1.tag along

（尤指未经要求）跟随，尾随 If someone goes somewhere and you tag along, you go with them, especially when they have not asked you to.

She’d tag along when he’d go drinking in the shebeens. All she wanted in life was to please him and be with him.

She seems quite happy totag along with them.

“I'm going to the store.” “Would you mind if I tagged along with you?”

2.hang around

to be or stay in a place for a period of time without doing much;

If you hang around,hang about, or hang round with someone or in a particular place, you spend a lot of time with that person or in that place.

She was always being swatted away by his girlfriends, who didn’t like having a reminder of his first marriage hanging around, but that only made her want to be with him all the more.

We just hung around all afternoon, listening to music.

...the usual young crowd who hung around the cafe day in and day out.

They usually hung around together most of the time...

Helen used to hang round with the boys.

3.pack sb off (to)

to send (someone) away to a different place

But instead of taking her to live with him in the Meadowlands, without even telling her why, he packed her off and sent her to live with his sister in the Xhosa homeland, Transkei—he didn’t want her, either.

Despite his protests, his mom packed him off to bed. [=sent him to bed]

parents packing their kids off to college

4.care for sb

to do the things that are needed to help and protect (a person or animal):to look after (someone or something)

They both stayed in Soweto, were both raised and cared for by their parents.

She cares for [=takes care of] elderly patients.

Who is caring for your son while you are at work?

I cared for his cat while he was away.

5.go off (to a place)(to do sth)

to leave a place for a new place

All the husbands and uncles had gone off to the cities to find work, and the children who weren’t wanted, or whom no one could afford to feed, had been sent back to the homeland to live on this aunt’s farm.

He went off to join the army after graduating from high school.

She went off to America.

She went off to get a drink.

6.for starters

used to introduce a statement that is the first in a series of statements

Of course, this was a lie. For starters, despite the fact that black people made up over 80 percent of South Africa’s population, the territory allocated for the homelands was about 13 percent of the country’s land.

“Why don't you like him?” “Well, for starters [=first of all], he was rude to my parents.”

There are a number of problems— for starters, where is the money coming from?

•The winners will be flown to Paris— and that's just for starters.

7.scrape by (on sth)  [skreɪp]

to live with barely enough money:to be able to buy only the things you need most

Other than the menial wages sent home from the cities, families scraped by with little beyond subsistence-level farming.

Money was tight, but we somehow managed to scrape by. [=survive]

She's scraping along on just a few hundred dollars a month.

We're barely scraping by on my salary.

8.fend for yourself

to take care of yourself without help from anyone else

The farmers would put out scraps for the animals, and she’d jump for it. She was hungry; let the animals fend for themselves.

His parents agreed to pay the rent for his apartment but otherwise left him to fend for himself.

•The fox was released into the wild when it was old enough to fend for itself.

9.fall ill 病倒[F]

When my mom turned twenty-one, her aunt fell ill and that family could no longer keep her in Transkei.

She fell ill soon after and did not recover.

He fell ill and died soon after.

10.the bottom rung of

a position or level within a group, organization, etc., that is higher or lower than others

Back in Soweto, my mom enrolled in thesecretarial course that allowed her to grab hold of the bottom rung of the white-collar world.

to get a foot on the bottom rung of the career ladder

He was on the bottom rung on the corporate ladder.

She was a few rungs above him on the social ladder.

the top rung of society

the lowest/highest rung of the pay scale

11.insist (that) + do

As a secretary, my mom was bringing home more money than anyone else, and my grandmother insisted it all go to the family.

He insists that she come.

12.have/keep your wits about you

to be aware of what is happening around you and ready to think and act quickly

时刻保持警惕;随机应变 If you have your wits about you or keep your wits about you, you are alert and ready to act in a difficult situation.

She’d give me little bursts, random details, stories of having to keep her wits about her to avoid getting raped by strange men in the village.

She can keep her wits about her [=remain calm and able to think clearly] in a crisis.

Travellers need to keep their wits about them.

13.help around the house

He was always the good kid, doing chores, helping around the house.

The children never lift a finger to help around the house.

14.round sb/sth up

to find and gather together (people, animals, or things)

My mom, who was only six or seven herself, used to round up the abandoned kids and form a troop and take them around to the shebeens.

They rounded up the cattle.

The police rounded up all the suspects.

She rounded up people to play basketball.

15.pass out

to fall asleep or become unconscious

They’d collect empties from the men who were passed out and take the bottles to where you could turn them in for a deposit.

They both passed out in front of the TV.

I felt like I was going to pass out from exhaustion.

He drank until he passed out.

Someone was passed out on the floor. [=someone was lying unconscious on the floor]

16.whatsoever

(also what·so·ever) no, nothing, none, etc. ~not at all; not of any kind

(用于名词词组后，强调否定陈述)丝毫，任何，无论什么 You use whatsoever after a noun group in order to emphasize a negative statement.

When it was time to pick my name, she chose Trevor, a name with no meaning whatsoever in South Africa, no precedent in my family.

‘Is there any doubt about it?’ ‘None whatsoever.’

My school did nothing whatsoever in the way of athletics...

There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that this woman was a totally devoted and caring mother.

There's no evidence whatsoever [=whatever] to support your theory.

His remark had nothing whatsoever to do with you.

17.pore over/through

仔细阅读；认真钻研 If you pore over or through information, you look at it and study it very carefully.

She bought a set of encyclopedias, too; it was fifteen years old and way out of date, but I would sit and pore through those.

It will take several more months to pore through the volumes of documents.

We spent hours poring over travel brochures...

He pored over the map for hours.

18.prized possessions

My books were my prized possessions. I had a bookshelf where I put them, and I was so proud of it.

These are some of my prized possessions.

I lost some of my most prized possessions in the fire.

19.fix

an amount of sth that you need and want frequently, especially an illegal drug such as heroin

I loved fantasy, loved to get lost in worlds that didn’t exist. I remember there was some book about white boys who solved mysteries or some shit. I had no time for that. Give me Roald Dahl. James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. That was my fix.

I need a fix of coffee before I can face the day.

20.wear sb/sth down

to convince (someone) to do what you want by trying again and again

She wasn’t comfortable with that. “No, no. No false idols, my friend.” Eventually I wore her down. That was a big win.

She pleaded until she had worn her parents down and they agreed to let her go to the party.

He believed that he could wear her down if he only asked often enough.

21.knockoff

（廉价）冒牌货，仿制品 A knockoff is a cheap copy of a well-known product.

One time I asked my mom for Adidas sneakers. She came home with some knockoff brand, Abidas.

You can buy a nice knockoff watch from them.

That purse is a knockoff.

22.get by (on/with sth)

If you can get by with what you have, you can manage to live or do things in a satisfactory way.

We got by with next to nothing, but we always had church and we always had books and we always had food. Mindyou, it wasn’t necessarily good food.

How can you get by on such a small salary?

We got by with a minimum of clothing when we went camping.

I'm a survivor. I'll get by...

Melville managed to get by on a small amount of money.

23.mind you ↑

used in speech to give stress to a statement that you are making so that a preceding or following statement will not be misunderstood

His advice wasn't very helpful. I'm not criticizing him, mind you.

Mind you, I'm not criticizing him, but the truth is that his advice wasn't very helpful.

They provide a good service. Mind you, they charge enough for it.

24.speak up (for sb/sth)

to speak freely and confidently about something:to express an opinion openly

When I look back I realize she raised me like a white kid—not white culturally, but in the sense of believing that the world was my oyster, that I should speak up for myself, that my ideas and thoughts and decisions mattered.

Several of us decided to speak up about our working conditions.

She is always ready to speak up for animal rights.

25. the world is your oyster ↑

If the world is your oyster, your life is good and you have the ability to do whatever you want to do;

there is no limit to the opportunities open to you;

used for emphasizing that you can go anywhere or do anything that you want to.

We were young and happy, and the world was our oyster.

With talent like that, the world is her oyster.