Phraseology lecture 13 phraseology and phraseological units

- Little Johnnie (crying): Mummy, mummy, my auntie Jane is dead.

• - Little Johnnie (crying): Mummy, mummy, my auntie Jane is dead.
• - Mother: Nonsense, child! She phoned me 5 minutes ago.
• Little Johnnie: But I heard Mrs. Brown say that her neighbours cut her dead.
• To cut somebody dead means ‘to rudely ignore somebody; to pretend not to know or recognize him’.

Puns are frequently based on the ambiguousness of idioms:

• - Isn’t our Kate a marvel! I wish you could have seen her at the Harrisons’ party yesterday. If I’d collected the bricks she dropped all over the place, I could built a villa’.
• To drop a brick means ‘to say unintentionally a quite indiscreet or tactless thing that shocks and offended people’.