I hope you enjoyed the last blog, number 123. Several people have commented that it may have been my best yet! Thank you for your comments.
I was talking to one of my students about the spread of Covid recently. She said a lot of nurses had been affected and I know from my workplace that a lot of children have caught it as well. Even my partner’s workplace was hit by several cases. So, a timely phrase that comes to mind for this situation would be: ‘they are droppinglike flies’. For example, you might say to your friend: “Oh hi Stephanie, long time no see! How is work going?” and then Stephanie might reply “Oh, oh, oh, so terrible! Everyone is going down with the virus, ten people were off sick today.” The friend might then say: “Holy Cow! They are dropping like flies! The virus is really going around at the moment.” So, the friend means that a lot of people are getting sick at this time. They are literally dropping or falling to the floor with illness which we can imagine flies dropping to the floor when they die and their bodies are scattered all over the floor! Vomit emoji!
Why do we say ‘drop’ like flies? Good question! I think we use drop for two reasons.
1. They drop, literally, when we hit them with a swatter, mid air.
2. If we go crazy and start swatting a lot of flies then the number of flies will drop (go down).
Take care everybody! Use this phrase at least 5 times this week but hopefully we can use it less and less. Can you think of any other ways to use it to talk about a drop in numbers of something?
Love, Tina
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