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                            Idioms and.........( 2 )

• A piece of cake ( very easy )=Winning the US open was a piece of cake for Sania and Martina.
• Call a spade a spade ( to be brutally franc )= It may hurt your sentiment but I prefer to call a spade a spade. You are wrong on this point.
• Carry the can ( to take the mistake )= As you are  can for my good friend I am ready to carry the can for your mistakes.
• Capital punishment ( the death sentence )= The rapists should be given the capital punishment for their heinous crime.
• Burn the candle on both ends ( to expend all the resources )= He has sold his car as well his car but could not  salvage his business from ruin. It is classic case of burnong the candle on both ends.
• To get carried away ( be overwhelmed )= Don't get carried away by this victory ; you have a long way to go.
• A dab hand ( expert )= Apratim is a dab hand at photography.
• As fresh as a daisy ( very active and enthusiastic ) = At this age Ranjit Guha looks as fresh as a daisy; he is always upto something new.
• not to give a damn ( don't care attitude )= I am my own man. I give a damn what other people think of me.
• not worth a damn ( completely meaningless )= As he knows nothing on this subject his opinin is not worth a damn; just ignore it.
• a damp squib ( something which proved to be worthless ) = The debate on the ban on cow slaughter proved to be a damp squib as no speaker was able to raise the debate to the expected level.
• a dark horse ( a person or team whom nobody expected to win )= In the recently concluded world cup Bangladesh proved to be the dark horse by reaching the quarter final stage.
• keep it dark ( keep it a secret ) = Atasi and Sanjoy were successful in keeping everyone in dark about their love-affairs.

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A few grammatical problems:

The word transformation means a complete change in somebody or something.(Oxford Advance Dictionary) .But in grammatical sense transformation means changing the form of the sentence without changing the intended or original meaning. So in that sense it is not complete change as such. Let us take a few examples. First the obvious one:

• My father is an honest man. ( Make it negative ) Can we write My father is not an honest man? The answer is obvious= we can't because it will change the meaning upside down and what is more my father may beat me black and blue. We have transform it in such a manner that the intended meaning does remain the same. So we have to write =My father is not a dishonest man. ( If he is not 'dishonest' , he must be ' honest'. )
• Do this work carefully. ( use the noun form ) = Do this work with care.
• As soon as we reached home it began to rain cats and dogs. (Make it negative )= No sooner had we reached home it began to rain cats and dogs. ( We can write this sentence in another form ) = Hardly  had we reached home when it began to rain cats and dogs.

**********************************************************************************spk--14/9/15

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