PE 11/19 Amazed by the Giant Baobb

* itching to + verb: restlessly eager

ex> Cheryl is itching to know what I got her for her birthday, but she’ll just have to wait.

* stoked: excited; thrilled (informal)

ex> My brother is so stocked that he got tickets to see his favorite band next month.

Note> The verb stoke meaning “to add fuel to, or to otherwise revive a fire” came to English from the Dutch language. It gained its contemporary usage in the slang used by surfers beginning in the 1960’s.

* emblematic: acting as a symbol for something

ex> The priests’ white robes are emblematic of their spiritual purity.

* figment of one’s imagination: something untrue that one believes is real

ex> There weren’t really three cookies left: that was a figment of your imagination.

ex> Is it also a figment of my imagination that there are crumbs on your book?

Note> This expression is actually redundant, as figment by itself means “something made up or invented in the mind.” However, the word figment is very rarely heard on its own.

* give one the benefit of the doubt: to accept that one is being truthful even if the evidence is incomplete

ex> Even though we haven’t read your report card yet, we’re going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that it’s as good as you say it is.

* boggle the mind: causes astonishment

ex> It boggles the mind that my favorite team hasn’t won a championship in sixty years.

* blow away: 놀라게 하다; 이기다

This is a very tricky idiom, as it has a wide range of alternate meanings. Apart from the above meanings, be blown away means “to be carried to an unreachable place by the wind” and “to be killed by a firearm.”

ex> But I didn’t think it had gone that well. I’m blown away that I got the top mark!