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You can also say this with another phrase like “Excuse me, do you mind if I butt in,” or “Excuse me for interrupting, but…” to clarify what you’re interrupting. 5. “I think it’s ...
The spelling of the compound varies (both with regard to this idiom and the everyday human communication gesture of waving).While hand-waving is the most common spelling of the unitary present participle and gerund in this usage, and hand-wave of the simple present verb, hand wave dominates as the noun-phrase form.
Dispassion, such as giving someone the cold shoulder or a fake smile, looking unconcerned or "sitting on the fence" while others sort things out, dampening feelings with substance abuse, overreacting, oversleeping, not responding to another's anger, frigidity, indulging in sexual practices that depress spontaneity and make objects of ...
An idiom is a common word or phrase with a figurative, non-literal meaning that is understood culturally and differs from what its composite words' denotations would suggest; i.e. the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words (although some idioms do retain their literal meanings – see the example "kick the bucket" below).
Dreizen likes using this phrase at the start of a conversation. "This acknowledges the time gap without taking or placing blame—and sometimes no one is to blame," Dreizen says. "Stuff just ...
Plus, the common tactic that psychologists suggest you avoid.
A less likely theory is that it derives from a phrase uttered by youngsters in the Roman empire who got into trouble, patrue mi patruissime (“uncle, my best of uncles”). [ 1 ] A fanciful suggestion is that it may be based on a joke from 19th-century England about a bullied parrot being coaxed to address his owner's uncle.
Kuiper uses the fact that this idiom is a phrase that is a part of the English lexicon (technically, a "phrasal lexical item"), and that there are different ways that the expression can be presented—for instance, as the common "hail-fellow-well-met," which appears as a modifier before the noun it modifies, [6] [7] versus the more original ...