By Nedu Wordsmith
Football Vocabulary
1a. Manchester United won Chelsea 4-0.❌
1b. Manchester United beat or defeated Chelsea 4-0.✔
Note that one can only win a trophy, contest, game, or competition, but not an opponent. This is one common error that has eaten deep into the fabrics of our English lexicon. You beat or defeat an opponent, but win a game. Thus,
1c. Manchester United won the game with a 4-0 scoreline against Chelsea✔
1d. Manchester United won the game.✔
2a. He wants to severe his relationship with his girlfriend.❌
2b. He wants to sever his relationship with his girlfriend.✔
These two words mean different things, “severe” is an adjective meaning extreme, “sever” is a verb meaning to cut or stop something. This is another very common error that has eaten deep into our fabrics. http://www.bellsnews.com/sports/cacl-enyimba-beat-wilbros-fc-5-3-in-aba/
Now, if you are preparing for the IELTS exam, you need to have a wide range of vocabulary particularly for the LISTENING test, else you may see yourself score low after paying so heavily for the test. Let me give us two examples with these words—- “across & brown”.
3a. I am not yet across with what Neydu taught today.✔
Now, this statement sounds definitely awkward to most of us. This is because, we are familiar with “across” being used as a preposition, but in sentence 3a, I used “across” as a verb and it means to be “familiar” with something and this is an example instance you could find in the IELTS.
3b. I browned the meat for five minutes and brought it down.✔
🙄🙄🙄🙄 Brown the meat? I sense the curious mind asking, now, this shock again arises from the fact that we are used to brown functioning as a noun and as an adjective but most of us never knew that “brown” can function as a verb as I used it above. In that example, “brown means to “heat/cook”. These and many more you need to learn if you are preparing for the IELTS.
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