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Trends for 2021 and beyond
With the year, two and a bit months underway, there’s been enough time to reflect on trends that will shape the decade ahead. I’ve put my thoughts together and come up with these six. Moocs A search for Moocs returns almost 35 billion responses in under seven seconds on Google. That many. There are possibly…
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A stonking good word
Every now and then, a word comes a long that makes me prick up my ears and say, ‘that’s a good one’. Stonking is such a word. There’s so much to say about stonking. For starters dictionaries across the web from Cambridge to Oxford and Encarta broadly agree on its adjectival usage to mean “large,…
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Groundhog Day: origin of idioms
From Ricky Gervais’ production of “Afterlife” (Netflix) to a number of recent articles in the press, the term groundhog day, seems to be popping up everywhere. Not sure what it meant, I set out to investigate. My research suggests that sectors of northern America determine weather patterns based on the behaviour of this particular rodent.…
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Content marketing needs to be part of your marketing strategy
Content marketing needs to be part of your marketing strategy. Here’s why. It’s all about the traffic Content marketing helps businesses prepare and plan for reliable and cost-effective sources of website traffic and new leads. If you can create just one blog post that gets a steady amount of organic traffic, an embedded link to…
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A new take on money laundering
Last week while editing an academic text, my hawkish eyes fell upon the phrase money laundry. The esteemed professor had made a typographical error. I smiled quietly to myself as images of ‘money laundry’ flooded my imagination. I could see $100 notes hanging over the drying rack and piles of the green stuff floating in…
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Is there a smoking gun in the Zondo Commission? idiom origin
While the Zondo Commission takes a deep dive into state capture, many South Africans may hope it finds the “smoking gun”. And if you are South African you will know exactly what I am talking about. If not, you probably have your own corporate/political scandal to apply it to. Let’s look at how “smoking gun”…
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Not my circus, not my monkeys. Idiom usage
Not my circus. Not my monkeys. I did a double take. I was having coffee with my Irish friend Paul and he was throwing this phrase around throughout our conversation. He was clearly trying to make a point. Real meaning While I pressed on with my most concerning issues he would respond with, “Not my…
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Black swan, a label for COVID-19
In much of my research for clients in the past couple of months I have often seen the term black swan. As I know swans to be white in most cases, I was intrigued by this phrase suddenly popping up all over the place. The term black swan has come to be associated with COVID-19…
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On the shoulders of giants: idiom usage
Although English is widely spoken, it’s seldom spoken well. And nowhere is this more true than in the use of idioms. People who speak English as a first language are often tripped up by the idiomatic turn of phrase. For example, the other day at a meeting, I heard some speaking about “standing on the…
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Smoke and mirrors: usage and origin
Last Friday, I attended a virtual networking event which was held over a hugely impressive digital platform. This included tables of six, different floors and a plenary area. Wow. It was truly a landmark in cyberspace – if you’ll excuse the irony. Introducing us to the event, the host said, “There will be no smokes…
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