Tag Archives: brownie point

01 Mar

The second anniversary of LEfF

Terry Lee

Hello, my friends! How have you been? I am excited to announce that today is the second anniversary of LEfF (Learning English from Friends). This is my 277th post. Time does fly, don’t you think?

Over the past two years, I have done my best to share my experiences learning new expressions. Most of the expressions that I have written here are the ones that would not be taught in English as a Second Language class but still used by many American people. I really hope my blog has been a helpful resource for all of non-native English speakers out there.

 

Let me start with talking about top five most popular posts.

1. black sheep

2. I really appreciate it

3. native American vs native to America

4. bun in the oven

5. what is your brownie point?

I would like to congratulate all of the friends who taught these top five posts (Brian, Jeff, Andrew, Jean, Alex, Sangeetha and Ari). Speaking of these five, I just realized that my sister-in-law has a bun in the oven. It’s been five months. Let me take a moment to congratulate her and her husband!

LEfF has gotten about 85,000 page views (3,541 per month and 117 per day) in two years and they are from 170 countries. That means LEfF got attractions from almost 90% of the earth. That is amazing, isn’t it? Here are some of the country names that I have never heard of : Djibouti, Guernsey, Martinique,… The list goes on and on.

How about top five countries? Here is the list.

1. United States

2. United Kingdom

3. South Korea

4. Canada

5. Japan

Hey, I have another interesting statistic. Do you know what is the number one browser people have used to get to LEfF? It is not Internet Explorer. It is Firefox. Thank God! Please stop using Internet Explorer. It is horrible. Chrome is the third browser but not far behind IE. You can use Chrome. 🙂 In fact, it is my default browser and I like it a lot.

What else? Oh.. it shows that readers use 105 different languages. My analysis is that people do want to learn new English expressions online.

Thank you all for your visits and support! Because of you, I am so happy to come back to my desk to write new interesting expressions. Don’t worry! It will keep updated. There are so many out there that I still do not know or have never heard of. It is like going down the rabbit hole every day.

Please share new posts with your friends so that many people get to have a chance to learn new ones.

See you soon!

 

03 Oct

what is your brownie point?

Who taught: Alex, Sangeetha and Ari

Brownie Uniform (source:http: liendoanaulac.org)

Have you ever eaten a brownie? It is so good. Oh, you do not know what it is? It is a small square cake, mostly made with chocolate. No wonder why it is good, huh? I had never eaten a single brownie before I moved to the U.S. I mean… I think I saw it in Korea but was not really interested in trying it. But, here in the U.S., any party you go, there are bunch of desserts and brownie is definitely one of them.

But, did you know that brownie has a different meaning? It means a junior girl scout. I was not a boy scout when I was young. My parents could not afford it. 🙂 But, apparently, there are bunch of levels in girl or boy scout and one of the levels they have is brownie. Usually, girls whose age is from 6 to 8 are in the brownie level and they wear brownie uniform. As you can imagine, the color of the uniform is brown.

Moving on, have you heard an expression called brownie point? Can you give it a try to find what it means? If you think it as a girl scout point, it is pretty easy to find out. Yes, it means the point girl scouts from the brownie level receive by doing some specific tasks. As they get the points, they can get badges to wear on their uniform. I guess, the more badges, the better.

But, you can use this expression for any situation where a person does a good work or deed. The best example you can find is from the relationship between husband and wife.

Say that you are a husband and your wife is out of town….. and you did  a load of laundry. And when she is back, she would be so happy, right? Now, you just got a brownie point. Last Saturday, Alex used this expression when I had lunch with him, Sangeetha and Ari. At the moment, I was able to figure out what it means but the etymology I thought of was not correct. I thought this expression is originated from brownnose. To some extent, brownie point and brownnose are related with each other because if you brownnose, you sort of get additional brownie point. But the etymologies of two expressions are totally different, which is very interesting. Checking out etymology of an expression is so much fun and better to remember. So, when you hear some new expressions, you may want to try to find their origins. It is really fun and you learn so much more.

Let me ask you a question! What is your secret way of getting brownie points?

Comes from the points Girl Scouts at the Brownie level (ages 6-8) receive for doing specific tasks that when accumulated earn them badges (a sign of recognition) to wear on their Brownie Uniform.