Sunday, January 27, 2008

Dogs... do you like them?

Hello, everybody! Surfing around the net I found this interesting website about words and their meanings. It's part of Voice Of America and it's called Special English. It helps people learn American English while they learn about American life and stay informed about world news and developments in science. It provides users with information they cannot find elsewhere.

There, I had the chance to read and listen to this show: Dog Talk: Life in a Dog-Eat-Dog World. This VOA Special English program, WORDS AND THEIR STORIES, was written by Jill Moss and read by Faith Lapidus.

There you can read about the many uses of the word DOG in different expressions. As I mention before this is a podcast which means you can listen to the article or download it to your computer or I pod to listen to later.

Any way, here there are some of the things I learned from it and wanted to share with you.
  1. Dog’s life: carefree existence. Dogs have no troubles or responsibilities. They can come and go as they please, sleep all day, and never have to work.
  2. Dog-eat-dog world: That means many people are competing for the same things, like good jobs.
  3. Work like a dog: according to this a person has to work really hard to be successful.
  4. Dog-tired: When you work really hard you will feel like a really tired dog.
  5. Sick as a dog: you feel really sick.
  6. Every dog has its day. This means that every person enjoys a successful period during his or her life.
  7. You can never teach an old dog new tricks. using this expression means that you believe that older people do not like to learn new things and will not change the way they do things.
  8. Meaner than a junkyard dog: People who are unkind or uncaring can be described this way.
  9. His bark is worse than his bite: Sometimes a person appears to be mean and threatening but is really not so bad.
  10. In the Doghouse: married people used this term when they are angry at each other and they may not treat each other nicely until they apologize to each other.
  11. To let sleeping dogs lie: It means it's better to leave things as they are.
  12. The dog days of summer: these are the hottest days of the year.
  13. To rain cats and dogs: we use this when it rains really hard.
Do you know any other expressions or terms using the word dog in it? Please, share it with us.
* photo by BryonRealey

5 comments:

Mac Sterling said...

Hi there,

it's very noble and a very interesting experiment to create a blog for English learners,congratulations!!!

I have a blog of my own,it's more or less in Spanglish,but at least we could share some experiences about teaching English (I taught some time ago). It's addressed http://jackfrost83.blogspot.com.

you're invited to check

see you

Marcel

Unknown said...

I have a new one about dogs invented by me:

Don't dog me!: Use it when someone caresses your hair as if you where a dog.

Doris Molero said...

Hi! Miria! Well, that's for sure a really funny one. Thanks for sharing!

Keep on shining!

Anonymous said...

Here's one for you - "Drinking like a dog in the sand." It usually refers to alcohol, when you drink so much that you may as well be a dehydrated dog.

Doris Molero said...

Thanks for that one, too! Too bad we don't have a name to thank...

Keep on shining Love and Peace!