morals instructor

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Zvuk - 24 Oct 2003 14:53 GMT

Maria is a little girl and she livs in a convent, with other girls. They go
to school there. There she has arguments the *morals instructor*.
-- What exactly is morals instructor (at the convent or convent school)?

Furball is a dog. He is hiding under a bed and he does not want to get out
of there. A boy offers him a chunk of raw hamburger in order to lure him
out. The dog whined and drooled as he watched. -- And then he *licked his
chops*.
-- I don't really get it. Licked his chops? What exactly he did and what
does it have to do with the food or hunger?

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Mike987 - 24 Oct 2003 16:43 GMT

>-- I don't really get it. Licked his chops? What exactly he did and what
>does it have to do with the food or hunger?

"Chops" is the area of the face surrounding the mouth of a person or
an animal, so the dog was rolling his tongue around the outside of his
mouth, in anticipation of receiving food. The term "chops", however,
is (a) informal, and (b) only used in a few set phrases, the other
common one being "a smack in the chops" (or "on the chops"), meaning
to punch someone in the mouth.

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Bill Bonde ( the oblique allusion in lieu of the frontal attack ) - 24 Oct 2003 20:00 GMT

> >-- I don't really get it. Licked his chops? What exactly he did and what
> >does it have to do with the food or hunger?
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> common one being "a smack in the chops" (or "on the chops"), meaning
> to punch someone in the mouth.

Note too that a musician can practice "his chops" or he can practise
"his licks". I think of 'chops' as mostly guitar and thought maybe
historically 'chops' referred to use of an axe (another slang term for
guitar) and then the 'licks' came into being with a conflation of the
chops wood meaning and the chops is a part of the jaw meaning. 'Chops'
is one of those complex words with many different meanings.

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CyberCypher - 24 Oct 2003 17:00 GMT

> Maria is a little girl and she livs in a convent, with other
> girls. They go to school there. There she has arguments the
> *morals instructor*. -- What exactly is morals instructor (at the
> convent or convent school)?

A morals instructor is someone who teaches people --- little people, in
this case --- right from wrong, good behavior from bad. In convent
schools, the nuns teach children what the Catholic Church says is right
and wrong. Here in Taiwan, under the old curriculum in public schools,
there were teachers who instructed children in Taiwanese morality,
mostly lessons from Confucius. I believe they had such teachers in
Japan until about 25 or 30 years ago. But they might still have them.

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Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / October 2003

morals instructor