SNOWFALL= Like “rain”, but with snow. SNOW is the frozen stuff and SNOWFALL is the act of snowing.

BACKYARD SNOWBALLS= They use the word “backyard” (a yard or patio at the back of a house) as an adjective to say what kind of snowballs (balls made of snow) they’re talking about. The result is the same as a locative, “backyard snowballs” means “snowballs thrown in the backyard”, which suggests intimacy, because you can play snowballing in the street with anyone, but if you are in a backyard, you are in someone’s house, so you have a relationship.

WARMING UP= Getting warm.

FIREPLACE= The part of a chimney inside a room, where the fire is burning. A chimney is basically made up of two parts, the “chimney top”, which is the part you can see above the roof, outside, and the “fireplace”, which is the part that you can see in the room, where fire burns. But most of the times we just use “chimney” both for the whole system and for each one of those two parts, so you can say that you are sitting by the chimney or that from the air you can see all the chimneys in the village.

MARSHMALLOWS= /mɑ:*ʃ,meləʊ/ A sweet puffy sugary confection, very spongy (see picture)
In the United States, when you go to a camp, or spend the weekend in the countryside camping with your friends, there is a tradition. At night, people get around a fire to tell stories and they make s’mores. A s’more is something so good that you always want “some more” (hence the name), so they say. To make one, you just put a marshmallow at the end of a stick and place it over the flames till it catches fire, then quickly blow the flames off and put it between two crackers or biscuits, often with some chocolate. Sounds strange but it’s yummy (see picture of a smore). Or you can just put the marshmallow higher above the flames, so it won’t catch fire, let it go hot and jelly, and then let it cool down before eating it (see picture). Anyway, in America we usually make the connection of campfire + friends + marshmallows, so when they talk about marshmallows catching fire on an open flame, we all know what they’re talking about: friends, intimacy, fun, adventure... And here is a video showing how to prepare delicious s'mores: How To Make S'mores by the Campfire.

OPEN FLAME= An open flame is a fire which is outdoors, and not inside a house, so it makes us think of a campfire (see picture).

WANNA= (coll.) Want to.

STUCK IN= If you are stuck in, you can’t move from where you are.

MILES= A mile is 1.6 kilometres. It is only used in the United States, the UK and a few little islands and British territories, while the rest of the world assumed the metric system long ago.

AIN’T= (very coll.) /eɪnt/ “Isn’t” (also “haven’t” or “hasn’t”)
- My mother ain’t home (isn’t)
- I ain’t got no money (haven’t)

STORMY WEATHER= With frequent storms and bad weather in general.

PICK UP= To pick up the phone is to get the phone when it is ringing so that you can answer it.

REDIALING= To re-dial is to dial again. To dial a number on the phone is to press the numbers for the person you want to call. A “dial” is a disc, and old phones used to have a disc that you had to move around (dial) for every number (see picture). Now we have buttons to press, but we still say “to dial a number”.

ON SILENT= Mute. If you don’t want your telephone to ring or sound in any way, you press the mute button so your phone is on silent and will not disturb you.

WIDE AWAKE= Completely awake.

FAMILIAR FACES= People you know.

THAT’S ALL IT WOULD TAKE= That’s the only thing needed.
- That’s all it takes to enter the competition = That’s the only thing you need to enter the competition.