Everyone seems to have a facebook account nowadays but I’ve noticed that twitter is becoming more and more popular, too. It even has its own new vocabulary related to it. We can call the people who have lots of followers on twitter ‘the twitterati‘ and each little message they write is called a ‘tweet‘. ‘Tweet‘ can also be a verb (E.g. ‘that’s a great idea, I’m going to tweet it’).
While I was thinking about social networking, an article on the BBC new website about the accuracy of information on social networking websites attracted my attention. After seeing that social networking sites can be used for something other than wasting time, I was inspired to set up a twitter account and start tweeting. From now on, I’ll tweet as many interesting expressions as I can as soon as I hear them. Click here to follow me on twitter and find out more interesting English expressions.
There were some interesting words in the article, too. The first word to catch my eye was ‘moored‘. We use ‘moor‘ to talk about fixing something in place using a rope. We can ‘moor‘ ships or objects floating in the air.
The next interesting word was ‘pinpoint‘. This means to work out the exact position of something, usually on a map.
There was another interesting expression slightly later on where it is mentioned that the agency is ‘no stranger to‘ innovative uses of technology. In this case, ‘no stranger to‘ means ‘familiar with’.
Further on in the article, the expression ‘pivotal role‘ is used. If someone plays a pivotal role in something, it means that they are very important in making that thing happen.
The last expression I would like to look at is ‘in full swing‘. If something is ‘in full swing‘ it is fully operational or very active.
Do you tweet? If so, what are you tweeting about today?
Today’s image is by Agata Urbaniak.