Showing posts with label cheese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cheese. Show all posts

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Grate & Great

Grate – a gridlike screen, usually of metal. Also, the act of scraping roughly, either literally or metaphorically.
Great – large in number or size. Also, of good quality.

For the record, a pile of grated cheese could never be so great that it would stop being great.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Baited & Bated

Baited – lured to a trap with the promise of a reward, or the act of having placed that reward in the trap.
Bated – diminished, reduced, basically the same thing as “abated.”
So if we baited the trap with cheese, then everything about the rat is bated – its life is bated, our rat problem is bated, and its breath is definitely bated. Yes, folks, it’s “waiting with bated breath” not baited. (And not “weighting,” for that matter.) It means to hold your breath in excited anticipation, it doesn’t mean your breath smells like cheese. Though you still might consider a mint now and then, for reals.