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Word of the Day: Fever pitch
Please don’t hate me for this, but I will refer to The Donald* and Pokémon Go in the same paragraph here.
My students know I use current events to teach English, and both Donald Trump and Pokémon Go are current events that have been getting a lot of press attention recently.
At the Republican Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, support for The Donald reached a fever pitch, and enthusiasm for the game Pokémon Go has also come to a fever pitch.
When we say that something has reached a fever pitch, we mean that the situation was very powerfully emotional.
Fever pitch can refer to pleasant emotions, such as happiness, or bad feelings, such as hatred.
Either way, whether at a baseball game or a political riot, sorry, I mean political rally, we can say that emotions reached a fever pitch.
*The Donald: This is an excellent example of usage of the article ‘the.’
Donald Trump has become exceptionally well known in the United States and, indeed, the world.
So, in the States, they refer to him as The Donald.
The article ‘the’ is commonly used for popular things when people are talking to each other.
For example: ‘I went to the library / the museum / the university.’
In these cases, ‘the’ is used for a landmark or something everybody knows.
Donald Trump’s case has become so well known that all we need to say is his first name, and everybody knows who we mean.
He has become The Donald.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 64.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.