Photo: Pixabay

Photo: Pixabay

It’s already 1 March!!! Where has the time gone?! One minute I was bringing the Christmas tree down, the next minute I’m making preparations for spring and Easter.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, time seems to be flying by a bit too quickly for my liking. In this day and age of instant communication the need to respond to email, What’s App messages, Snapchat, Facebook and text messages is no longer an option but an absolute requirement. This expectation to respond immediately has meant that our days have become busier and busier so much so that 24 hours in a day are often not enough to accomplish all that we want to achieve.

Time has become a precious commodity or a limited resource both in our personal and working lives. There are in fact a lot of metaphorical expressions in English that show how valuable time is.

In this post, I’ve selected 12 expressions related to time that I found in Ian McKenzie’s book “Financial English” that are frequently used in English. I have used a business context for the examples.

1. Take time
Don’t worry. I know things haven’t been easy and that it will take a little more time for things to pick up, but things will turn around.

2. Time left
How much time have we got left to present our findings to the board?

3. Run out of time
We need a decision from the bank. We’re running out of time.

4. Spare the time
I really cannot spare more time on this project.

5. Worth the time
I don’t think this account is worth the time we’re going to need to make it viable.

 

6. Save time
It will save us a huge amount of time if we were to forewarn our suppliers of the changes ahead of the meeting.

7. Waste of time
We’ve had to input all the data again onto the system. It’s been a such a waste of time.

8. Spend time
Look, we’ve spent a great deal of time on this tender. We cannot afford to lose it now.

9. Allocate time
We need to allocate sufficient time on this task to ensure it gets done properly.

10. Lose time
There’s no time to lose. We need to head to the airport now.

11. Invest time
We’ve invested a lot of time on cultivating this connection. We cannot abandon it now.

12. Give time
If you could just give me more time, I promise I’ll get the figures to you by tomorrow.

 

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Ciao for now

Shanthi

 

Source: Financial English (Second Edition 2012), Ian Mackenzie, Cengage Learning