Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[missdaredevil]

Dear teachers,
I have three questions from a book. Please help me with them.
Thank you all.

1.
*Jurassic Pontiacs* that *ply* the traffic-choked streets.
What is *Jurassic Pontiacs*? I can't find it on google or yahoo.
And does *ply* mean *work hard* here?

2.
Havana has a *gritty* authencity of.....

rought or stark?

3. This is no *touched up tourist complex* or hastily *made-over* museum piec.

What does it mean?Does *made-over* mean *reconstructed*?

[CP]

Sounds like a lively book.

1. The Jurassic period was a time when dinosaurs walked the Earth -- gee, I miss my boyhood. Maybe you saw the movie Jurassic Park , in which dinosaurs were cloned for a modern theme park, with messy results. So the book is calling Pontiacs, a brand of large American car (named after an American Indian) "Jurassic Pontiacs," to summon up the image of gigantic autos crowding the streets. They ply the streets, meaning they work the streets, as a person plies his trade. It's a pretty nice image.

2. Yes, rough, stark, maybe unsophisticated, down-to-earth.

3. Yes. "Touched up" would mean cleaned up to look presentable, as when you use some left over paint to touch up your sitting room, just painting over the imperfections, not repainting the whole room. When something is made over, it is remodeled, fixed up.
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