What's up - American idioms

What's Up? is a book about idioms. In fact, "What's up?" is an idiom. An idiom is a group of words that has a special meaning. The meaning of the group of words is different from the meanings of the individual words together. For example, the group of words "What's up?" means "What's new?" or "What's happening?" The word "up alone does not mean "new" or "happening," but when it's combined with "what's," it means "What's new?"

This doesn't mean that every group of words is an idiom. For example, "up the hill" is a group of words, but it doesn't have a special meaning. Each word has its ordinary meaning. In this example, "up" means the opposite of "down."

Many of the words used in idioms come from Old English or Middie English, ancestors of the English we use today. Their one-word equivalents often come from Latin or Greek. For example, the Old English words "turn down" mean "reject," a Latin word. Because so many of the words used in idioms are English in origin (not Latin or Greek), idioms are at the heart of the English language. Although idioms often sound less formal than their one-word equivalents, this doesn't mean that idioms are slang or incorrect forms of English. Most idioms are standard forms of expression and are used in literature, magazine and newspaper articles, academic journals speeches, and radio and television broadcasts, as well as in everyday speech.

By doing the exercises in this book, you will learn to understand and use seventy-three idioms. You will practice using idioms in reading ing, writing, speaking, and listening. You will not only learn the meaning ing of each idiom, you will also learn:

1. the subjects and objects that go with the idiom. For example "Judy called up her sister."

2. the words in the idiom that are stressed. For example, in "work on" only "work" is stressed, but in "work out" both words are stressed.
3. the position of pronoun objects. For example, you can say: "Judy called up her sister," or you can say: "Judy called her sister up." But if you use a pronoun, you must say: "Judy called her up." You can't say: "Judy called up her" unless you are contrasting "her" with someone else.
4. if the idiom is informal. For example, "polish off": "Victor polished off a hamburger and a soda in about one minute."

By doing the exercises and activities in What's Up? you will get a lot of practice with idioms in sentences, paragraphs, and stories. You will read sentences with idioms in them, write sentences with idioms,

hear sentences with idioms, and say sentences with idioms. After you finish each chapter, you will have a good idea of how to use the idioms introduced in that chapter.

Of course, you won't know all the idioms in English (there are thousands of them), but you will know many idioms, and you will know how to learn more on your own. And the next time someone asks you "What's up?," you can tell that person: "I've been studying English idioms, and 'What's up?' is one of them

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