Blacklist

This is a column of words or phrases commonly misused by Chinese speakers. If you’re planning to be an English teacher, reporter or employee of a multinational company, then watch out for this page each week.

1. Though they have very high IQs, they seem to be strangers to modest.

Professor Zhu Shida (ZS): We often say: He is a stranger to me. It means one does not know another person. Thus we have the phrase “stranger to,” followed by a pronoun or a noun.
 
When it means a person out of place or not at home in something, we express it this way: He is strange to the work but will soon learn. It means he is not accustomed to or is unfamiliar with the work. Based on this pattern, it evolves into “no stranger to.” He is no stranger to hard work. You see it is followed by a noun. It means that he is fairly accustomed to or fairly familiar with the work. Anyway, the sample sentence should read: Though they have very high IQs, they seem to be strangers to modesty. It means that they know nothing about how to be modest.

Terry Boyd-Zhang (TBZ): “He is a stranger to me” is also something you say about someone you have broken a relationship with. An arrogant person who brags about how vastly superior in intelligence he or she is to you, for example, may be one you would eventually discontinue any relationship with, treating them as if they were a stranger to you.

2. The renminbi will rub shoulder with the dollar and the euro one day.

ZS: It is fairly difficult for a beginner to make clear phrases involving “shoulder.” Sometimes it is in a singular form and at others it is plural. In this case, we have to say “rub shoulders with” which means: to mingle with, rub elbows with, be on par with or be equal to. I have an example from Vladimir Nabokov: Never have we rubbed shoulders with as many celebrities. So, here we have to say: The renminbi will rub shoulders with the dollar and the euro one day. However, when it comes to the phrase “give the cold shoulder to,” it is in the singular form. Don’t be confused. We usually say: She gives the cold shoulder to her suitor. You never say: She gives the cold shoulders to her suitor. We have another example from the International Herald Tribune: Teachers’ unions give the cold shoulder to the Obama administration.

TBZ: There are several expressions with “shoulder” or “shoulders” in English, as mentioned above. Some other expressions include: shoulder to shoulder (meaning “showing solidarity”), put one’s shoulder to the wheel (“to get to work – and hard!”) and stand head and shoulders above (“taller than everyone else” (literally) or “better than everyone else” (figuratively)). Be careful though – don’t overuse such expressions or your teacher might start to find you clichéd!

3. Slacks

ZS: We often read sports reports in Western newspapers about fans wearing slacks in the bleachers. The word reportedly is a corporate coinage. The Haggar clothing company asserts that in the 1940s, the Haggars, working with ad-man Morris Hite, deliberately coined the word “slacks,” so-called because they were to be worn during leisurely “slack time.” However, the Haggars could not get the patent for this term. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this word dates to 1824 when slacks started to be worn, meaning “loosely cut trousers for informal wear.” Now, in English dictionaries, we have an explanation of slacks as “trousers for casual wear.” Also, it still has something to do with its original meaning of “loose, careless, slow and sluggish.” “Slacks” is another example of linguistic evolution over time.

TBZ: Very interesting! We have slacks, trousers, pants, jeans, cords … then variations like harem pants, hammer pants, tunic pants, pajama pants, hot pants, flood pants … as you can see, I prefer the word “pants,” but “slacks” is fine, too. I think that “pants” is perhaps more general (something long you wear on the bottom) and I feel “slacks” are dressier, more like what you would wear to work (or to church), if you weren’t wearing a dress or a skirt.