Ask Canguro 003

List of Highlighted Vocabulary

Note: The following words were mentioned in our podcast conversation.  

Extra:

• an arm and a leg: a very large amount of money
• appropriate: suitable or right for a situation
• behavior: the way someone acts
• bold space: blank space created using bold formatting
• businessy: having a formal business-like style
• chit-chat: casual, friendly conversation
• chunk: a section or piece of something larger
• clean and tidy: neat and well organized
• colon (:) and semicolon (;): punctuation marks used to connect or introduce ideas
• common collocation: words that frequently appear together
• crossword: a word puzzle with crossing words
• deck (on a ship): a flat surface on a ship, like a floor in a building
• deck of cards: a complete set of playing cards
• deep: extending far downward or inward
• deep voice: a low-pitched voice
• deep water: water far from the bottom
• diaereses: two dots showing separate vowel pronunciation
• diarrhea: frequent, loose, or watery bowel movements
• Dylan Dog: an Italian comic-book supernatural detective
• easy reading book: a book written for language learners
• exclamation mark: the punctuation mark ! showing strong feeling
• feature: an important quality or characteristic, often used with technology or products
• flip-flops: open shoes held by straps between toes
• Game of Thrones: a fantasy book and television series
• graded reader: a book adapted to a language level
• helter-skelter: in a messy, confused, hurried way
• indecisive: unable to make decisions easily
• interrobang: the combined question and exclamation mark ‽!
• Keep calm and carry on: stay calm and continue despite difficulties, famous UK slogan
• messy: untidy and disorganized
• mishmash: a confused mixture of different things
• nervous wreck: someone extremely nervous or worried
• nitty-gritty: the most important practical details
• overlap: to partly share the same area or ideas
• persistently: continuously despite difficulty or opposition
• phonics: teaching reading through letters and sounds
• profound: very deep or meaningful
• profound sadness: extremely deep sadness
• profound thinker: someone who thinks deeply about important ideas
• punctuation: marks used to organize written language
• reduplicative: repeating a word or part of it
• satisfying: giving pleasure or a feeling of achievement
• spick and span: extremely clean and tidy
• subtle difference: a small difference that is hard to notice
• The New Yorker: an American magazine about culture and current affairs
• to anthropomorphize: to give human qualities to non-human things
• to assist: to help
• to carry on: to continue
• to commence: to begin
• to complain: to express unhappiness about something
• to continue: to keep doing something
• to cooperate: to work together
• to dilly-dally: to waste time by delaying
• to get a breath of air: to go somewhere for fresh air, to take a breath
• to give up: to stop trying, to surrender
• to go on: to continue
• to keep on: to continue
• to overestimate: to think something is greater than it is
• to purchase: to buy
• trait: a particular quality or characteristic
• wishy-washy: weak, unclear, or indecisive
• word sketch: a corpus summary showing common word patterns
• wreck: something badly damaged or destroyed (example: shipwreck)
• zigzag: a line with sharp alternating turns
• Zipf’s Law: (in linguistics) common words occur much more often than others