weekly posts on literature, languages, and learning
In the days leading up to Halloween, one of the highlights of the dark season of the year, I’d like to share some adjectives that you can use when talking about the weird, the sad, and the gloomy. Twenty six words, to be precise, one for each letter of the English alphabet, along with some …
[This post has been written with ESL/EFL students in mind, CEFR level B1 and above.] There are countless resources on the internet that can help you with learning and practising new vocabulary. In this post, I’ll introduce you to just three websites I always recommend to my students and that I regularly use myself. Make …
Continue reading "Top 3 online resources for your vocabulary study"
In an earlier post, I wrote about the etymology of the English words for the days of the week. As we saw there, those words have their origin (for the most part) in the names of some of the main deities of the Germanic pantheon. In this post we’ll look at the names of the …
Continue reading "Modern English names for the months of the year – 100% Latin!"
There are many words in English that we can use to say that something looks attractive: from 'pretty' and 'beautiful' to strong adjectives such as 'stunning', 'fascinating' or 'captivating'. In this post we'll look at the interesting background of another one of those, namely 'mesmerizing'. Firstly, what exactly does this adjective mean? The Cambridge Dictionary …
grammaticus 