I was pretty sure I knew what "peanuts" and "crickets" meant.

You know:

• peanuts - арахис - a nut that grows underground in a thin shell
• crickets - сверчки - a small brown jumping insect that makes a loud high sound by rubbing its wings together

But when I saw each of them in a specific context, they didn't make sense:

• They paid me peanuts
• If you get crickets after sending your email, you're writing to the wrong people.

As you can see, they were not (арахис) and (кузнечики)

I suspected they meant something different, so ...

I looked them up and was right:

• Peanuts = a very small amount of money
• Crickets = no reply or reaction at all; no spoken or written answer

I mean, I've been teaching English for 20 years, and I only discovered these meanings recently.

I'm a teacher. And I'm still learning.

My point?

There is no finish line in learning a language.

There is always something new and interesting to learn.

Some people find this fact frustrating.

I find it fascinating.

What interesting words or phrases have you recently discovered? (in English or maybe in your native language).

Write me back and share.

Really.

Yours curious language nerd 🤓

Tania.

Here's my weekly update for Jan 17, 2022...

🎥 How NOT to miss important emails (for example, from me 😉)

How to quickly set up filters to make sure my emails don't end up in SPAM and are always noticeable. You can create a filter for anything, and organize your mailbox into neat "folders".

Click here to watch the video

🎥 Movie hangout about "Shakespeare in Love"

A fragment from our discussion of the movie "Shakespeare in Love" on 19 Dec 2021.

Click here to watch the video