Restore the unguessable word in each everyday expression
You don't have to decide today - take your time.
Come round whenever suits you - it's up to you.Each sentence below is missing one word. The gap always hides the frozen part of a fixed everyday expression - the word you could not predict from the meaning alone. Write a single word in each gap; no other word, however logical it seems, will be accepted.
1. I can't make up my ___ - the blue jacket or the green one?
2. Could you keep an ___ on my suitcase while I buy the tickets?
3. This box is really heavy - could you give me a ___?
4. We promised to keep in ___ after the course finished, and we still write every month.
5. Our teacher wants us to learn the whole dialogue by ___ for Monday.Show the answers
1. mind
2. eye
3. hand
4. touch
5. heartEvery answer is a noun, and in each case it is the one word the expression froze long ago. The classic errors: in item three, learners offer the ordinary noun for assistance, which no native speaker uses in this frame; in item five, many reach for a noun meaning the faculty of remembering, because that is what their own language fixes there - though a few languages happen to fix the very organ English chose, so check rather than translate. In items one, two and four the temptation is a more logical noun: one meaning decision, one meaning a look, one meaning contact. Resist all of them. The test: if a synonym still sounds acceptable in the gap, you have not yet learned the expression as one frozen unit.