...
Why I love working in an office #3
November 28, 2005
My very first office party!...
Guest blogger: E-mail and communication
November 25, 2005
By Paul Sharville Let’s talk about e-mail. Back in the old days, Edwardian Britain was nuts about writing. There were at least seven postal deliveries a day – from early morning to tea-time. Some of those were letters of epic...
Unpaid tests
November 23, 2005
I never, ever do unpaid tests. Well. Maybe sometimes. The problem, as I see it, is that there are unpaid tests and there are unpaid tests, and each of them has to be considered separately. When I first started off,...
Whet/wet one's appetite
November 21, 2005
Ha ha! I believe an eggcorn (it is an eggcorn, isn’t it Chris?) has been spotted in the wild on this very website (in the comments of the entry before this one)! Apparently, it’s a very common one: a search...
De but en blanc and à brûle-pourpoint
November 18, 2005
While writing my so-called novel, I caught myself using the expression "de but en blanc", which means suddenly, without warning. According to my useful Dictionnaire d’expressions et locutions, it comes from shooting. "Blanc" represents the target, while "but" should really...
Online data backup
November 15, 2005
I tried for a long time to work out the best way to save my data. I was terrified that I would turn my computer on one morning and hear it implode (it happened to me once) and lose the...
Search engine optimisation
November 11, 2005
This blog is two years old today. In that time, it’s gone from having no visitors to attracting around 1,900 unique visitors a day, and it’s allowed me to be visible on the Internet and to attract clients: earlier this...
Banlieue
November 9, 2005
This word dates back to the Middle Ages and is formed of "ban" (the authority of a lord) and "lieue" (a distance of around 2.5 miles): it used to be the area around a town which was submitted to the...
Racaille and kärcher
November 7, 2005
The importance of language in politics has rarely been as clear as it is now. Listen to a French radio station, tune in to a French TV programme and you will hear the words "racaille" (rabble, scum) and "kärcher" (powerhose)....
Hurricane, cyclone, typhoon
November 4, 2005
Did you know that the only difference between a hurricane (from Hunraken, the Mayan god of storms), a cyclone (from Greek kuklos, circle) and a typhoon (from Chinese tai fung, "big wind") is their geographical origin? Hurricanes happen in the...
National Novel Writing Month
November 1, 2005
When I was growing up, I was forever writing little stories, and at school, my favourite class for French; essays, far from being a chore for me, were an opportunity to play with language, which I always loved, and exercise...