A.1. To be on the safe side don’t talk about these affairs,
some people are fond of gossiping about/over others’ affairs.
2. “I think/To my mind/In my opinion/I believe/It seems to me
there aren’t many gossips in our block of flats (Brit)/apartment
hous (us), we are lucky/we are in luck,” said Anne. 3. “I
would never have thought that Jane would circulate
gossip/would gossip,” Kate said. “Just don’t listen to her,” Dotty
answered. 4. Let’s go/climb up this winding staircase to the top
of the tower. 5. What are you doing? It won’t do. (It will never
do.) How can one wind off wool like this/in this way? 6. No
one could take a man for a ride/Nobody could lead a man
down the garden path like little Polly. 7. Put all these odds and
ends (all these little things) in a bag and wind a (piece of)
rope/string round/around it several times. 8. Don’t peel the
bark off the birch-tree, you’ll hurt it. 9. You shouldn’t lie in the
sun so long, your skin will peel (off), and anyway it does more
harm than good. 10. Why are you peeling the potatoes? For
salad it’s better to boil them unpeeled/without peeling/in
their jackets/skins. 11. Kate sometimes managed to find a temporary
job but she still couldn’t scrape a living. 12. Something
has stuck to my sole and I can’t scrape it off, it must be tar. 13.
Look out! Don’t scrape your arm against/on the nail. 14. Don’t
scrape your fork on your plate, please, I hate this sound. 15. He
just scraped through the examinations but I think he has realized
that one shouldn’t waste so much time. 16. It’s quite a
decent holiday centre but we had very bad luck with the
weather (but the weather was really nasty): it rained steadily
from morning till night. 17. At that moment I couldn’t help
admiring/couldn’t help but admire/couldn’t resist
admiring/couldn’t keep from admiring her self-control. With
a steady hand she threaded the needle and went on sewing as
though nothing had happened. 18. He seemed quite a steady
young man. 19. Let’s put something under the leg of the table
to steady it.
B. 1. John’s room was in a dreadful/terrible/horrible mess
but when his sister took advantage of his absence to tidy it up a
bit he got very angry and said that he couldn’t find anything
there any more/any longer. 2. You have made a mess ofthe
whole job /me ssed up th e whole job/blownthe whole job
again. Aren’t you ashamed of not caring at all/being indifferent
to everything? 3. She made a mess of myplans/upset/frustrated/
foiled my plans by keeping me waiting for four hours. 4. We
heard a twig crack. Someone was approaching (us)/was coming.
5. How careless you are! Mother’s favorite vase has/is
cracked: how could you wash it with/in boiling water? 6. Now
it is dangerous/unsafe to cross the river because of the cracks in
the ice. 7. The paint on the window-sill has/is cracked. We will
have to scrape it off before repainting. 8. Regular training contributed
to his success in the competition. 9. He refused to contribute
his poems to our wall-newspaper and now there is no
time to ask somebody else to do it. 10. The American
painter/artist Rockwell Kent has contributed some of his works
to the Pushkin Museum/ Museum’s collection of pictures. 11.
He spoke with such spirit that he left nobody cold/nobody
remained indifferent. 12. As soon as you tell him about it his
spirits will rise. 13. You have taken the criticism in the right spirit,
just as I expected. 14. I remember that there is half a bottle of
strawberry juice left somewhere. It tastes like nothing else on
earth. (Its taste is beyond compare/is incomparable.) 15. At
first/ Initially/In the beginning the taste of this unfamiliar fruit
seemed unpleasant to us, but then/later we got used to slaking/
quenching our thirst with it. 16. All of us/We all knew her to
be a woman of taste. 17. I don’t like the taste of carrots. Don’t
put them into the salad, please. 18. This shop has such a choice
of goods that you are sure to find something to your taste. 19.
He likes to crack/make jokes/to joke, but many of his jokes are
in bad taste. 20. What a nuisance/How annoying! The cucumbers
taste bitter/have a bitter taste.