What's new on IELTS with Fiona

Easter is a time when people use a lot of 'egg' words to make (awful!) PUNS e.g.

• Hope you have an egg-stra special Easter.
• Who else is egg-cited for Easter?

• All of this celebrating is eggs-hausting

What is a PUN?

A pun is a "play on words" - a joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words which sound alike but have different meanings.

The word "egg" sounds a little like "ex" so you can make jokes like:

- Eggs-ellent (excellent)

- Eggs-hausted (exhausted)

Maybe this is a good time to review

• when 'ex' is pronounced /eks/ (excellent, exercise) :  (when it is stressed)
• when 'ex' is pronounced /ɪks/ (explain, except) (when it is unstressed)
• when 'ex' is pronounced /ɪɡˈz/ (exhausted, exactly) (when it's followed by a vowel sound on a stressed syllable)

The only exception seems to be "EXIT" (stress on the first syllable - some people pronounce this as /egzit/).

***Commonly mispronounced**

• "exAM" (stress on the second syllable)