Welcome to our reading of 'A Skeleton in the Cupboard' from New Concept English. This story explores the idiom about family secrets. We often read in novels how a seemingly respectable person or family has some terrible secret which has been concealed from strangers for years. Our story features the author and his friend who discovers such a family secret in a Victorian-era house setting.
Let's read the first part of our story. It is the same old story of not being able to say 'No'. I heartily sympathize with it. We have all experienced it. A friend of mine was asked to a wedding. Notice the key vocabulary: heartily means sincerely or with enthusiasm, sympathize means to understand and share feelings, and experienced here means to have lived through something.
Now let's continue with the middle section of our story. He wanted to refuse, but was afraid of hurting the feelings of the bride's mother, who had been a friend of his family for years. He told me that he felt very uncomfortable about it. Notice the past tense structures and connected speech patterns in this passage.
Now we reach the climactic moment of our story. During the wedding ceremony, he sat in the back row. Suddenly, he noticed something strange about the bride's family. They all looked nervous and kept glancing at an old cupboard in the corner of the room. When the cupboard door accidentally opened, everyone gasped in horror! There was a real skeleton inside! Notice how we express shock and surprise in English with sudden adverbs, exclamations, and rising intonation patterns.
Now let's analyze the idiom 'a skeleton in the cupboard'. This phrase means a shameful or embarrassing secret that a family or person tries to hide. The literal skeleton in the story becomes a metaphor for hidden family secrets. Examples include 'Every family has a skeleton in the cupboard' or 'The politician's skeleton was finally revealed'. Similar idioms include 'dirty laundry' and 'skeletons in the closet'. This idiom reflects Victorian society's emphasis on family reputation and social respectability.