• train ~ a general term for all types of trains. Also, a train is made up of train cars.
• subway ~ a train that runs underground. In British English, the underground.
• monorail ~ an elevated train that runs on a single rail. Mono means “one.”
• freight train ~ a train that carries goods. A train car that is closed and carries freight is called a boxcar.

Railroad Idioms: Test Your Knowledge

• See which railroad idioms you know, phrases that involve rails and tracks

When railroads came along a hundred and fifty years ago, they changed our view of the world. For the first time, people could travel across whole continents with reliable, safe, and comfortable transportation.

People love cars and they love cruising, and in the past hundred years we’ve developed numerous idioms for driving. We use many in the car, and some have moved beyond driving to other subjects.

What does it mean if I’m a backseat driver? Do I have really long arms that can reach the steering wheel? And how can we say someone is asleep at the wheel if the person is not even in a car?

Let’s look at some common idioms and phrasal verbs that you might use in the car—or at work or school, or on the golf course …

The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, known locally as just the Bay Bridge, is one of two major bridges that cross the bay into San Francisco.

Animals have always given people colorful ways to describe things. In English, this has ranged from simple similes such as sly as a fox and blind as a bat to slang terms and political jargon.

What does it mean if a cat’s got your tongue? And if you face a tough situation, will you take the bull by the horns, or will you chicken out?

From the farm, from the jungle, and from pets in the home, animals are used to describe personality traits, moods, and more.

Check out some of these animal idioms here and even more in the Quick Targets Idioms series.

Inches are evil. Fractional evil, but pure evil.

OK, the page trim is 5.5 inches in width, the left and right margins are each six-eighths of an inch, and there’s a quarter-inch gutter—quick, what is the text width?

On the other hand, if the trim width is 140 millimeters, the right and left margins are 20 millimeters each (140 – 40) and the gutter is set to 6 millimeters—quick, the text width is 94 millimeters. Piece of soup.

“Bahhhhhhhrain,” the news announcers say.

“Beijzzzing,” they call China’s capital.

“Pakiston,” they say, not Pakistan. It’s spelled with an A but pronounced with a short O.

“Cheee-laaay,” comes a chilly voice that pretends to have a Chilean accent. (2019 update to an older blog post.)

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to try to pronounce place names the way they are by the people that live there, but it is a definite jump in inconsistency.

One challenge to finding the right English slang dictionary is editors and publishers have different definitions of what slang is. Generally speaking, slang is informal English words and idioms, used mostly only in spoken English. Some authorities, however, define slang as language used by people of certain social classes or groups, often mainly within that group (e.g., young people, military, criminals). The collections of entries publishers put out can thus differ greatly.

Take is a common verb in English: few people ever have to look it up. But check out the many verbs we put together by adding on a word: take in, take out, take on, take off, take up, take down, take over, take under, take back, take aback, take along, take to, take away … These are phrasal verbs and the takeaway is they mix people up a lot.

Also phrasal verbs: look up, check out, put together, add on, and mix up. Adding complexity, many nouns come from phrasal verbs, for example takeaway.

Elements of Phrasal Verbs

Phrasal verbs are idiomatic expressions with their own special grammatical considerations. They consist of a verb and a particle—a preposition or an adverb that gives them new meanings. (Keep in mind, often the particle looks like a preposition but functions as an adverb, which can lead to confusion when capitalizing titles. Note the phrasal verb size up in the title above; up is capped because it’s an adverb, not a preposition.)