Lesson One
Chapter One
Outgoing
i. (Sociable, open and friendly, not shy— not to be confused with "outgoings", which means personal or business expenses such as rent and domestic bills)
Examples:
Outgoing Sales Assistant required. Must be on the ball and capable o f taking on hectic work schedule.
- In the long run, you'll pick up more clients if you adopt a more outgoing attitude.
- The place needed doing up, but it wasn't that which put us off going for it: the outgoings were outrageous.
ii. (Used to describe someone who is about to retire from a high position, e.g. president, chairman)
Example:
- Virtually the whole town turned out to see off the outgoing president; they weren't particularly looking forward to meeting the new one.
iii. (A collection of mail which is to be sent, rather than " incoming" , which has just been received)
Example:
- I'm sorry to be bossy, but letters which are to go off should be put in the 'outgoing' tray.
Off the record
(Unofficially," Don't tell anybody I said this, but ..." , not to be made pubIic— note the opposite "on record ", which means official, a publicly known fact)
Examples:
You could wind up paying higher interest.
Off the record, I reckon you'd be better off going to your own bank rather than one o f my clients.
- Before we get things under way, I must stress that anything that comes up during this meeting must be kept strictly off the record.
- Interviewer to Prime Minister:
I'm not trying to catch you out, but you are on record as saying that inflation would plummet once we had recovered from the slump.
To go by
i. (To rely on/ judge something by what one has heard, seen or read — often used in the negative — note also "to go by the book", which means to stick to the rules)
Examples:
- You can't go by what he comes out with;you need to seek a specialist who caters for experienced professionals.
- I never go by the tabloid press; mind you, this latest scandal is quite an eye-opener.The outgoing mayor had clearly been up to something.
- We do try to go by the book in this company, but, off the record, the odd rule gets broken from time to time.
ii. (To pass— used for time only)
Examples:
- As time goes by, I feel we're drifting apart.
- Five years went by without me hearing from him, and then out of the blue, he turned up at the house.
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