will some good headed native speaker of english help me with this

mike   Thursday, August 29, 2002, 17:06 GMT
i could not find the following words and expressions in any dictionary. Will somebody be so kind and translate them for me please. I'd be very grateful for that. Thanks in advance.

dasein

dogan

w-2's

blur (a person) - can anyone be a blur?

get the lead out - with this one i need pronunciation - is it lead - the heavy metal or lead , like in (leading position)

give up the ghost - can it be used only for machines or for people , too.

go figure - will u please think of a model sentence with this one.

pissant

to kindle - doeas it also mean - to conceive (woman)

high school equivalency - what sort of document is that?

gravy train

ditto machine

granola

ball-busting - i hear it very often in films

cooze

to pull a burn
Tom   Thursday, August 29, 2002, 19:29 GMT
dasein
- sounds like German "da sein" (= "to be there" or "to be alive"). Or maybe "Dasein", a noun meaning "life".

w-2's
- isn't that the official number of a work permit or something in the US?

get the lead out
- [led] as in lead, the chemical element of symbol Pb (as you noted, lead is heavy, so when you get it out, you move faster - which is the meaning of the idiom)

go figure
- "While 90% of Poles will say they're Catholic, only 20% go to church every Sunday. Go figure."

pissant
- "Christmas vacation should be shortened to a half day off school. There's no reason this town should be full of these little pissants running around like hoodlums just because it's Jesus Christ's birthday."

kindle
- the meaning "give birth" is restricted to rabbits!

granola
- a breakfast food
Mingo   Friday, August 30, 2002, 02:10 GMT
lots of those expressions are confusing and antiquated. I wouldn't use them, except for "go figure", which tom used perfectly in the aforementioned sentence. "Ball-busting" is a little of an race and odd expression, it depends heavily on the context in which it is used. Some of those other expressions, like "ditto machine" etc I have never heard of.
mike   Sunday, September 01, 2002, 16:15 GMT
thanks a lot for your help. I mostly got them all from stephen king's 'The stand" and two film scripts - The Shawshank redemption and Reservoir Dogs

thanks a lot one more time
Neil Gratton   Sunday, September 01, 2002, 22:55 GMT
pissant = "piss ant" - just a random insult

give up the ghost - can be used for anything that's worn out and ceased to work/live. Possibly a little irreverent when used of people.
mike   Wednesday, September 04, 2002, 17:04 GMT
thanks neil!