Лексикология английского языка

Practical Exercises to Lectures in English Lexicology

Lecture 2. Informal Style

Exercises

I. The italicized words and word-groups in the following extracts are informal. Write them out in two columns and explain in each case why you consider the word slang/col­loquial. Look up any words you do not know in your dictio­nary.

l. T h e Flower Girl. ... Now you are talking! I thought you'd come off it when you saw a chance of getting back a bit of what you chucked at me last night. (Confidentially.) You'd had a drop in, hadn't you? 2. L i z a. What call would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? What become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I say is, them as pinched

it done her in.

M r s. Eynsfordhill. What does doing her in mean?

H i g g i n s (hastily). Oh, thats the new small talk. To do a person in means to kill them.

3. Higgins. I've picked up a girl.

M r s. H i g g i n s. Does that mean that some girl has picked you up?

H i g g i n s. Not at all. I don't mean a love affair.

M r s. H i g g i n s. What a pity!

(From Pygmalion by B. Shaw)

4. My wife has been kiddin' me about my friends ever since we were married. She says that ... they ain't nobody in the world got a rummier bunch of friends than me. I'll admit that the most of them ain't, well, what you might call hot; they're different somehow than when I first hung around with them. They seem to be lost without a brass rail to rest their dogs on. But of course they are old friends and I can't give them the air.

(From Short Stories by R. Lardner)