de aurelian | mart. 2, 2016 | Blog
Hello! Today I’ll be looking at two commonly confused verbs: fit and suit. Both are used in reference to clothes, shoes or other personal things, but they aren’t interchangeable. Fit means to be the right size and shape for someone or something: The dress fits perfectly.| The jacket fitted me pretty well but the trousers were too small.
Suit means that clothes or other personal things are the right style, colour etc for someone. If that’s the case, you say they suit that person: Casual clothes really don’t suit her. | A green dress won’t suit me.
In British English the usual past form of fit is fitted, but you can also use fit in more informal English: Two years ago, these knickers fit me perfectly. In American English, the usual past form is fit, but you can also use fitted.
de aurelian | ian. 19, 2016 | Blog
Hello! In this post I’d like to look at the difference between clothes, clothing, and cloth, which may be confusing for some English learners.
Clothes is the usual word for things we wear: She’s got some beautiful clothes (NOT cloths).
Clothing is a more formal word for clothes in general. And it’s uncountable, i.e. it doesn’t have a plural form: The workers here all have to wear protective clothing (NOT clothings).
Clothes is not used with numbers, and in conversation if you want to talk about one piece/item of clothing you would usually call it by its name: I want to buy a new coat (NOT a new cloth/clothing).
Clothes are made from various kinds of material, fabric or cloth, such as woven wool, silk, cotton or acrylic: I brought back a lovely piece of cloth from Thailand to make a dress out of.
A cloth (with plural cloths) is a piece of cloth, used for cleaning surfaces, dishes etc: Oh dear, I’ve spilt my coffee – have you got a cloth?
Right. Time to tidy up the living room now. It’s quite a mess with all those clothes scattered about 🙂
