1 Unit Lessons for life Opener 1

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Unit 1
Lessons for life
Unit 1 Lessons for life
Vocabulary notes
1  It’s seen better days is a good example of English 
understatement – it’s generally used to describe 
something in very bad condition. Shakespeare used it 
in the play As You Like It to refer to people who were 
poorer than in the past.
2  In Shakespeare’s play The Merry Wives of Windsor, the 
comedy character Pistol says ‘The world is my oyster’ 
to mean ‘I will use force to open the oyster’ (i.e. to get 
access to the world’s wealth and luxury). An oyster is a 
shellfish you have to force open to gain access to the 
delicious food inside. Today, the expression has a softer 
meaning – it means ‘I am free to do whatever I wish 
in the world’.
3  A ‘wild goose chase’ was a type of sixteenth-century 
race in which horses followed a lead horse at a set 
distance, mimicking wild geese flying in formation. 
Shakespeare used it in Romeo and Juliet, but it only 
came to mean a hopeless quest at a later date.
4  Emilia, Desdemona’s maid in Othello, uses ‘neither here 
nor there’ to mean something is not important – it has 
the same meaning today.
5  Said by Othello, ‘a foregone conclusion’ has the same 
meaning today – something that has an obvious and 
inevitable end which is known in advance.
6  In the Merchant of Venice, Jessica says, ‘love is blind 
and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves 
commit’. Shakespeare used the phrase in other plays too.
7  Used by a character in The Taming of the Shrew, 
Shakespeare uses the phrase ‘break the ice’ to mean to 
win people over to your favour. Its modern use – to help 
people get to know and talk to each other – came much 
later.