Transcripts
1. Course Introduction: Here's a question. Have you ever been watching an American movie? And someone in the movie says something and you understand every word that they said, but you don't understand what they mean. That means I know that word. I know that word, and I know that word. But together I have no idea what he's talking about. Okay, this is a common thing for English language learners. So why is that? What is going on? Well, an expression or an idiom is a common group of words that people who speak the language natively will know. But each word in the expression or idiom may have no relationship to the meaning of the expression or idiom that makes it very hard. And because it's cultural, sometimes you need to understand the culture behind it in order to really get it. So it's tough to learn expressions very tough. And sometimes if you read the meaning of one in a book, Yeah, Okay, I see that, but I don't know how to use it. So we're gonna talk about in this course how to use expressions. We're gonna talk about what they really mean, and hopefully it's going to be fun. And when you finish this course, you're going to be able to When you watch a movie, say, Oh yeah, I know what that means Not only the words but the whole expression. You'll be able to understand people who are speaking native English better, and you'll be able to speak better and sound mawr natural. This course is going to be a little more relaxed than some of my other courses because it's about expressions. We might joke around a bit, but we are going to learn a lot. You will see me like this for the whole course. It's not just for this introduction, okay. Also, be using a digital blackboard so that you can follow along and actually see as you listen. And that will help to make each expression we learn. Hopefully, Mawr memorable. By the way, my name is Luke. I'm an American English teacher. I'm the co founder of a language learning platform called Yoli, as well as the founder off Cloud English. I've been teaching English for quite a few years and I really enjoy it. I'm very happy to be able to share this course with you, and I hope that you sign up and I hope to see you in the first lesson
2. Taking This Course: Hi there, welcome to the course. Before we actually get started with the first lesson, with the beginning, the real beginning of the course, we need to go over a couple of important things. Number one, we need to know exactly what is an expression and we need to be clear about that. Now maybe you already know. Fine, but let's just make sure we are all on the same page. On the same page, on the same page means that generally we have the same understanding of something. So we'll talk about what an expression is, and then we're going to talk about the lesson structure. How are the lessons organized? How will we go through the lessons? And then I want to give you a couple of suggestions about how you can practice and how you can review after each lesson, because that's a very important part 2. Okay, So what is an expression? It's actually pretty simple. An expression is a group of words that people often say, which has a commonly understood meaning within a culture, a certain culture. Now this course is focused on American English. Okay? Different languages have different expressions. Different countries have different expressions. This course is focused on American English, slang. Now we're not calling it slang. Each one that we learn is not called slang. We don't say a slang over there, it's laying over there. That's the general word. We call each one that we're going to learn and expression. And you'll also hear me call these idioms sometimes and phrases. So these three words expression, idiom phrase, are often used in a very similar way. So I may use the other two, idiom and phrase throughout the course as well. One really important thing to understand about an expression is that it's fixed. Usually it's fixed. That means that this group of words together, they have this meaning, commonly understood meaning. But if you change something, it changes the meaning and it may have no meaning perhaps. So you have to be very careful. The expression is usually fixed. Can't move words around. You can't add words, can't take words away unless, unless that's allowed within the expression. So now you may be thinking, No, How do I know? How do I know if I can change something or not? If I can take something out or not because it is okay sometimes. Well, that's what we're going to talk about in this course. For each expression, we learn, these are expressions for everyday life. Some of them have variations. But we can't just make any changes we like. And we're going to talk about whether or not we can, and if we can, which ones we can make. Now let's talk a little bit about the lessons. Each lesson is going to be pretty much the same. We're going to start by talking about the expression. I'm going to say it, I'm going to pronounce it so you'll know how to say it. Then we'll talk about any variations. Variations means yes, okay, it's fixed but we can change s0 to he or it in this one. Oh, okay. Okay. That's fine. So we'll talk about how we can change it if we can change it for each one, okay. So that's called variations. Variations. Any variations. Then we'll go over the meaning. What does this expression mean? Okay, and sometimes, Why does it mean that? Sometimes it's not so clear why it means that, but if we can understand a little bit of background or maybe history, we'll talk about that too. Then we'll talk about any usage that it might have. Because sometimes there will be an expression that means this in this situation, then the same thing might mean another thing in a different situation. Okay, So we need to understand not only the meaning, but the meanings in different situations. Be a little complicated. We're going to really spend time with each expression because I want to make sure that you really know how to use each one. Let's make that our little goal for the course. You know how to use each one in conversation. If you don't, something is off, maybe I haven't explained it clearly enough or you need to go back and watch it again. Knowing how to use it is very different from knowing what it means, right? Yes, that's right. So after we've done this part and we've done this part in each lesson, we're going to talk about examples. Examples will be a very important part of this course. We have to really study the examples carefully. I've been very careful in making the examples so that you, once you see the example, kind of get it as quickly as possible. Okay, so we'll look at examples for each expression we learn. So that real-life examples so that you feel like I know how to use it now, but now what should you do? Should you just sit there and listen and watch the course? That's fine. If you're doing it for relaxation. Find it relaxing, great. But I would really strongly recommend that you make your own examples. Make your own examples, make your own. Why? Because to learn anything you need input and output. Input and output. Input is watching each lesson, listening to each lesson, right? Output is yes, okay, taking notes, That's good. Okay? But output is also creating your own examples. Now you may be thinking, yeah, but that's hard. It's so hard. Yes, it is. You know what? It was hard for me to make the examples for this course too. I spent a long time making the examples for this course because I wanted to make sure that they were really clear. It was not easy. But if you do the same thing as me, Wow, you're going to really understand each one. You're going to know how to use each one really well, because you've gone through that difficult process, you've struggled, you've made something with it. So real learning is input and output. Input and output. Okay? That's the structure of the course. That's how the lessons are going to go. And I will see you in the first lesson.
3. Out of Your Mind: Out of your mind. Now this expression can be changed a little bit. We could change your to my, we could change it to her. We can put other people in there, but we can't say outside. We can't say generally brain, for example, we have to keep those words, but we can change, we can change who is here, your My her. And we can also add an S if we need to. Are they out of their minds? For example, this one can be used either as a question or as a statement. But first, what does it mean? Well, it means that somebody perhaps has suggested something crazy, insane, abnormal, maybe even irrational. And to let someone know that we feel that they are crazy, insane, abnormal irrational, or that they have said something or done something crazy, insane, abnormal irrational. We would say this. We would say probably either, Are you out of your mind or you must be out of your mind. So we would say, Are you out of your mind question or you must be out all of your mind, then probably an exclamation mark. Now, you can also change that a little bit to say me, right? You could put my here. If somebody wants you to do something that is crazy, insane, abnormal, irrational, then you can say, do you think I'm out of my mind? Do you think I'm out of my mind? I'm letting you know that I think whatever it is we're talking about words, actions, anything, whatever it is, is not acceptable. We're not going to do it. I'm not okay with it. What ever it is or maybe she's not okay with it or you're not okay with it. Or maybe you are okay with it. But you shouldn't be sure you're doing that. Are you out of your mind? Right? You should be not okay with doing this, but you're doing it. So what is wrong with you? It's kind of like saying that to get a better feeling about it. Let's look at some specific examples. We just had a baby and you want to move to another country. Are you out of your mind? So this may be a wife saying this to her husband. This husband and wife, maybe they just had their first child. This is a very stressful time, right? This is a very stressful period. A new baby, maybe financially, it's tough. I know some people who recently had a baby, their first baby, it's a tough time. I mean, it's hopefully a happy time but not an easy time. Now, why would you add something much more tough or at least as tough, but add it on top of this. Difficult or tough thing. We have a child, this is stressful. Now you want to do another stressful thing which is moved to another country. Are you out of your mind? So I can't believe you suggested this to me. Maybe I'm the wife. The husband has suggested this, you know, I think we should move to Sweden, something like that. We just had a child or you out of your mind, you must be out of your mind. If you think I'm going to jump into shark infested waters. Were in a boat or in a boat. And we're in maybe near South Africa. And near South Africa, there are a lot of great white sharks. And maybe we going to look at the sharks. And one person Suggests going into the water to look at them. Which sometimes people do. But of course it could be very dangerous. So because it's dangerous, it's kind of a could be crazy idea. If you're not protected from the sharks, maybe not so smart. And here is suggesting that I do it. You must be out of your mind if you think I'm going to jump into shark infested waters. Shark infested means the hits there are sharks everywhere. Okay. I'm expressing my disbelief, my disbelief. But you could imagine that I would be willing to jump into the water with a bunch of sharks. Are you insane? Are you crazy? What's wrong with you? Okay, so hopefully these examples make it clear. Now, I want to also make it clear that this expression is showing emotion. If you're in a meeting and somebody says something that you think is totally wrong and you say, Are you out of your mind? It's basically like pointing at them and saying, You're crazy. So you do have to be careful with this one. If you're willing to show your emotion, then use this. And it's something you might use with people you know quite well who say crazy things. If you don't know someone and you tell them they're out of their mind. Well, that, that might not be a good idea. It might make them uncomfortable. So usually this expression is used among friends, okay? And not for people you don't know well, unless you're talking about someone else or you're talking about another group and you're talking to someone you don't know well, you know, I was really surprised when, when this blablabla people said blah, blah, blah. I really think they must be out of their minds, then it sounds totally fine. So if you use it like that to talk about, I don't know, some political group or some company and to say they did something wrong and crazy, yeah, use out of your mind, that's fine. But generally, you want to avoid pointing at someone and saying You're out of your mind. Unless unless you know them very well. Okay.
4. Hit Home: hit home. This expression can be very powerful as a way to express emotion. Okay, Emotion. What does it mean? Well, our home is something that is our home is something that is close. It is close to us home. The idea of home is something that's very close. But I want you to forget the word home and think instead about the word close, because we're not really talking about our home often. But we will look at one example where we can actually talk about a home like a house. But here we're talking about something that's close to us. Usually because of our experience, The experience means something we did in the past, something we went through before. If you hear a sad story and the story is more sad to you because of something similar that you experienced before, you might say that the story really hit home the story the story about and then say whatever it is really hit home Now you could add for me hit home for me. Okay? What that means is I heard about this thing and now I feel some sort of connection to it because I've experienced something similar. When I heard it, it really hit home. It's like your heart is your home and it gets very close to your heart because it's very close to your heart because it's close to your experience you can feel it to, and maybe that causes you to have empathy for That's a T empathy for whoever this story is about or whatever the story is about. Maybe when you were young, you experienced a hurricane or a very bad storm. And then on the news, you see a story about a typhoon Typhoon, big storm, and you hear about the people who lost their homes. Maybe even some people were killed. You say that story really hit home for me? I really want to do something to help those people donate money. Go there, volunteer, Okay, because it hit home to you because you have empathy because of your similar experience. So let's look at some specific examples. I read an article about problems for foreigners living in China, and it really hit home. That means I suddenly feel I have empathy. I suddenly feel I have empathy with those people. Why? Well, I lived in China for a long time and I had some problems sometimes. And so when I hear about other people having problems, I feel empathy for those people because I've experienced it too. So it hit home. The terrible condition of poor people in Africa hit home for me when I visited last year. Now this one is the same and yet a little bit different. So let's talk about this one. Well, I experienced something, and because of that experience that I went through, I feel that I have more sympathy. I feel that I really understand this more, but here it's a little different because maybe I'm not as poor as the poor people I feel sympathy for, so you can use it as well when you're just close to something. Could be physical because I was actually in Africa or not. You're close to something, and because of that, you feel more empathy. Or we could say also sympathy. Also here we're kind of using it to mean realize, because I'm realizing something I didn't really realize before, or maybe realise something on a different level. Maybe before I knew that many poor people who live in Africa have poor living conditions. I knew it in my mind. I knew it, but when I saw it with my own eyes. Or maybe if I even watch a documentary about it, I realize it on another level. So now I I know it mawr somehow and so hit home. So just to be clear hit home can be used to express your feeling of empathy or connection to people who went through or experienced something before that you also experienced. But it can also be used to express mawr empathy or more connection to a group of people or something because of some other reason. Maybe you went there and saw it yourself. Maybe you saw a documentary and you saw a documentary right and that made it hit home. In that case, it's not a shared experience, but it is a feeling of connection, and it's a way to kind of realize it at a higher level. So here realize, is kind of connected to the meaning of hit home. Recently, I watched a movie about how we raise animals for food and how, in many cases there's a lot of cruelty. And after watching that movie theater idea of the human impact on nature really hit home for me. That movie made it hit home for me. So I hope you've got a feeling for this now. Finally, one way that this is used to close to home is when somebody says something that is actually so close to the truth. It may hurt the person that it's about, and maybe the person who said it wasn't trying to say something close to the truth. Maybe it was just a joke, right? What are you stupid? You didn't even finish middle school, right? Maybe someone jokes around that someone didn't finish middle school. So they said something not knowing that maybe that person didn't finish middle school or maybe high school. So it's very close to the reality. And because of that, maybe they feel very hurt. They might say, Well, your comments really hurt me because they hit so close to home. They hit too close to home. Home. Here is the truth, and the comment is the thing that hits, and it's close because it's nearly correct. Or maybe it is correct, too close to home, very personal, somewhat hurtful. In some cases, the simple thing to say would be her comment hit very close to home, and I was quite hurt by it. I was quite hurt then. That person might say, Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you I was only making a comment. I was only joking, for example, so we can use this expression in many different ways. Hopefully, you have a clear idea about how it's used so that when you hear it, you'll know what it means. But the basic idea is there's a connection between something and you or something and someone else. And because of that connection, there's a closeness that usually involves emotion, emotion, and it's often negative emotion. Sadness, hurt frustration. It's never usually Oh, yea, it hit close to home. It's usually about the negative emotions.
5. Gut Feeling: a gut feeling. Often added, Ah, here. A gut feeling. But we don't add an s new. We say I've just got a gut feeling. Now what does that mean? Well, there's a cool word. The word is intuition. I really like this word. You ever feel that? You know something, but you don't know exactly how you know it. Maybe you feel that the person over there doesn't like you and they're not even looking at you. You just have that feeling or you meet somebody and you just feel like you're going to be good friends with this person. That's just your deep feeling. Where does that come from? This is an intuition, an intuition, and it could be about lots of different things. Maybe you feel like the event tomorrow is going to be cancelled, and then it is. Oh, my intuition was right. And an intuition doesn't have to be right. Doesn't have to be right, But if you were right, you might say the next day. Yesterday I had an intuition about it, had an intuition about it, or we say, my intuition tells me Well, an expression that basically means the same thing is gut feeling or sometimes gut feel. I just had this strange gut feeling that the event the next day was going to be canceled. The event was going to be cancelled and then it waas just had this gut feeling. We often say we often say, Go with your gut, go with your gut. Okay? So when we're describing the feeling right now or when it happened, we say I had this gut feeling. I had, uh, gut feeling. And when we're trying to decide what to do, we really can't decide where. 50 50 Should I go on vacation or not? Ah, or should I go to Columbia or should I go to Thailand? I can't decide. Go with your gut. That means follow your intuition. And sometimes we say instinct as well. Okay, that thing about yourself that you can't quite understand You don't know exactly why you feel it's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do, or why you think this is going to happen or why you think something isn't going to happen. Whatever. You can't quite explain it. Intuition got feeling and again when we're making choices, we sometimes say Go with your gut. Go with your gut. Sometimes you'll see a gut feel. Sometimes you'll see a gut feel you're going to quit your job. Why? It's Google. One friend says to another. So you got a great job at Google? Maybe that's the company. You always wanted to work at your your dream job, but it just doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel right. You have this feeling in your stomach. You have this this gut feeling. You have this intuition and your friend thinks you're crazy for quitting. After you tell your friend I'm gonna I'm gonna quit. I'm gonna leave Google. But its your dream company. What's wrong with you? It's Google. I have a gut feeling that I'm doing the right thing. I have I have a gut feeling we could replace a with this or we could use the other expression. I can't explain it. I can't explain it, but I know it's the right thing to do. I have to go with getting smaller and smaller. My, I'm not gonna make it my gut. I'm going to go with my gut, go with it's sort of like follow. Follow the instinct, the intuition that I don't really understand. That doesn't mean that it is correct. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. But it's It's really just this really feeling that you can't quite understand. Just another quick, simple example. If you can't decide what to do, just go with your gut. Just go with your gut. Could we add feeling to this? Go with your gut feeling? Yes, yeah, you could do that. But here, when we use this one, go with your gut. It's not necessary to add feeling because we know what it means, okay, and this is really a common expression. When we're thinking about difficult decisions and we have maybe two sides, we have a logical choice, and we have our. We have our intuition. We have our gut feeling, and sometimes they agree. Sometimes they do not agree. By the way, when you are trying to decide something, we'll often say pros and cons when you're looking at the good things about doing this and the bad things about doing this. So maybe leaving Google quitting your great job at Google. Well, maybe more freedom to travel and blah blah, blah, blah and many bad things about leaving. But still still, even though it's logical, even though it seems like the right thing to do logically, I have to go with my gut, have to leave. It's just what my heart is telling me. And you could sometimes say that, too. It's what my heart is telling me what my heart is telling me. All right, so hopefully this one is clear. Try to look out for it when you're watching movies were reading and use it yourself. Next time you have a tough choice. Ask yourself, what is my gut feeling? Should I go with my gut or not?
6. My Heart Isn't in It: my heart isn't in it or we could say wasn't in it or we could say Your heart isn't in it her heart. We can change this part in this part, and if it's more than one person, we could say hearts. But basically my heart isn't in it or if it's in the past, my heart wasn't in it. Basically, this means I was not interested in that or I wasn't enthusiastic about it. We could say un enthusiastic, un enthusiastic. That means you're just not excited about it. Sometimes we use anymore when we use this expression. When we used to be excited about something, but we're not now. We used to be very passionate, but we have lost our passion. And so when we feel like we've lost our passion, we could say my heart isn't in it, My heart isn't in it and sometimes people will add a word here. They'll say my heart just isn't in it or my heart just wasn't in it. Her heart just wasn't in it, because when your heart is in something, you feel connected with it, you care about it. You think about it all the time. You're passionate when your heart isn't in it, maybe you're doing it. Maybe you're still going through all of the actions. You're still maybe taking care of your responsibilities. But you don't care about it as much anymore. You're not doing it with the same energy. And maybe that means it's time to stop, right? So sometimes when we talk about things that we quit and we say the reason we quit, why did you quit after five years? Well, when I started, I was really passionate. I loved it, whatever, whatever it waas. But after a few years, my heart just wasn't in it anymore. So I had to quit and move on to something else. Move on to something else, All right, so hopefully that's clear. It's pretty simple. I think this expression is pretty flexible. That means we can change a lot of things. We can change this and change that and add an S to that. We can change it a bit according to the situation, but let's let's look at a few examples. He's not a bad teacher, but I can see his heart isn't in it. So sometimes people do things because of money or they do things because of their duty or they do things because of some other reason. And when we see that someone is doing something, not because they love it, but because they want money or they have some other reason when we can see that that they don't love what they're doing, You might say I can see that his or her heart isn't in it. He's not a bad teacher, but I can see his heart isn't in it. This is something that I experienced in high school. I had a high school teacher and that teacher. It was obvious that teacher loved coaching football. That teacher loved coaching football, love to be a football coach, and the teaching part was just okay for him. He didn't really care that much about it, so he had the job. He got the job of a high school teacher because he wanted to be a football coach and maybe also because he wanted to have the summer off. He didn't want to work in the summer. He wanted a summer vacation, okay, and the teaching part came with those benefits. You have to be a teacher if you want to be a coach and if you want to have the summer vacation. But maybe maybe that person was not passionate about actually teaching, and I could tell I knew it was very clear to me, but it didn't mean that that person was a terrible teacher. Very lazy. No, I could just tell that that person, that teacher wasn't passionate. So this is about one of my high school teachers. He's not a bad teacher. He's okay. So So So? So I can see. I can tell his heart isn't in it. If your heart isn't in what you do, you probably won't do it well. And I think this is true about life in general. And I hope you can tell that I really enjoyed teaching English. My heart is in what I do. You can check out my YouTube channel. You'll see lots of lots of free videos, and I really like trying to find new ways to explain things or trying to find ways to make learning English fun or interesting. I like the challenge. I like making videos. I like explaining things. I like helping people understand English better. I enjoy all of the things about it. I really dio my heart is in it. Hopefully, that means I do. I do a pretty good job at it, But I think if I didn't like it, it would be pretty hard to keep doing. I think if I hated it, if my heart wasn't in it, it would be a big struggle for me. I wouldn't do it very well, I think. And I think if there's a teacher who doesn't doesn't do something, well, it may be just because their heart isn't in it. I like to think of it kind of visually imagine you have a person and ah, got a body. Eyes is a body and they've got legs and they're doing things blah, blah, blah. They're doing things. Yeah, they're doing things if their heart is here than they're doing things with excitement and passion. Yeah, yeah, passion who? And if it's not, if their heart is over here way over here, thinking about something else, passionate about something else than this person. Yeah, maybe they do an OK job. Maybe it's OK, but they're kind of just a shell, and they should probably just stop. It probably shouldn't do it because they don't like it. They truly don't like it there. Heart isn't in what they do, and people can feel that. So I really believe this is true about about life. I think it's important to do things that we really care about because they say you only live once, so it's better to do something that you enjoy, right? Right, right. All right, all right. So hopefully now you've got this one practice making your own examples. If you make your own examples, you have to think through not only what this means, but how to use it. And that process can help it stick in your mind and make it easier to use. When you need to use it in conversation, it's more likely that you'll use it more naturally. All right, I'll see you in the next one.
7. Go Nuts: go nuts. Go nuts. This one is very interesting because Well, because it's common, but also because it has different meanings. So let's talk about those different meanings. One is one is go crazy crazy. Now there's there's good crazy and there's band crazy So we use the word crazy and we sometimes say crazy in a good way. And maybe that's just crazy with excitement. And then there's bad, crazy, bad, crazy And that means toe to really lose your mind to lose your mind, to lose your mind. The other meaning of go nuts is to go too far to do something excessively. Okay? And we could say hope she went nuts with the With the sugar in these cookies Me's she used way too much sugar to do something excessively or to do something in excess to go too far to go too far. Okay, so we're either here talking about riel craziness, somebody really going crazy and becoming unstable in their mind. Or we're talking about excitement, craziness. Ah, but maybe in a good way, right? Happy, crazy. We use crazy that way to or we might be talking about just doing something way too much these air the most common. Okay. Now, how about the way we actually use this? Well, when we're describing someone's behavior, you can say she went nuts. She went nuts, as in totally crazy. Lost her mind. Or in this case, she went nuts with something. Meaning she did it too much. So it's a description of something. But if we're giving somebody permission to do something, go ahead. Do as much as you want. I don't care. Sure, Whatever you want to dio, we might say, Yeah, go nuts. Go nuts. That means do whatever you want without limits. Basically, this is not a description of what somebody did. This is permission to do whatever you would like to do. Can I? Do you think I could have some candy? Yeah, Go nuts. Now, maybe this is a bad uncle saying this to his nephew or niece. Eat as much candy as you want. I don't care. Sure. Go nuts. Do whatever you want. That doesn't mean that the kid is crazy. That doesn't mean the kid will actually eat too much. It means you can do whatever you want. You can have as much as you want. All right, so it's usually either a description or a statement to give permission to excessive excessive behavior. I think we need to look at some examples, of course. So during the during the holiday season, some people celebrate the holiday called Christmas, and one thing people do when they celebrate Christmas is put up. Decorations. Decorations might include a tree, maybe a Christmas tree with my terrible Christmas tree, a lot of lights and things on it. It might include many, many lights on strings and on people's houses. Got a house and people will put decorations outside with lights on them. In the tree of these air decorations outside and lots of lights on the house. And at night it's just lights, and some people really do a lot. Some people put out so many decorations that there electricity bill is very, very high, like thousands of dollars, but they enjoy it. So maybe a daughter comes home for the winter holiday, the winter break winter break from university. She comes home for winter break from school, and when she gets home, she sees that her father has put up tons and tons and tons off Christmas decorations and he doesn't usually do that. So maybe he I just did a little too much this year. Doesn't mean he's a crazy person. Doesn't mean when he was doing it, he was actually like that. No, just means he went too far. Probably did a little too much. Oh, my God, she says. When she gets home, she sees all the decorations. Oh, my God, you went a bit nuts with the Christmas decorations and we could add this year this year. Then he kind of looks embarrassed and says, Oh, yes, I guess I did. Yeah, I guess I did, I guess, makes it sound a little softer. You're right, you're right and a bit nuts also makes this a little softer. Instead of saying you went nuts, that's a little strong, but if you say you went a bit a bit nuts, it's kind of the same. You did too much. You did too much, but it's more gentle, so it's It's not mean or anything. You can say someone went a bit too far or you could say someone went a bit nuts. You went a bit too far with the Christmas decorations. This year you went a bit nuts, so it's kind of playful, but it's also serious, really. This is too much. What's the electricity bill going to be like? I'm not a huge sports fan. I don't really like sports when the Olympics come on every two years. I like to watch the Olympics, and I like to play Ping Pong sometimes. But when I was a little kid, I loved sports, especially football, and you might know it as American, American football, American football people hit each other, have big pads and helmets, what most of the world calls football Americans call soccer, by the way, soccer anyway. So there's one team and the team is called the Broncos. The Broncos and they're logo is it's, it's a horse is a horse. And sometimes the Broncos were a very good team when I was little and sometimes they were a very bad team and if they were bad for a long time and then suddenly they won, I would be so happy because I was such a huge fan, such a huge fan. I love this team and all the players. I knew everything about them and so I would get really excited if they would, after losing many times, if they would finally win, I might have said I will go nuts If the Broncos win tomorrow, I will go nuts if the Broncos win tomorrow. So there's a game and if they win their game against the other team, I will because I'm so excited. I'm so happy. So this go nuts is not a negative nuts. This is not crazy in a bad way. It's maybe crazy from excitement. And if we actually were sitting at the gain in the stadium, we might see the other fans go nuts. We could say the crowd, The crowd went nuts. That means they're screaming and they're waving flags and they're throwing things into the air and they're throwing beer and drinking beer. They are going nuts. They went nuts. We can always change. This form went well. Go, going, go. We can change it. OK, so this one is about excitement, excitement, and it describes someone's behavior or or a whole crowd. Maybe a group of people living in the countryside would make me go nuts. This nuts now is actually crazy. Now will it really make me go crazy? Will I actually lose my mind. Well, some people, when they say this, they really mean it. She she actually went nuts. She actually went crazy. He he is actually nuts. He's actually crazy. That's kind of Ah, in polite way to talk about a person who has lost their mind. Someone who is insane, actually insane. Okay. Living in the countryside would make me go nuts. I might really mean it, but probably not when I say living in the countryside would make me go nuts. Do I really mean insane? Crazy? I will lose my mind. Well, maybe in a way, maybe I will say one day. I can't take it. I can't take it anymore. Hopes any anymore. I need to move back to the city. So I haven't actually lost my mind. I'm not a crazy person in a in a mental institution, but I have changed my my behavior. I left the countryside. I couldn't take it any more. So in a way, yeah, it made me go nuts. I couldn't take it. If you can't take something anymore or you think you won't be able to you can say that would make me go nuts. That would make me absolutely nuts. That would make me totally nuts. Notice I can take out. Go here. It would make me nuts. Crazy, insane if I had to live in the countryside for so long or go nuts. Sometimes, though, this one is used as an exaggeration and people use it to say living in the countryside would make me go nuts. Working in an office all day would make me nuts as an exaggeration to just say I wouldn't like that. So sometimes when we want to say just, I wouldn't like that where I really wouldn't like it or it would make me frustrated it would make me frustrated. Sometimes we can say this That would make me nuts as a way to make it very clear to, um to make it stronger, right? And so it's a bit of an exaggeration there. That means it's a bit of a stretch. Not exactly what we mean. Like when we say I'm starving. Well, you're not really starving because you're look healthy. You know, if you were starving, you would be almost almost dead, right? So hopefully that's clear.
8. Lose Your Head: lose your head or to lose one's head. It also say lose his head, her head. We could change this to the past. Lost. Okay, will lose, we could say is losing so we can change this around the grammar of this. We can adjust if it's there than we would say. Maybe heads. We could say that. Okay, sometimes sometimes we say mine here losing your mind and sometimes will change this to cool. And there are some small differences between each one of these. So let's just let's just talk about how we actually use it. But first, basically what it means basically, this means to to lose control of your normal emotions or behavior. Okay. And if you can't keep that under control, for some reason something happened, you might say you lost your head. You lost your head, right? Because if you can, if you can imagine a person with head and the head falls off, where's my head? Where's my head? We can imagine that if you can imagine that you can kind of get a feeling for what this means. If our head is the thing that controls our basic behavior, are normal emotions then when we can't control these things, it's like saying we have lost our heads. This could be because of some very strong emotion. It could be so this would be something like to go crazy, go crazy or go nuts with anger. I was so angry. I'm sorry. I just I lost my head. I lost my head. I lost control. But it doesn't have to be a strong emotion like anger. Maybe this one is just about losing our sense of what is what is rational. Something is rational. It's fair. It considers all the factors of a situation and maybe because of any strong emotion, or maybe because we're drinking too much, maybe alcohol or whatever reason. We just we can't control that anymore. This stuff and we can't be this. We can't be totally rational, logical, balanced. We could even say so. That's the idea. I want to be clear. It could mean someone is very angry and not in control of their emotions, but it could be that they're very drunk and not in control of their emotions. Or it could be that something just in that moment caused them to lose control of their their balance. It could be almost anything, really. It just means they do something following this stuff, without consideration of why they're doing it, something very, very impulsive. And we use the word we use this word here we use the word composure. And the word composure is a really good word, because it it is what we usually describe ourselves as having. We have composure. That means everything is okay. I'm in control. But if you see someone being attacked and you run over there and beat up the attacker, the person who's hurting an innocent person, you maybe did something good. You protected them. But you also lost your your composure. It doesn't have to mean anything positive or negative. Although it is usually used in a negative way, it is usually used in a negative way, often related to anger, anger often about being impulsive, suddenly following an emotion that just pops up doing something a little bit a little bit crazy. Not rational year rational, unbalanced. Okay, on this one, if people say she lost her mind, this one is just about going crazy. I lost my mind, lost my mind. She lost her mind. Is different than she lost her head. She lost her head, means just in the moment she lost her composure. She lost her balance. She lost her mind. Is amore permanent thing. It's now the kind of person you are a person who has lost their mind. You're now a crazy person or what people would consider to be crazy. You know, she's totally lost her mind. That's a state a condition now. So I want to be very clear about the difference or how people use this and this this'd ISMM or permanent ah condition. This is temporary, short term, and it happens usually quite suddenly. And it's something that we can get over and we can return to our balanced emotional condition. Two are controlled rational behavior. Okay, so I know that might be a little bit tough to understand. We will look at some examples, okay? And then this one to lose your cool. This one is losing Your cool is is always about anger. Okay. Sorry. I just lost my cool for a second. Usually this one is also very short. Short term, somebody says something. For some reason, it makes you very angry. And you just wrap become furious. And then after you say, I'm so sorry, I I just lost my cool. I lost my cool, and that could be the same as lost my head. It could be but lost. My head is a little more general than to lose your You're cool to lose your cool, which is just about anger. All right, so let's look at some examples here. We have two people talking, and maybe it's Ah, maybe it's a boyfriend and a and a girlfriend talking with each other. And the night before they had they had a fight. That doesn't mean physically a fight could be just a argument. Justin Argument. And maybe this argument was a heated argument. If someone describes an argument as a heated argument, it means there was some anger. There was some anger involved. I had quite a heated argument last night. Again, it does not mean there was any violence. It doesn't mean there was any violence. Just means maybe emotions are high. There's some anger, and so the next day maybe this boyfriend wants to apologize. He wants to say Sorry. So he says, I lost my head a bit last night, I'm sorry, I shouted And you adding a bit does make it softer. You could say a bit softer. It makes it softer. We don't have to have that in there. Could we say I lost my cool a bit last night? Yes. I lost my mind a bit last night. No, remember I lost. My mind is more of a permanent thing, so we couldn't say I'm sorry I lost my mind last night. I lost my head. I lost my cool a bit last night. I'm sorry I shouted at you. Well, I'm just glad things are back to normal now. I hope it doesn't happen again. This is his girlfriend and she's going to forgive. Forgive him for shouting. And maybe she did too, she might say, And I'm also sorry that I shouted at you. They were They were in a shouting match. When there are two people yelling at each other, we say sometimes it's a shouting match like a competition. Sometimes I hear my neighbors well. What's going on over? There was a shouting match, but anyway lost my head lost. My cool would work in this situation now. What if it was a party, and this person was was just drunk and said some stupid things and was just being, ah, crazy drunk person and wasn't angry, but, uh, is just feeling sorry for the the sloppy drunk behavior I lost. My lost my head a bit last night. I'm sorry, I I'm sorry. I, uh, started throwing bananas at everyone. Maybe there's a party. A really drunk person. They're throwing bananas and fruit at people. Okay? The next day, then apologizing to the host. Well, I hope it doesn't happen again. Maybe wouldn't say this part, I hope. I hope it doesn't happen again to the host of the party. Could we say if it's the drunk one? Could we say I lost my cool? No, probably not. Because losing your cool is about anger. Okay, so losing your cool is for anger. Losing your head could be firm or kinds of things going crazy, being drunk, being angry, being very happy, sometimes being defensive right, or just generally losing your stability, your emotional balance. All right. Let's look at another example. Next example. There are two friends. One has recently become very wealthy. Maybe he or she started a business and is now very wealthy. We won't go into the details of that. And this wealthy person who's newly rich, newly rich, um, has a friend who maybe comes over to see his his new mansion or nice house or Ferrari or whatever. So this one friend believes maybe that money can make people do do crazy things. And I suppose that could be true, right? And maybe this this friend is worried that that his friend will will lose his balance, lose the balance of his life and not not remember what's what's really important. For example. Okay, you're rich now. I'm happy for you. Just don't lose your head. Don't lose your head. So this is not about anger. It's nothing like that. This is about asking the other person, this newly rich person, to remember to remain stable emotionally and in his personality, in his lifestyle, maybe even. But if he if he suddenly spends all his money, if he buys new cars every day, maybe that could could be described as losing losing your head. Maybe that could cause this person who is now newly rich ah, lot of problems, okay and maybe caused them to lose all that that new money that they've made, right? So maybe this friend is just trying to help trying to give give advice to his friend. All right, so I hope it's clear now to lose your head can be used in lots of different ways for lots of different kinds of things. But the general idea, the general idea, is about losing balance, losing composure. And then we can have those variations to lose your cool. But that's only about anger and lose your mind. But that's usually Mawr permanent. Okay, so I hope I hope this one is is clear.
9. Bored to Death: bored to death, Bored to death or bored to tears. Okay. We sometimes say Bored to tears. Tears? Yes. Bored to tears. All right. What does this mean? Actually, it's very simple. It means very border. Remember, Board is how you feel. Not the thing itself. We would say the movie. The movie is Boer Ring. Yes. I N g. The movie is boring. I'm bore Bored. I'm bored to death. So I think it's important to know what we cannot say. Can we say the movie is boring to death? No. The movie is boring to death is incorrect. I am bored to death. She is bored to death. She is bored to tears. They're bored to tears. They were bored to tears. Yes, Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, All of those things are OK. What about other adjectives, Like sleepy to death or maybe excited to death? Can we say that? No. Bored to death is the expression bored to death is what we say. All right, so that's basically what Ford to death means. It's also like saying so bored, extremely, extremely bored, Very bored, extremely bored, So bored. The meaning here is pretty simple, but let's look at a couple simple examples. How are you? I'm bored to death. Maybe one friend calls another friend because this person wants to do something fun and this friend says, And how are you at the beginning of the phone call or how's it going? House it going? And this person said on Bored to death Perfect. Perfect. Well, do you want Teoh? Do you want to? Do you want Teoh? Go see a movie? Are you not really. I would rather go to a gun range. Oh, that sounds fun. Yeah, Let's go. Let's go. That is, by the way, a thing that people in America do for fun. In America, people will go to a gun range or a shooting gallery to shoot guns for fun. Yeah, Yeah, that's true, but, uh, I've never tried it, but maybe I will. Maybe I will. Okay, let's look at another example in this one. Someone is giving general advice. If you feel bored to death most of the time, you probably need to find a passion, maybe a hobby, A passion to pursue. To pursue a passion means to go after something to to follow your dreams or find a goal that you can work toward. We often say a passion passion. The adjective, by the way, is passionate, passionate. Could we put in tears here if you're bored to tears most of the time? Yeah, sure. So what does? Bored to death ad when we use it? What does it add beyond just saying board, but just makes it It makes it stronger. Okay, So sometimes when you want to make boards stronger, use bored to death or board too tears.
10. Comfort Zone: comfort zone comfort zone, and we usually say your comfort zone, his comfort zone, her comfort zone, my comfort zone. It's a thing that we have. And I think it's good to sort of understand what his own is first, so that we can have a kind of picture in our minds of visual in our minds. And then once we have that when we talk about the examples it will be will be very clear how people use it in daily conversation. So a zone is a zone is just a, ah general area, and usually it does have clear lines or a border right, a clear line. So let's say let's say this is a place in a city and it has this shape. This is his own. This is his own. Often when you take a train, the amount that you have tow pay the fare or the ticket will depend on depend on the distance and maybe the distance. The whole train line will be broken into zones zone $12 zone to $3 zone $45. So it's it's an area. It's a general general area. It doesn't have always a certain shape, but it usually does have clearly defined lines, but it doesn't have to be a square or a circle. Well, that's the basic idea. Okay, now, when we think of a comfort zone, I'd like you to just imagine a person here and a zone around them, but not a physical zone. And this circle is a line, and it represents the limits of what is comfortable to this person and all of the things on the inside of this. These are things that this person feels comfortable doing things that this person is used to, things that this person is used to. Maybe they're used Teoh meeting with friends and hanging out, used to doing their job. Maybe they're used to staying in their home town, visiting their family. Maybe this person is used to Okay, maybe they speak a second language used to speaking a second language. But there are some things outside of this little zone that make this person feel nervous things this person is afraid of. Maybe it's that third language speaking it with strangers. Maybe it's public speaking, Wu speaking in front of 2200 people. Maybe it's talking in front of a camera, right? Some people are afraid of that, Like me. I'm very scared to talk in front of a camera. And maybe it's Ah, maybe it's going to bars and meeting people. Maybe it's travel, international travel, any kind of activity or behavior or thing that you can think of that is scary to a person. We might say that this is outside of this person's comfort zone, and so we often used the expression step or outside of going to erase this So it's more clear. Step out or outside of your, for example, your comfort zone. What does that mean? Well, that means you. You leave this and you try this, you leave and you try this. You leave and you try this. Now, maybe that will bring this thing into your comfort zone. Maybe not. Maybe you remain afraid of talking on camera. Maybe you remain afraid of traveling to another country even after you do it are flying or whatever, but you might bring it into your comfort zone. But the basic idea is you step out of your comfort zone as a way to challenge yourself, and this is often a good thing. Sometimes people will say off. I don't like being here. Why not? Because I'm out of my comfort zone. I'm out of my comfort zone here. Sometimes people will say out of my element out of my element here, Uh, but often when we say step out of your comfort zone, step outside of your comfort zone were encouraging someone to do something new as a way to challenge themselves as a way to grow as a person as a way to as a way to expand you're her horizons and be a stronger, better, more capable person. So maybe you feel uncomfortable using a lot of natural English expressions. Maybe you're taking this course, and that is outside of your comfort zone. And just to be clear, this is this is totally subjective. That means something that is in your comfort zone. Maybe outside of mine, something in my comfort zone. Maybe outside of yours, right? I feel very comfortable talking on camera, very comfortable. And maybe maybe you don't. Maybe you do, but maybe you don't. So comfort zones are unique to each person. So hopefully you've got the idea. Let's look at some specific examples. Sometimes it's healthy to step outside your comfort zone. In fact, it may be the only way to grow as a person. Notice sometimes here? Not necessarily. But sometimes this could be someone giving general advice may be encouraging a friend to try something new, right? Sometimes sometimes it's OK to step out of your comfort zone. It's the only way to to maybe grow or develop as a person. We don't always have to talk about the comfort zone as a thing to step outside of. Sometimes we're just talking about the things that we're comfortable with or the things we feel most comfortable doing. So it's not always used to talk about self improvement. That's just, I think, the most common we could say. I'm in my comfort zone when I'm with my old friends in my hometown. I'm not talking about stepping outside of my comfort zone. I'm not talking about what's outside of my comfort zone, really. Maybe I'll mention it. But I'm really just describing the things that I enjoy most, the things that are most natural and easy for me hanging out with my friends in my hometown . I feel totally relaxed, totally comfortable. Okay, so you can use comfort zone to talk about those things that are both inside and out of it. The comfort zone, that line. And you can use it to talk about the adventure of stepping over the line to step out or step outside of your comfort zone. And that is usually when we're talking about challenging ourselves or self improvement. And I think it's very important to remember that visual. I always like to imagine a picture when I learned something new, because that helps me remember that helps it stick. So remember that picture of that line around the person and the things that are in it, that bubble, those things air comfortable with scary things, air floating outside. They've got scary, scary faces, and maybe maybe if you try one, it will come into your comfort zone eventually.
11. Bugs Me: bugs me, bugs me, bugs me. Okay, We'll have a visual for this one. Definitely. But let's say it. Which is common here. It sometimes we can add in really or something like that. Really? It really bugs me. And then we can say when we could add when? After it. So it really bugs me or it bugs me. And, um, something might bug her or him. Okay, If it's a question and we're using it as a question, then we'll take out the s. Does Does this. Does this bug you does this bug You okay? Now, what does this mean? What does this mean? Maybe you're getting a feeling about it from this example. Let's start with something visual, OK? Because if we can, having a visual really helps make it stick. Right? So there's a little bug draw a little, but 123123 It's got little mouth. It's a little bug. Okay. And this bug, this bug is in your shirt, and it's a small bug, and it's walking around, and, uh, it is not comfortable. It irritates you. It really irritates you. It irritates you. That means you don't like the feeling it makes you owe frustrated, right? It bothers you. It bothers you. This is what you can keep in mind on. We can replace Bug by irritate and bother you. Does this irritate you? Does this bother you? Yeah. So? Basically it's the same idea. But it's not only for physical things. We could use it for physical things. My, my, my hand has been bugging me recently. That's not a question. My hand has been bugging me recently. My hand. So it doesn't mean that it hurts. Maybe it does a little bit, but it could just be a funny feeling. It's not used for extreme pain. No, if there's extreme pain, we don't use bug. Usually Bug is irritation, discomfort, frustration. These are lower than an extreme feeling of, Ah like that. That would be it's killing me. We might say something is killing me. If it's very painful, instead of it's bugging me, they would say, My hand has been killing me recently. That's that's different. That's a lot of pain. Okay, so we can use this for physical things and non physical things. Right? So have you ever seen somebody chew gum like this? It really bugs me when people chew gum with their mouths open. It bugs me. It bugs me. Okay? It bothers me. It irritates me. I don't like it. Okay. So you can use it as a reaction to something that Yeah. Yeah, it bugs me. Does this bug you? Yes. It bugs me. No, that doesn't bug me. Maybe it's a sound. Maybe it's a little sound like there's ah, maybe a electrical machine over there going. Someone says that's does that sound bug, you know? No, it doesn't bug me. Kind of mine. Don't mind. Is kind of the opposite. I don't mind. Okay, this is the idea. Hopefully, this is clear. Remember our visual. And let's look at an example. It really bugs me when people crowd around the bus door instead of waiting in line. Now, this is a real one for me. Can learn something about me. It bugs me, bothers me. Okay, here's the bus from above. Okay. And here's the door. And people are like this trying to get into the bus. And people are throwing elbows. People are throwing throwing elbows. And I would rather I would rather wait in line. You have one person and another and another and another and another and another and another and another. And everybody goes into the bus in an orderly fashion or way, orderly fashion or an orderly way. That would be nice. So let's not crowd around the bus store. This is something that really, really bugs me. But now let's go on and look at another example where we use Bug slightly differently as a person actually doing something to another person to bug someone to bug someone. Okay, let's look at an example, and then we'll talk about how it's used. So let's say we have a parent and a child, okay? And the parent is asking the child, maybe 11 or 12 years old, to wash the dishes. That's that's this child's job to wash the dishes there, there chore. That's their chore. A chore is something that kids have to do around the house. My chore when I was a kid was washing dishes every 33 times a week, and also I had a dust every Sunday, had to dust the whole house. That was my That was my chore. That was my chore. Okay. And this this child doesn't want to wash the dishes, but but his or her parent keep saying, need to wash the dishes, washed the dishes. I told you to watch the dishes. You said he'd wash the dishes. When are you gonna wash the dishes? Ah, finally. Finally, the kid says, Stop bugging me about washing the dishes out. Do it tomorrow. Okay, so this bug is different than irritates or or bother? You could say it. Stop bothering me. If you said stop bothering me about washing the dishes, that would be okay. We wouldn't hear, say, stop irritating me about washing the dishes. Irritation is an uncomfortable feeling. These are both actions that another person is doing to sort of push someone. So this is more like, Stop pushing me! Stop pushing me about that. Pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing Stop nagging me. Nagging nagging is to constantly repeat something that may annoy a person. But because you want them to do something will you stop nagging me about that? Please, please stop nagging me about that. Usually nagging is something that annoys annoys someone. But the person who is nagging needs something to be done. Maybe they have a very good reason to nag. And we sometimes say when we don't want to bother people. We don't want to make people feel annoyed, but we need them to do something we say. Listen, I hate to nag. I hate to keep bugging you about this, but you promised you would send me those running out of space vacation. I'm going to just write pics. I've got room for picks. Those vacation pictures you promised you would send those vacation pictures that you took. You still haven't done it. I know. I've asked you several times. I hate to keep bugging you about this, but could you please send me those pictures? Stop. Stop bugging me about that. Stop nagging me or Oh, yeah, sure, I forgot. I'm sorry. Here you go. Here you are. OK, so this one is very useful because we're talking about doing something to somebody else to keep reminding them maybe. Or another thing that makes us feel annoyed about something. All right, so make your own examples. Try to make it stick in your mind so that when you want to use it, you can do so easily
12. You Wish and In Your Dreams: you wish and in your dreams, in your dreams you wish and in your dreams were doing these together because they really mean exactly the same thing. And they're used pretty much in exactly the same way. Basically, these two are responses to someone saying something unrealistic. That probably won't happen. And we're saying to that person that they're just having some kind of fantasy. But really, we think it's not going to happen. Or maybe it won't happen soon. Your friend says something that they really want to be true. They'd really like to have that happen. And you want to tell them that that's kind of unrealistic or crazy. You might say You wish you wish or in your dreams in your dreams. Now there's a difference between how these air used, so we'll talk about that, too. But this is the basic idea. It's a response, a response to hearing something that's unlikely or unrealistic. It's almost like it's a waste for you to say that maybe it's fun. Maybe it's just a joke. That's that's fine. But then the appropriate response to that joke is he. Yep, in your dreams you wish. This is usually not used very seriously. It's usually used in a very casual, joking way. Not always, but usually. And if we wanted to say something very seriously, we might say, Well, you know, I don't think that's I don't think that's very realistic, unrealistic That would be very serious way to say this, But when my friend says they want to live on the moon and I say You wish I'm recognizing that it's a ridiculous and funny thing and I'm being funny and ridiculous a little bit. Two. It's almost like that thing is true Onley in your mind only in your fantasy. Onley in your dreams Onley in your dreams or It's just something that you wish, And I know that, huh? So it doesn't have to be used jokingly, but it often is. So there are some differences in the way that these two are used. This one is usually by itself. It's used alone as a set phrase in your dreams as a response, and this one can be used in exactly the same way. However, this one can also be used at the beginning of a sentence about what is unrealistic. For example, you wish you were Yeah. Yeah. You wish you could date someone like that. So maybe maybe you have ah, friend, girl or boy who is really attracted to someone who is either very handsome are very beautiful. Kind of perfect. And they have a major crush. They have a major crush on that person and crushes. When you really like that person, you feel very attracted to them. Right? Maybe you're infatuated. We say I have a crush on, uh, crush on some person. Her, him, whatever. Ah, and it's it's a It's a kind of, ah, distant thing. You're in love with someone. Maybe they know who you are. A crush is often far away. I've crush on Brad Pitt. A crush on Angelina Jolie. Someone might say they don't know them. They don't know each other often. It doesn't have to be. Could be a friend. But maybe your friend doesn't know that you have a crush on them. Okay, so anyway, anyway, the idea here is you put this one at the beginning of the thing, and it's often to repeat what was said before. Uh uh. I have such a crush on him. Him? Maybe I have a friend who's a girl and she has a crush on some boy and I say, Yeah, you wish you wish you could date you could date him Then I might say he's out of your league out of your league or if you have a friend who's a guy and he says, Oh, she's she's perfect She's perfect. I'm infatuated. Maybe even I'm in love. You wish you could. You wish you could date her. She's out of your league out of your league means you have no chance of actually being with that person. Ah, and it could be for a number of reasons, but it's often because of level of attractiveness, to be honest. So in this case, maybe my friend is a very average looking person, and he's maybe he's a little overweight. Nothing, Nothing too special. And she's she's a model or she looks like a model and, uh, you know, absolutely perfect features way out of his league. It's very unlikely that she would like to date him, so I use this expression like this. Okay, that's the idea. Let's look at some examples. So my brother tells me he's thinking about buying a new car and I asked, What kind of car are you considering? Kind of car. You thinking, Thinking about looking at these Airways that we can express what we might get, what we might do? I'm considering doing this. I'm considering buying that. I'm looking at getting ah, something. And then my my brother says a Ferrari. Okay, this is Ah, this is a supercar, right? This is a luxury car, and it is way out of his price range out of his price range. Before we talked about something being out of your league, right? Like that person is out of your league, you have no chance of dating that person. For whatever reason, they he or she is out of your league. Well, if it's about money and buying something, then we say, Well, it's out of your price range. You have no chance of buying that going to by Ferrari. I thought you would say something like a Subaru or a Toyota or a Chevy. Know you've said a Ferrari. That's ridiculous. And I might say here are here. Are you kidding? Are you kidding? Except I don't need to say Are you kidding? Because it's obvious that my brother is kidding here. He's joking. He's not serious. So if I say Are you kidding? It's almost like I'm stupid. I don't need Teoh. Ask if he's kidding. It's a dumb thing for him to say. He's just being funny. So I can just be funny to ha You wish you wish. You wish, huh? In your dreams, huh? In your dreams, In your dreams. Okay. Same thing here. But if I wanted to put it into a full sentence, then I would say something like, Yeah, yeah. You wish you wish you could buy up. Excuse me by ah Ferrari. I know that he cannot. Now, if it's someone who could afford a Ferrari, then you couldn't say that. It's not so obvious. We have a very wealthy friend who you know is wealthy. And your friend says, thinking about buying a Ferrari. You probably wouldn't say. You wish. You would probably say Cool. Can Can you give me a ride? Can I? Can I have a ride? But here I know the full situation. I know what my friend looks like. I know what she looks like. There's no chance. I know how much money my brother has. I know how much of Ferrari costs. No chance in your dreams you wish and you can use you wish at the beginning of the sentence , even if it's repeating exactly what was said. I want to get a Ferrari. You wish you could get a Ferrari, and that is okay, too. All right, so this one's pretty simple and I think pretty easy to use. And it's a good way to put a little bit of humor into this kind of conversation when we're just talking about what we would like when we're just imagining things that we want. This is a really good expression to use in response to those sort of things we we want, which maybe we can't get, at least at least not right now.
13. All in the Same Boat: all in the same boat, all in the same boat. Okay, basically, this means we share a common struggle or we could say difficulty and really, we don't say we share something great and wonderful All in the same boat were in the same boat. Now we can also say, in the just in the same boat, pretty much always. This one is used as a shared bad thing, but usually something good comes out of that or often something good comes out of that because we're all in the same struggle. We can do something together, we share something, and this one has a perfect visual. So what's the visual? What's the visual for this one? It's too perfect. Here's some water and here's a boat and there in the water, the boat in the water. Do you and the person here in person here, person here and a person here, person here in a person here and all of these people are dealing with exactly the same kind of problem. And it's not only for people, by the way, it can be used for groups for companies, for countries, okay, and it could be used for huge groups of people like the entire planet. For example, if we're talking about oh, the environment, then we might say we're all in the same boat. The entire planet were in the same shared situation. What's the situation? What's the bad thing? What's the struggle? Maybe maybe it's pollution. Maybe it's air pollution. I've seen some bad air pollution and it affects everybody. And we're all in this shared space where there's this problem, so we can maybe all work to fix it. So this expression has this feeling of being both bad a problem, but at the same time, good. Because we can. Now we can now pull together, pull together perfect for boats because pulled together means we row the boats. We pull the oars at the same time we pulled together so we can all go faster If we say Let's pull together, It means let's all get together. Plan, organize, coordinate. Make sure that our efforts are used efficiently and get this done. We really pulled together and got it done quickly. It's a very positive expression, so because these people are in this shared boat now, they can get their or is out and row quickly in this direction. Maybe they all pull together, pulled together because they're in the same boat. But it could be used in so many different ways. Maybe that's about there. Emotional condition. Maybe all these people are depressed. Maybe they'll have depression. That's kind of abstract, but they're still kind of in the same boat, and they might be able to help each other because they all understand each other right. There's an advantage of being with people who share your circumstances, share your circumstances. Okay, maybe there are several companies competing and one is way stronger than the others. And so the losers are all in the same boat. All of the companies that were killed and crushed by this huge, successful business on, Then maybe they can get together and try to try to maybe resist or fight against this big company. It doesn't always mean that people have to pull together, but it does suggest it, and it makes it possible because we're sharing this struggle. We're all in the same boat, were in the same boat. My computer just died, and I think this time it's for good. Well, now we're in the same boat. I guess I've been going to the library when I need to use the Internet. Okay. My computer just died. Computer died. Computer dying. Could be because of the battery. Your phone dies. That doesn't mean it's gone forever. That means you need to charge it. Charge it. Right. But this died for good. Here means permanently permanently. That means forever. It's not going to change anymore. Maybe my computer broke and I got it fixed before. But this time I don't think it can be fixed. It's forever. It's for good. Sounds strange to say that for good means permanently. Right. But it can. It can. It often does. I'm going to quit smoking for good. I'm gonna quit smoking for good. Never again. Never again. I'm quitting for good. Okay, well, now we're in the same boat. That means my computer was broken too. We are now two people with a broken computer. So we're in the same boat. Neither of us have a computer. How do we live without computers? Okay, I guess. Just makes it softer, a little bit softer. How bad is that? I've been going to the library when I need to use the Internet. So in America, if you need to use the Internet, you can go to your local library and you can sign up for time to use a computer and get online. Get on the Internet. So now maybe this person and this person can go together. Does that mean that they're helping each other because they're in the same boat? Yeah, not really, Not really. But at least they they understand each other, so it doesn't have to actually be that they take action or they do something together. But at least now they understand each other, or they're in the same situation, which can allow them to have empathy for each other. Empathy, empathy. Here's someone describing a time in the past when they struggled with a group of people who normally disagreed and couldn't work together. But because of the struggle, they were able to OK, so it's a story of how people who usually don't talk to each other did and found common ground, which is something they share, something they share common ground, I think because we were all in the same boat, we were able to empathize with each other in spite of our different opinions in spite of our different opinions that really allowed us to work together. I think tough times can unite people. Difficulty can bring people who are very different together for a common purpose to get something done. To get out of this, maybe difficulty out of these tough times, Unite or come together, unite or come together. We could also say Forget our differences. Pull together, find common ground. I think you get the idea. Try to make your own example. You can speak it if you like. If you do that, record yourself so that you can listen to it again. Make sure to use this expression and try to make it different from mine. Use your own experiences. Talk about your own life. That's really a good way to come up with examples. Otherwise it can be difficult.
14. Beside Myself: beside myself. B side myself. This this expression is used to talk about strong emotions, strong emotions, good emotions, bad emotions, just strong emotions. Hey, motions that are powerful joy, fear, excitement. Now sometimes we just say this without anything After it, we say I waas beside myself, okay? And then we have to assume we have to assume what the emotion is now. Generally, if someone just says I was beside myself, depending on the context or what was going on at the time, it's going to be fear or happiness. Probably I was beside myself. That means I was very scared. I was very scared, Okay? I was beside myself. I was very happy. So fear, happiness, fear, happiness. We usually don't talk about or use this expression to talk about things like depression, because maybe it's a strong emotion, but it's also kind of a slow emotion, so we wouldn't say I was beside myself with depression. But we would say I was beside myself, where she was beside herself or they were beside themselves with and then say the emotion, fear, joy, excitement, happiness. Hey, that's pretty much how it works. And it's to emphasize how strong it is. If you're beside yourself with fear, you're not just a little scared. You are absolutely terrified. If you're beside yourself with joy, you're not just happy. You are jumping up and down. You are ecstatic. You are X tab salute, Lee ecstatic, jumping around like a crazy person. Yes, I was beside myself or I was beside myself with joy. I was beside myself with excitement. OK, that's the idea. And for the visual, I guess you can imagine you're so whatever. Have happy excited that you can't even contain it within your body. So you have to make a copy of yourself to stand beside you. Now there are two use. You can't handle it in one body alone. That's a good way to remember it. I think doesn't really mean anything like that. But I think it's a good visual. OK, so examples she was beside herself when she found out she'd won the scholarship. She was beside herself. Now what emotion is this? Is she happy? She scared. What's the emotion which she won a scholarship. That means she's very happy. She's very excited. She's jumping up and down. Scholarship is something that you get to help pay for university, right? You want to help pay for your school. And maybe the students who do really well can get scholarships. The award scholarships to Onley. Really, really good students. Students who apply and perform really well. Maybe write the best. The best application letter to the group. Who decides which students get scholarships. Okay, so if you get one, especially if it's a big one, maybe it's a $10,000 scholarship, right? Maybe you're going to be very, very excited. You might feel so excited that you say I'm beside myself right now. I'm beside myself right now right now. Very common expression. Now this one, If we say I'm beside myself right now, it's pretty much always going to be about happiness. Joy, Excitement. Yes, yes, yes. And if we were afraid, we're scared of something we probably wouldn't say right now. Just a common usage thing. We might just say right now I am beside myself with fear with fear, okay, or just I'm beside myself. I'm beside myself this right now, usually for this kind of this kind of example or this kind of emotion. There was a knock on the door at two in the morning and I heard loud breathing sounds. I was honestly beside myself with terror. This is a scary story. This is fear during bed and you hear someone knocking this late two in the morning and then you hear that would be scary. I feel scared now. I'm scared beside myself with fear. Okay, so we have too often add we often, when we talk about fear, will add the emotion after it, using with with fear with panic. You could say these as well. You may be wondering why I always right at an angle. Maybe that bothers you. And the answer is, I don't know. It's a good question. I never really thought about it before. I guess I just I feel like notes should be kind all over. I like the sort of all over feeling. I think it helps to make it more of a shared experience, almost like a relaxing thing. I think it's relaxing for me to do notes this way anyway. I never thought about it before, and I don't know why. I just asked myself this question. Can I write the other way? Let me try Hello. Well, that's very strange. Oh, I don't like that. I can write straight, though. I can do that. No problem. Easy.
15. Uncalled For: Uncalled for, uncalled for. We often say the whole thing as that's uncalled for. Or sometimes, hey, that's uncalled for as a reaction, as a reaction to something that happened or something that somebody said which we don't like or we don't think is right. So we say it's uncalled for it's inappropriate, and this is what it means. It's inappropriate. Or we could also say it's unnecessary, unnecessary, not necessary, inappropriate. That's basically what it means. And again, it's usually a reaction. If somebody says something and you feel like what they said was not right for the situation. And you want to let them know that you can say that's uncalled for or I don't think that is called for. So a variation of this, variation of this would be that isn't called 4. We'll look at two examples. One example we'll look at is about something rude that somebody did, where somebody said, then the other example we look at will be about something doesn't need to be there. And it's not rude, just doesn't have to be there. So it's an called for and that case, unnecessary or excessive. So let's look at those examples so that we can get a better feeling for this basic expression, which we use to say, we think something is unnecessary. So one friend, let's say Sam meets his other friend, let's say Tom and asks his friend Tom what he thinks of his new tie and new type. What do you think of this what do you think of this tie? And Tom says, very directly, very bluntly. Blunt is totally honest without thinking about how the other person feels. Okay. It's extremely ugly, very ugly. Well, you could have told a white lie. Could have told a white lie. I think that would have been good. A white lie is a little dishonesty that may be protects other people's feelings. Right? So we say, oh, that was uncalled for this is what Sam says. Maybe Sam would have preferred that. Tom tell him. It's okay. It's fine. It's pretty good even if he thought it was extremely ugly. So he might say that was uncalled for. But then Tom could say, Well, you asked and this is the response that is common when somebody says something that the other person doesn't want to hear as though he's saying, Well, you shouldn't ask me if you don't want the truth. And maybe Sam should know that Tom is a very honest person. If their friends, maybe he knows that he is totally honest, brutally honest. Maybe he's that kind of person. Maybe he's asking the wrong person if he wants a white lie. But anyway, him saying that was uncalled for is a way for him to let Tom know that he doesn't like the answer that he got and it doesn't have to be about a white lie, could be about anything. If somebody says something unkind to a colleague, right? In whatever situation a colleague gets fired and someone else says, Good, I'm glad they got fired. Another one might say, Hey, hey, you don't have to say that about him. He just got fired. That was an called for okay. I'm letting you know that I don't think that's the right thing to say. Inappropriate. Alright, Let's look at one more example like this so that we can have a better feeling for how to use it. You're rude behavior at the party was completely uncalled for completely uncalled for now, maybe wife and a husband went to a party together. And at the party the husband had a few too many drinks and he started making some rude jokes. And it made some other people at the party feel a little uncomfortable. And when they get home, this guy's wife wants to let him know that he said some things he shouldn't have said. He made some people uncomfortable and he needs to really think about that before they go to another party. So she can say you're rude behavior. We don't have to say rude here because we know what we're talking about. So if she just says your behavior, that's okay too, at the party was completely that means very much uncalled for unnecessary inappropriate didn't fit into the situation we were in. You shouldn't have said it basically, that's the idea. It can be used to describe uncalled for behavior and can also be used when you hear something and you want to react to it and immediately let somebody know you think whatever it was is inappropriate. Hey, that's uncalled for, right? But now let's look at another example where this expression is used very differently. Let's look at an expression that's about something that just isn't necessary. The extra security at the event was uncalled for, in my opinion. Alright, extra security. Let's say for example, we are at a university and there are going to be some famous speakers talking at this event. Maybe they're scientists. And because of this, the unit that the university has decided to beef up to beef up security. Now what does beef up mean? A beef up means to sometimes strengthen. That's an E strengthen or increase or increase something. Usually it means to strengthen it, to make it bigger, to make it a little more powerful. So maybe they usually have two people on Security now they have six just to be sure everybody is going to be safe. By the way, we will throughout this course be talking about new and related expressions. So we're not only learning the expressions that we're talking about in the course, but many others that are related which will come up. The difference is I'm not really going to explore the ones that I mentioned deeply. Usually I'm going to be exploring the main expressions that we're talking about. So for those that we mention or talk about briefly that we don't really discuss in depth. You can find them in other examples online. Try to find examples that include them to better understand them and maybe we'll be able to talk about them more in a future course. So anyway, the extra security at the event was uncalled for, in my opinion, my opinion. So one person thinks it's okay. One person thinks it's not. Opinion is subjective. You think so? I don't or maybe we all agree that maybe we don't. It's about each person's view. So in this one, it's not that anybody has done anything rude. It's just that I feel that this doesn't need to happen. This doesn't need to happen. This is fine. It doesn't mean people are listening to me. I'm just saying my opinion, my view on this, I could be wrong, but I think that this is not necessary. Okay, so this one doesn't focus on the rudeness part. This expression doesn't focus on that at all. And anytime something happens and you feel like it just doesn't need to be there. Or you can say, well, it's kind of uncalled for I think. Okay. So it has these two different pieces, the rudeness piece, inappropriate and the not necessary piece, which is usually just an opinion. So hopefully that is clear.
16. Never Mind: never mind. Never mind. This is a very simple one, but it's extremely common, and I want to make sure it's clear how to use it, because if you say it in the wrong place, it can make people feel a little bit awkward. And I think one of the main reasons you're probably taking this course is to avoid using expressions that make people feel awkward. You want to know how to use them exactly. So what does never mind mean if you don't already know? Never mind is basically like saying forget, Forget what I said Disregard that disregard my my earlier request and it can be used in lots of ways. Sometimes we say Never mind when we ask somebody to do something, then we change our mind and decide that we don't want that anymore. And then we say, Never mind or sometimes we use it when somebody didn't hear us and they say What? And we say it again and they say, Sorry, what? I didn't hear you and we say off, never mind, because we kind of give up. Never mind can also mean, And this is not as common, really not as common It can also mean not to mention, and I'll show you how to use use it in this way. But I want to focus on the one that's really common in conversation. Never mind, never mind, because it's way more common. And this one is something I have to tell you about because you might look it up and say, Hey, what about this one, right? Even though it's really is much less common, I think the best way to get the feeling about the 1st 1 is to look at an example. So let's do that. 1st 2 people, one person comes into a room and says, Linda told me you wanted to talk to me The other person who was in the room says, Oh, never mind. Why would this person say Never mind. Well, maybe this person, Let's say this person is Lisa. This person has a question, and the only person who can answer this question is, Is Tina? Tina knows the answer. This is Tina. This is Lisa, Okay? Lisa needs help from Tina because Tina knows the answer, but she doesn't know where Tina is. So she asks Tina's friend Linda toe, Ask Tina to come to where Lisa is to help. But in the middle of this process of maybe Linda finding Tina, Lisa figures it out. Okay, So when Tina comes into the room and says to Lisa, this is getting complicated. Linda told me you wanted to talk to me. Linda told me, You have a question. That's why Tina says, Oh, never mind. And then might say, I figured it out. And then Tina might say, Are you sure? Are you sure you don't need help? Are you sure? Yes, I'm sure. I figured it out. And then if you want to be polite here, she'll say, thanks anyway. And this is very common when someone has offered to help. But we don't want their help or we don't need their help anymore. We say thanks anyway. It's like saying, I appreciate that you're trying to help me. I like that you're trying to help me. However, I don't really need your help. This is a very polite way to say no, thank you. No, thank you. Okay. All right. Let's look at another example. This is a very noisy place. Very noisy. Okay. Are you ready to go? We're ready to go. Sorry. What? That means I didn't hear you. By the way. Only say what? Generally with people you know? Well, friends can say what to each other. Generally it's not polite to just say what? What? But if you're good friends, it's OK. Sorry. What? I said, person one. I said, Are you ready to go? I ready to go very loudly because it's a very noisy place. What they can't hear? This person now has given up. Maybe this person is pretending not to hear because they don't want to go. They want to stay, who knows? But this person is now ready to give up their original idea of leaving. And so they say Never mind. Never mind. That means Don't ask me what I said anymore because I don't want to say it anymore. And this is a little different than the 1st 1 because now this person may still have the desire. But because of the noise, they've decided to give up. Where is the previous one? She figured it out. And so she doesn't need help anymore. This one is really common. This never mind is is very common. Oh, and I realize I'm sorry. I I generally write this as two words, but in fact many people will write it as one word. So it's OK to write it as one, because many people will. But I generally do write it as as to just to be clear about about that, Um, it's often used when we're talking about jokes. If you tell a joke and another person doesn't get the joke, they don't get it. I don't get it, Get it. That means they don't understand the They don't understand the humor, Get it and you say the joke again. And they say at this point, if they get it, they should be laughing. But they're not laughing. They don't get it. Then they say, OK, tell me one more time. Tell me again. Tell me again I'm really gonna pay attention. You just say, Never mind. Never mind, because it's only fun to tell a joke once. If you have to tell it three times, it's not fun anymore, right? So never mind. Never mind. Okay, that's how this is used Now, I said I would explain the other the other way to use, never mind on bits like this. And I think the best way to explain what it means is to just give you an example came do you Ah want Teoh go hiking tomorrow? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me with with this foot injury injury means you got hurt with this foot injury. I can barely walk. Never mind. Go hiking. So it is sometimes used like this. I can barely walk, let alone go hiking. Never mind Go hiking. In fact, I prefer to use here, let alone let alone. I think that's much easier to use but some people will use. Never mind. Never mind Go hiking. This basically means you want me to do this thing. But I can't even do this thing. And if you can't do this thing, you definitely can't do this thing because this is easier than this. This is a kind of this, but it's harder. So are you kidding? Are you kidding? But this one is not as common as the previous way to use. Never mind. And again, I prefer to use, let alone. So I hope that's pretty clear.
17. It's a Long Story: It's a long story. It's a long story, this expression we use when we feel reluctant. Usually we feel reluctant to explain details. That doesn't mean that we won't explain the details. It just means we feel at first that we don't really want to. If somebody asks us what's going on with this, they don't understand something. Or maybe there's a personal issue that we're having, and someone asks us about it we might use. It's a long story to let them know that maybe we don't want to talk about it. Or maybe we can talk about it later, and sometimes we adhere kind of. It's It's kind of a long story, and if someone really wants to hear the details, they might say I've got time. They want to push. They want to push for the details that maybe you're not eager. You're not eager to explain your reluctant They might say, Well, I've got time. That means well, I'd like to hear it. I'd like to hear it. I'd like to hear the story. That means please tell me what's going on. Please tell me whatever it is that you're reluctant to say either because there isn't enough time, which is sometimes the reason or because it's very personal and maybe a little embarrassing , and you just don't want to explain it. So you might use this expression when you want to avoid talking about the details of something that to you is a little bit embarrassing. You're a little bit embarrassed. You don't really want to say the details because you feel a bit weird about it. So that's when it's probably most useful to say when you'd like to avoid that discomfort. So let's look at some Let's look at some specific examples. I thought you were in England. What are you doing here? It's kind of a long story. All right, So maybe you have a friend and you run into your friend in the supermarket. Maybe you live in New York and your friend lived in New York and you bump into your friend . That means you meet them by accident. You didn't plan to meet them in the supermarket, but you know that your friend moved to to England and was planning to start a new life there, start a new a new life there with his Ah, maybe with his girlfriend. That's the last you heard. That's the latest information that you had before. But now here's your friend in the supermarket. I thought I thought, uh oh, I thought you were in England. What are you doing here? It's kind of a long story. This could be because we're in the supermarket. And maybe if we meet up for a cup of coffee, maybe maybe my friend will tell me over coffee the whole story. Or maybe maybe this person. My friend doesn't want to tell the story because it's uncomfortable. It's a bad memory, and maybe it's a little awkward to talk about for some personal reason. Maybe once they got to England, he and his girlfriend had a very bad break up. They broke up, broke up, broke up, means that two people separated right. They broke up. They had a bad break up, so he had to come home. Or maybe it's some other reason, maybe something with his family anyway. He doesn't really want to talk about it. Maybe he will. But immediately when I ask, he's a little reluctant. Remember that word reluctant? And so he says. It's kind of a long story, not the right thing to talk about here in the supermarket with a lot of other people walking around. So then I might say, Well, why don't we meet up for a cup of coffee tomorrow and we can talk about it? I'd love to hear about it. And if he says, Yeah, OK, sure. Okay, then we can We can meet tomorrow and talk about it in a better, a better setting, right? So there are all kinds of reasons why someone would be reluctant to share details. But anyway, this expression is probably the easiest way to make it clear that now is not the best time to share those details. Why isn't your daughter still at Harvard? So I know that your daughter went to Harvard, But now I know somehow I know that she's not there anymore. Might be a little bit uncomfortable for you. You might not want to talk about it. So you just say long story. That's pretty clear to me. Okay, you really don't want to talk about it. Something happened. Something serious happened. Something really serious happens, and you really don't want to discuss it, So that's pretty clear in this situation. notice that we just say long story. This is quite casual, but it's also very clear, and it's the same as saying it's a long story, just a shorter way to say the same thing. There is another idiom that I want to mention, because it's similar to this, but different, and that is to cut a long story short. This one is similar in one way. The similarity is someone doesn't want to share all the details. But the reason is usually different. Someone might say to cut a long story short because there really isn't time to give every detail. So we say the beginning and then say And to cut a long story short, use this expression on, then just say the ending. And the reason here is probably actually actually to save time. So it's different than it's a long story. It's a long story. Usually has that kind of negative feeling of something strange happened. Something awkward happened, something embarrassing happened. I'm reluctant to share the details here. It's not that I'm reluctant. If there were more time, I would love to maybe, but it's just that there isn't enough time, so I'm going to jump to the end. So someone says Dr Carter, how did you become so successful? Maybe this is at a big event where there are lots of people. Dr. Carter is up on the stage. She's a famous doctor, someone in the audience with a microphone. Dr. Carter? Yes. How did you become so successful? Dr Carter says. Well, I got into a good school. And to cut a long story short, I worked really hard. And here I am. So, of course, many details are skipped. She had to omit many details. Maybe because there isn't enough time at this event. Maybe because there are other people waiting toe ask questions. But here it's a way to give the general feeling of how she got here hard work without going into too many specifics. All right, so that one is similar, but not the same
18. To Each Their Own: to each their own to each their own, and you often also hear his own. So you see his there sometimes. But I prefer to say to each their own, because I feel it's more. It's more balanced. I just like it more, and I think this one is becoming a little more common. But what does it mean? So to each, their own basically means Don't don't judge people for for what they like or dislike. Don't judge people for what they like or dislike. Don't say if somebody like something that you don't like. Oh, that's stupid. I don't like that right? We could instead say well, to each their own to each his own. That basically means you have your opinion. I have my opinion. Or it could be used when somebody else says something kind of judgmental, judgmental to me. Or maybe something that I do or think is just unusual. I can say well to each their own. You have your preferences I have. My preference is so it's It's kind of a way to show others that you are willing to accept what they think and you're open minded, have an open mind and It's also a way to tell someone that they should be maybe more open minded if they seem to be judging you too much and you want to explain your actions that not everybody is the same. We all have different opinions, right? Sometimes you'll hear people say different strokes for different folks, and that one's not very common anymore, so I don't really want to include it in this course. But we'll say different strokes for for different folks. It's kind of the same idea. Everyone has their own thing, all right, so I want to be clear. This one's not so common anymore. This one is much more common, and it's used in the two situations that I described, and you will still sometimes hear his instead of there. But it doesn't change the meaning. Okay, And you may wonder, Is there anything I can change? Can I change to to something else? Can I change each to each other? No, it's really just used like this, we might say before it. Well, we sometimes say Well, when we want to try to explain something or get somebody to see our point of view well, to each their own. Let's look at some examples. I don't like to tell other people what to think to each their own. That's what I believe. That's what I believe. So in my way of looking at things from my perspective, I'd like to respect other people's opinions, other people's way of looking at the world, whatever. Because if everyone was like me, the world would be a super boring place. Okay, so it's kind of like saying, uh, I am glad that people are different. That's kind of how it's being used in this example. This example, I think, is a little bit more interesting because it shows how it can actually be used in a real conversation. Have you ever been talking with somebody? And the person you're talking with says something that you feel is not necessary. Uncalled for. Maybe on maybe it's a little too judgmental and you want to kind of in a friendly way. Remind them that perhaps it's better to be more open minded. Perhaps it's good that there's diversity. Can you imagine if everybody was all wearing exactly the same thing? Wouldn't that be a very weird and strange world to live in? But I suppose, to each their own. But basically, I'm saying to my friend, Hey, you know, maybe you don't need to to say that. Don't you think it would be better to just accept what people want to do? So it could be for something like a person's behavior or their attitude, but it could also be something very simple, like their clothes. So in this example, one person says, Did you see her clothes so strange? So strange. Maybe someone is wearing something really weird. Maybe someone is wearing very tall, strange shoes and yellow pants and an orange shirt, and one person wants to be a little judgmental. Okay, the other person me. In this case, maybe I want to remind my friend Hey, you know what? Who cares? It's interesting. People wanna wear weird clothes. That's entertainment for free. We should be paying for this. Yes, I suppose. But to each their own, to each their own, I suppose, is a way to sort of half agree. This is really useful. If you say I suppose it doesn't mean you fully agree. It doesn't mean you're saying yes, yes, yes, completely. Yes, Totally. What it means is I understand what you're saying and I agree a little bit. Maybe it's not normal, right? But I see that your attitude is kind of judgmental. And so that's what I want to comment about. So this is actually very useful to Okay, so next time someone around you says something that you feel is a little too judgmental, you can say in your own mind or to your friend to each their home.
19. You've Got to Be Kidding: You've got to be kidding. You've got to be kidding. You've got to be kidding me. We often add me to this one you've got. So you've got to be kidding me. Now, Do I sound happy when I say that? Well, if I'm saying it correctly, no, usually we see something that we dislike, something that is disappointing, Something surprising, surprising or an overall feeling of exasperation, which is not a good feeling. Exasperation is when we feel like suddenly were faced with something that we don't want to deal with, and we just can't believe it's riel. Maybe we can believe it's real, but we don't want to believe. It's really can't can't can't believe this. Something bad happens. We sometimes say, I can't believe this. I can't believe this. If something like this happens, we might also say You've got to be kidding when we hear about the bad news, when we confront or face the bad thing when we want to show our exasperation. Can't believe this can't believe this. You've got to be kidding me. So we'll say either this one or this one, but it doesn't mean we really can't believe it. It means that we don't like what's happened here. Usually, usually, sometimes, sometimes it's used to express shock. And when we say you've got to be kidding, we usually don't actually think that someone is kidding. Kidding means joking, telling a joke, Not serious. In fact, people will also say, You can't be serious. You can't be serious. Usually it's not actually a question toe. Wonder if someone is being serious. It's just a way to express this emotion. You'll often see this in movies when someone hears about some bad news and they want to express this frustration or exasperation about the bad news. Ah, you've got to be kidding. You've got to be kidding. You've got to be kidding me. There are so many movies that use You've got to be kidding or you've got to be kidding me, or you have to be kidding or I can't believe this in a scene. This could be for very extreme things. For example, you find out that you're not allowed to go into the country because your visa is invalid. That's pretty bad to go all the way home, you might say. You've got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding. Could be for something like that or something very simple. You ask somebody to buy something on the way home and they forgot. And when they get home, you say, Where's my Where's my chocolate? Why? I forgot it slipped my mind. You've got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding me so it could be used for all of these. That's fine. It has a very broad range of possibilities. Could be used in many ways, and it often depends on our tone and our face. You look at the person you can tell how upset they are, how surprised they are, how frustrated they might be. It's not Onley. Four frustrations. Sometimes it's just disbelief. Sometimes it's just disbelief at something, and it doesn't have to always be bad news, right? So let's say your best friend, your best friend got a fantastic job at a great company. I got this job. You've got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding me. That's great news. That's great news. But for a moment there, it was really surprising to me that that happened. So I want to be clear that this is often used to express an emotion for when bad things happen but can be used to express surprise. When something surprising happens and we hear about it or we see it, it's often in the moment someone's trying to do something I can't just can't That's got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding to express that feeling, to express that feeling, Really, You got in Wow, Harvard, you've got to be kidding me. That's great. That's great. The very native expression. I think the better way to get a feeling for this one is to look at some examples. Two people are traveling together, and one of them goes into the hotel, talks to the receptionist and finds out some bad news about their reservation or booking. Booking is you have a room at a at a place where you have a place at a place you've arranged it before a reservation or booking. Uh, booking is often for hotels. All right, anyway. Hey, so I just found out, Learned. Got some new information. Hey, so I just found out that the hotel accidentally gave our room to someone else, and now they're fully booked. Now they're fully booked. That means there are no more rooms. This hotel is full. We had a reservation, we had a booking. And now it's gone because they made a mistake. You've got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding me. I I don't need the other person to confirm. Oh, no, I'm not kidding. Usually not. Sometimes it's used that way. You've got to be kidding me. No, I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding sometimes, but usually that's if it's It's good news. But here we don't need toe Have that. You've got to be kidding me. What's the point of a reservation if they give it to someone else? What's the purpose of a reservation if they give it to someone else? You've got to be kidding me. Can't believe that. I can't believe this. What are we going to do now? We have to sleep on the street. This sucks. You're married. You've got to be kidding me. Three weeks ago, you were single. So this is surprise. This one is disbelief. And maybe for this one, the person could confirm it. No, it's true. It's true. It's true. It's it's no joke. It's no joke that means we're being serious. Has no joke. I got married. What? What? I didn't even know you were dating someone I wasn't. So you're saying you met someone and then got married right away? Yep. What if you've got to be kidding me? No. Now, this person doesn't have to say it's true. This person might just be expressing their surprise, their disbelief about what happened. Okay, that doesn't mean it's bad news. Maybe it's good news. It's just surprising. Maybe I should add an exclamation mark here and here. Really? Like that. You're married, You're married. If you had a friend who was single and then three weeks later your friend got got married, wouldn't you be shocked? Yeah, of course. You've got to be kidding me. Notice how I say this? I'm not really saying. Got to be got to be kidding, right? I say, gotta gotta gotta. Which actually I pronounce as a d gotta, gotta, gotta gotta You've got You've got to be kidding me. Could say you've gotta or you gotta Some people will say, Even though the grammar is weird, you gotta be kidding me. Americans often say it very quickly. Yes, you gotta be kidding me. You gotta be kidding me. You gotta be kidding me was a d sound and the tea makes got to got to You've got to You've gotta You've got to you gotta You could say either one. If you want to be more natural, maybe you've gotta or you gotta And then, Ah, this is the explanation about why it's surprising if this person had been dating someone for two years. Maybe it wouldn't be so surprising. Maybe this person wouldn't say this. Okay, so this one can be a little bit complicated. When you're making your own examples, try to pick out something that you think is shocking and write a little dialogue between two people. See if you can make it fit so that it feels natural so that when you need to use it in real life, you can
20. You Read My Mind: you read my mind, You read my mind or read my mind, Or are you trying to read my mind? Okay. What does this mean? Well, this one basically means you. You knew or no what I was thinking about. That's basically it. I want to be clear that read and read, read and read are spelled the same way. Pronounced differently. Read is in the present tense, and it's like read and red is in the past tense. And it's like, read. So read, read. I'm going to read your mind. Okay, We can use it that way. A mind reader, Someone who knows what you're thinking. Maybe there are no riel mind readers, but that's the idea. But we often use the expression You read my mind when you said exactly what I was thinking . I was thinking something just in my own head and you said it out loud. It could be about what we should do, but it could also be just any any thought. Basically, someone says just what you were thinking about pretty much exactly. And then we were surprised by that. Surprised by how you read my mind, you read my mind or We're trying to come up with an idea and I'm thinking about an idea and I say, What do you think? And you say an idea And it's exactly the same as the idea I was thinking about when I say yes, yes, I agree. You read my mind, you read my mind. It's almost like you're thanking the person for saving you the time eso that you don't have to say what you were going to say. Sometimes it's used like that, and sometimes we can read each other's minds. If we're very close, we have a good relationship. So I think this one is. This one's pretty simple. Pretty simple. You can read my mind. There's a good song about about this, and I think there it's about one person knows the other person's ah, desire, right So this person knows what the other person wants. It's not always about speaking right. Maybe maybe someone's feeling very tired. Uh, for example, my shoulders are very sore and husband or wife walks up and starts giving, giving this person the shoulder massage. Ah, it feels very nice. You really read my mind. You really read my mind. So nothing was said there, I wasn't going to say something. And yet the other person, my husband or wife, knew what I wanted new the thing that I needed. So it works in that case, too, And I'm recognizing that I was just thinking about how painful my shoulders are, and then my wife came up and gave me a shoulder massage. You really read my mind. Okay, so let's let's check out a few examples. What should we eat? What should we eat? How about pizza? You read my mind, You read my mind. I was thinking exactly the same thing. It's kind of like kind of like you said it, which we talked about before. But that's a statement that we agree with, and it's usually a strong emotion. This could be for any sort of thing. It's just a thought that was going on on Another person, knew it or guessed it or recognized it, and we're acknowledging that that happened. So this one, I think, is Mawr General could be used in more ways. I think one of the reasons were such good friends is that we can basically read each other's minds notice This is the e pronunciation. We can basically read each other's minds now basically, is often put year two mean, Uh, it's kind of like that kind of like that. And it's a very American thing, and it's kind of said more often by younger Americans, maybe even younger than me. It's basically like I don't use it that often in fact, So this example is, I think, more common for younger people. And I want to make that clear because it's important to have a feeling for what's used more often by younger people. What's used more often by older people. I do use it. Sometimes it's basically it's basically the same. If there are two types of coffee Costa Starbucks, which one is better that they're basically the same? They're basically the same, but this one's a little more expensive. This one maybe is a little bit more smoky or something like that, so I will use it that way. Basically, I'll use it that way anyway. Anyway. We can basically read each other's minds, means that we always know what the other person is thinking. Maybe it's about where to go today, but maybe it's also about preferences. Maybe it's about saying what the other person was thinking. It could be about lots of different things. If two people are close and they know each other well, they can say, Maybe we can basically read each other's minds. Sometimes we will say thoughts. Sometimes people will say thoughts, but mine's is is more common. And sometimes there will be a conversation back and forth. Do you know what I'm thinking? Do do you know what I'm thinking? One friend says to the other shopping day, shopping day, meaning today we're going to go out and go shopping all day, right? Do you know what I'm thinking? Shopping day? You read my mind. You read my mind. Okay, so it can be used like that, too.
21. Don't Sweat It: Don't sweat it. Don't sweat it now. No sweat. You may no means easy. No sweat means easy. We say all that's no sweat. It's no sweat. It means it's easy for me. But don't sweat. It doesn't mean Don't do something hard. No, it doesn't. Doesn't usually mean that. Don't sweat. It means don't worry about it. Don't stress. Don't stress about it. If you stress about it, you're going to maybe feel uncomfortable. Does it mean you actually sweat? If you worry and probably not? Probably not. But if we want someone to stop worrying, we might say Don't sweat it now. Sometimes we use Don't sweat it to mean you might know this one. You're welcome. Okay, if someone says thank you so much, you really helped me a lot. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We might say that. Don't sweat it. That means don't worry about saying thank you to me. Don't worry that you have to be very, very thankful. And you have to make me cookies or something. I'm happy to help, so don't sweat it. But usually we're talking about worry, and we're trying to make other people not worry so much if they are already worried. One very common phrase that includes this is don't don't sweat the small stuff. In fact, I think this is the name of a book. If I remember correctly, don't sweat the small stuff. What does that mean? Don't sweat. The small stuff means don't worry about things that, uh, that aren't worth worrying about. Some things you should be concerned about. You should be worried about. Maybe the education of your Children, if someone is concerned about that, are worried about that. Maybe that's good. Maybe you should be concerned about the education of your Children. But if it's maybe about not having a certain pair of shoes, and I'm concerned that I'm not going to be cool because I don't have these shoes now, maybe I'm sweating the small stuff. In fact, we don't usually use this in the positive. We don't usually say I will sweat this. No, we don't usually say it. We use it in the negative. Don't sweat it. Don't sweat the small stuff. Don't worry about the little things in life. If you do that, you're always going to be concerned or worried or upset, right? If you let the little things make you unhappy. Then you're always going to be unhappy because life is full of little things. Little inconveniences. So this is a very, very common phrase. Don't don't Don't get upset by very small, maybe issues or inconveniences or problems. Okay, so an example of this one. I forgot to lock the door. I forgot to lock the door. Don't sweat. It will be home in an hour. So maybe two people go out. They have to do something. They have to maybe run errands, going out to do things to get things done. And, ah, one person is very now worried because what if someone gets in? What if someone takes our money or takes our valuables in our home? It could happen, but do you think that's going to happen in this hour that some strangers going to try to open our door? We're going to be home in an hour. Don't worry about it. Don't stress about it. It's very, very unlikely. Now it is a reasonable thing to be worried about forgetting to lock the door, but because we'll be home in an hour, it's it's may be reasonable to try to tell that person not to worry too much and that it will probably be OK. OK, so it's It's kind of a way to comfort someone to comfort them. Let them know it's going to be OK so that they can actually stop worrying. Stop worrying and we could say Don't sweat. It will be home in an hour. It will be OK. It will be fine. In fact, it will be okay. It will be fine. Is kind of like saying Don't sweat it in another way. I'm so sorry I cracked your phone screen. I feel terrible. I feel terrible. Can you imagine cracking someone's phone screen? It's not your phone, It's their phone and you broke it. That's terrible. You might feel so guilty. Well, if someone someone feels very guilty and you want to let them know they shouldn't feel guilty, they don't need to worry about paying you back or anything like that. You can say, Don't sweat it. Don't sweat it. I'm buying a new phone next week. Basically, I don't care if you crack the phone screen. It doesn't matter to me. Next week I will have a new phone, so it's Okay. So hopefully, by saying that they can feel a bit more relaxed. They don't need to feel so upset about breaking something that's mine, which is a bad feeling, right? Maybe Maybe I can alleviate their guilt. Remember, Also, we can use this to mean you're welcome. Okay, You can use it to mean you're welcome, but it really means you don't need to worry about feeling thankful. Do you ever feel really thankful? And you feel like you really need to do a lot to show someone how thankful you are. Well, you're kind of worried about not doing enough to show someone how grateful or appreciative . We're thankful you are right. You feel like all I need to make them a cake, and they need to buy them a Christmas gift. We say, Don't sweat it. Don't sweat it. That means you don't even need to feel that way, because why I'm so happy to help you do it all right? Pretty easy. Pretty simple. I think this one's easy. Remember, though it is different than no sweat. No sweat means it's easy
22. I'm Beat: I'm beat, I'm beat, I'm beat. It means I'm tired now. Does it mean tired as in physically tired or tired? As in sleepy? Tired? Actually, it could be either one, either one. Maybe it means tired as in I'm so sleepy. I'm so sleepy or tired, Isn't I did so much today that I feel exhausted, physically exhausted and we might say What causes us to feel very tired? By the way, this is not just tired but very tired. We say I'm beat from I'm so beat from work today. I have so beat from work today. I just want to lay down on this self, Uh, watch a little TV fall asleep. I'm so beat from work today. Or you could just say I'm beat. I need to go to bed. I'm beat. I need to go to bed. This one, though, is quite casual. You wouldn't usually use it in a formal situation. You might use it with friends might use it with people in your family. If you say I'm beat, they will know exactly what you mean. They'll know you're tired. It's a very American phrase. So let's look at some simple examples. I'm beat. Let's just stay home and watch a movie. Let's just stay home and watch a movie. Maybe there was a plan. Maybe you're planning to do something with a family member. Go out, do something. But now you don't want to. Not in the mood, Not in the mood. I don't feel like it. Not in the mood to go out and do something fun. Why? Cause you're tired. I'm beat. So instead of going out, let's just stay home and watch a movie. It's much more relaxing. And sometimes when we say we're beat, we follow it immediately by the thing we want to do because we're beat because we're tired . I'm beat. I'm going to go. I'm gonna gonna often instead of going to, But it means going to I'm gonna go take a shower and goto bed. I'm being I'm gonna go take a shower in governments, you know later it's like that. It's like that. So let's look at one more example. I was totally beat after the gym yesterday, so I might skip today. I'm still a bit sore, still a bit sore. Just to be clear, we could replace I with he she We were totally beat after the gym. Okay, we can replace it with that. What we can't say is you beat me. That would have a different meaning. Someone beats another person. It means they hit them right? So we just say I'm beat, She's beat, okay? It's an adjective to describe the person. It's an adjective to describe the person. That's all that's all. If we use we, then we should say we were or we are. If it's now after means. The thing that made us that way is that I'm beat after work. I was beat after work. I'm usually totally beat after work. After the gym, I was totally beat. I was totally beat after the gym. That's the thing that made us feel tired when we used after We know exactly what it is. That's the thing. That's the reason we're tired. OK, it's not for another reason. Completely so I might skip today means not go when I usually would. If you should do something, but you don't you might say I'm going to skip going to skip it. I'm still I'm still a bit sore. Sore sore means your muscles hurt. Maybe your muscles and maybe your Maybe your joints as well, Like your elbows and knees. And your muscles are just painful because they did a lot of work. You worked out at the gym, Sam. I'm really beat from the gym. I'm going to skip. Maybe so my body can recover so my body can recover. So I think this one's pretty easy to use. What is something that makes you feel beat exhausted? Describe it, write it down or speaking example. Record yourself. Then listen to it again. Try to make little corrections. Okay, I'm beat. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go have Ah! Nice hot cup of tea. Sounds nice. So you guys in the next one?
23. Get a Life: get a life, get a life. Now this is used in two different ways. One meaning of get a life is a a comment or a criticism of someone who you feel is lazy wasting time or maybe being unproductive. And sometimes that could be socially. So sometimes when people say you need to get a life, you need to you need to get a life. It means I feel that your life right now is not a very good one. You're wasting a lot of time. Or maybe you're not connecting with anybody. You need to go out there, you need to make friends. You need to expand your social, social network or social circles. And so it could be used as a general criticism for someone who isn't doing something that's up to a certain standard. Maybe your standard. It's not good enough. Lazy. Get a life, get a life again. It is critical. So this is something said by May be very good friends who want to help you and encourage you and push you family members who went to help and encourage and push. You really need to get a life. You gotta get out there work on your career, make more friends and stop playing so many video games. Get a life A could also be used for people who just want to be critical of you. If they don't approve of what you do, they might say You just need to get a life. You just need to get a life. But I think it's more common for people like family members who want to push, push someone they know who may be wasting a lot of time, push them toward maybe working harder or making more friends or whatever. The other way to use get a life is when someone is being inappropriate. Or maybe they have invaded someone's privacy. Or maybe they're being immature and they say something or do something that shows that there immature or they are invading your privacy, getting into your private space or they've said something generally inappropriate. The response to that might be get a life. What are you talking about? It's it's not really saying you need to work harder or anything like that. Very different. It just means Oh, don't don't say that kind of stuff. What are you doing? What are you talking about. Go away, You're immature. That's inappropriate. So it's It's a criticism still, but it just has a different feeling and actually has a different meaning. I think the best way to get a better picture of this is to check out a few examples. So let's do that kind of like the example I mentioned before. You sit around playing video games all day, get a life, get a life, and again it could be girlfriend. Could be a boyfriend could be apparent. Could be a brother. Could be a sister. Could be a friend. Could be a friend. I think you're wasting your time. I think you're playing too many video games and you could be much more productive. And maybe life is passing you by passing you by. Life is passing you by. You are going to regret playing video games so much if you don't do something, if you don't get a life and start working. No, I want to be clear that that's not necessarily my opinion, but it's a common opinion. So I think you know the idea that video games maybe keep people from being productive. Uh, actually, I think video games are becoming a very cool job. So, anyway, let's let's not let's not take this as a criticism of video games. Okay? Just an example. Justin Example. Maybe there's a girl who has a friend who likes to gossip. She likes to know everything that's going on with her friends. She likes to know. First, she wants to get the scoop. Get the scoop. I mean, she can no. First, What's happening? Okay, so she says to her friend, I heard that you and Dan are spending a lot more time together. Do I hear wedding bells? That means are things getting serious? Are you guys going to get married? Get a life? Will you get a life, will you? We've gone on one date, and I had coffee with him last week. Anyway, It's none of your business, none of your business. So what she's saying here is you're being too nosy. You're being too nosy, and that is inappropriate. Inappropriate means you shouldn't. You shouldn't say that you shouldn't care about that. It's not the right thing for you to say. I don't need to tell you now. Maybe she's joking a little bit. That's fine. Maybe she will tell her that's fine. That's fine. It could be. But get a life here is is saying to her, You're being way too nosey. Nosey is when you try to find out, everyone else is details and you ask maybe too many personal questions. Too many personal questions. Why would nosy be too many personal questions? Well, it's kind of like sticking your nose into other people's business. In fact, we say that your always sticking your nose into other people's business. Mind your own business, mind your own business and get a life. Will you get a life, will you?
24. Good for You: good for you. Good for you. Okay. What does this mean? Well, the basic expression good for you might be in something like carrots are good for you. Okay? Like they're good for your health. But let's not focus on that. That's pretty basic. Let's say good for you is a response to good news. A response to good news to show that we are happy to hear the good news. But it's not good news about us. It's not that something good happened to us. It happened to other people. If it's a group of people than we would say good for them. Well, good for them. Good for them. So you have to be a generous person. You have to care about others in order to say this because if you know somebody and they did something successfully, something good happened to them. And they tell you about it and you say good for you. Nothing good happened to you. But hey, your friend, your family member, something good happen to them if you feel happy because they feel happy. If that makes you glad to hear that news, that means you may be really care about them. and you can say good for you. Good for you. I did it. I got the job. Oh, good for you. I know you were trying really hard. You were interviewing for six months with that company I know you were interviewing for six months with them. I know how terrible that process Waas. I'm so happy for you. We can also say that. Happy to hear the news Happy? I'm so happy for you. Okay, so that's pretty easy. But it depends on how you say it. Because this one can also be very sarcastic. This one can also be very, very sarcastic. We've we've talked about this word before a couple times. What it means is actually I mean the opposite. So if I say good for you good for you. I'm not happy for you. I'm unhappy, right? So if I'm competing with others and the other person wins and they were so happy that they want, I say Well, good for you. Maybe I really do feel that good for you, But if I don't feel happy for them, Good for you. Good for you. You can hear it in the tone of my voice. Have maybe a sarcastic tone. Okay, so let's look at an example that shows that difference. I'm getting married. I'm getting married. Wow. Good for you. Good for you. Good for you. Good for you. I'm getting married. Well, good for you. Good for you. Good for you. Feel the difference now? Why would someone say this one weather might be a number of reasons that this could be not great. News One is that they just don't care, right? Someone just doesn't care. They have nothing to do with it. Someone they don't even know. Well says I'm getting married and they just not interested. Not interested? Yeah, Lots of people get married. I know that. Good for you. Good for you. I'm just saying it to say it so that it's done OK? Or maybe I feel sad that this person is getting married. My ex maybe. And I still maybe I I'm still in love with this person, and now I hear she's getting married to someone else. Ah, So when I say good for you, I'm feeling hurt inside. I don't mean it. I'm being sarcastic. I mean, the opposite. I don't mean it. That can mean What you say is different from what you're thinking. For this one, I think you can probably just use it right away. I don't think you need to write down an example. It's It's pretty simple. It's too simple. So next time you're in a conversation, you're talking with someone and they say some good news, Say good for you, Good for you. Oh, good for you.
25. A Bit Much: a bit much? A bit much. Okay. Now what does this mean? Ah, bit much means something is excessive Mawr than it should be. More than it should be. Should be less. But it's too much, in fact. Okay, we could be talking about Price. It could be talking about Price, but we could be talking about other things, too. Like events, style, maybe personality, all kinds of things. And it's basically used like an adjective. If someone is a little bit eccentric, eccentric, that means they have kind of a strange personality. And they maybe have a silly laugh. All they laugh like that. And, ah, it's just kind of a weird person. Not always a bad thing, right? We might say He's a bit much. He's a bit much. He's a little He's a little eccentric, a little eccentric, okay? Or maybe maybe we go to an event. And normally at an event you'll have free coffee and some chairs. But this event has all kinds of free food and the decorations air crazy. It's very, maybe luxurious, and that's more than you would expect to see this kind of event, maybe just some normal business event. So you might say, Well, this is a bit much. This is a bit much sort of like saying this is excessive. This is excessive. OK, Price, Same with price. You feel something should be $100 in fact it's actually $200. So you say that's That's a bit much. That's a bit much. That meaning is more literal because we're talking about price, right? It costs too much. Maybe I won't buy it because it's a bit much. So notice that we're using it to describe things or people sometimes actions to sometimes actions to like adjectives in away were describing that thing with something similar to an adjective. Okay, And just to be clear, it can be about things like behavior it can get into people's actions to. So it's a very general expression that can help you say this idea of something being excessive in a lot of different situations, and that makes it really, really useful. $30 for a movie ticket is a bit much. $30 for a movie ticket is a bit much. It's too much cost too much. It's too expensive, too expensive. It is maybe a rip off it's a rip off. I'm not going to pay $30 for a movie. It's insane. It's crazy. Okay, so this is the more literal meaning exactly what it says. All right, let's look at one more, though. That's a little bit more abstract. Abstract. One person is wearing a hat, and she asks her friend what she thinks of the hat. But the head is not a normal hat. Maybe it's this sort of style, and it's got. It's got some feathers on it and some flowers, and it's kind of colorful, right? And ah, ladies very happy about her. Her hat, her crazy hat, she asks her friend, and the friend feels that maybe it has too many too many decorations. And because it has so many decorations, maybe it's not that appropriate. I don't really like it. Doesn't mean I hate it. No, no, it's It's just a pit. Much now, a bit really makes things sound gentle, soft, So saying something is a bit much is it's not harsh. It's often polite to say something is a bit much. So instead of telling her I don't like your hat, I think your hat stupid. What do you think of this hat don't like it. It's so direct, so straight, direct, critical, and that that might hurt her feelings, right? Instead, she says, it's a bit much that says what she means. I think it's got too many decorations. I don't really like it. I don't think it's appropriate, but it does it politely and respectfully. Okay, it's excessive. Yes, excessive. I don't like it. It's a bit much, but don't say I don't like it unless you expect to hurt the other person's feelings.
26. I Wasn't Born Yesterday: I wasn't born yesterday. I wasn't born yesterday. Okay? And sometimes this is said as a question. Do you think Do you think I was born yesterday? It was born yesterday. Now what does it mean? It's actually used in two different ways. One is to say, Do do you think I am so gullible to believe you? You have so gullible to believe you. You've said something that's clearly wrong. And I'm smart enough to know that it's wrong. If you're gullible, gullible means that you will believe what other people say no matter what. What does that mean? Well, that means sometimes people are going to take advantage of you now Take advantage. Could be a good or bad word, good or bad phrase. Rather take advantage could mean all you use. You use this the best you can. You have access to resources, things like that, and you use it. Take advantage of everything that's good. But take advantage of someone means someone's trying to use you. Maybe use your kindness to take your money, or maybe just get something for themselves. So if somebody tells you about something and you feel like they're trying to cheat you trick you or take advantage of you and you want to let them know that you're not going to allow it because you're not dumb. You're not that stupid. You know exactly what they're trying to dio. I know you're trying to cheat me. I'm not stupid. I'm not gonna believe you. Of course not. Right we say, Do you think I was born yesterday? Huh? I wasn't born yesterday. Come on. That's ridiculous. Go away. Go away. Okay. And it might be it might be when someone is trying to scam us by email. We ever had one of those emails. I'm a prince from bubba, blah, blah, blah. And I need $10,000. And then I will give you a 1,000,000 later for blah, blah, blah. Something like that. Some ridiculous thing. And you don't believe it? And you read it. Thinking about what? Do you think I was born yesterday? Stupid email. You say it to yourself, perhaps. Okay. And again, you can use it with other people as well to let them know that you are not gullible. You are not gullible as a question or as a simple statement the other way. This is used is to say simply I know this. I know how that works. I know how this works When perhaps someone has doubted has doubted you. Okay, if someone is trying to explain to you how may be an app works right. And you know how the APP works. You don't need them to tell you how it works. You're very experienced with this app. Then you can say I wasn't born yesterday. I know. I know that. I know. So when you feel like someone is maybe looking down on you for being a little critical of you for not knowing something. And you want to let them know? Yes, I do. Then you say this expression, so it's kind of the same thing as the other one. Except they're not trying to scam us. They're not trying to take advantage of us or get money from us. They might just be trying to explain something to us in a way that we feel is a little bit insulting. Yes, I know that wasn't born yesterday. So if you hear the tone in my voice, of course. Of course. Aiken download an app. I wasn't born yesterday. It's a little bit defensive, isn't it? Listen to that tone. It has a feeling, a defensive feeling. I could just say yes, I know. Yes, I know, but I don't just want to let you know that I know I want to also protect my protect my ego . My ego is my opinion about myself. I don't want to think that other people think that I'm not smart. So I want to make sure that, you know, you must know that I'm not stupid, so it helps to make it a little stronger. I use this sometimes because maybe I want to protect my ego a little bit or my image don't want others to see me that way. So it does sound a little bit defensive, like we're really trying to be protective of ourselves in some way. So let's look at a few examples. If you think I'm going to trust my life savings to some hip new investment scheme, you must take me for an idiot. I wasn't born yesterday. Talk about risk. Talk about risk. Okay, So a few things to explain here life savings is the money you save throughout your life. All the money you have right and a hip new thing is a hip thing is very popular. It's a trend, but anything that's a trend usually goes up and then it goes down. So it suggests just by saying the word hip, that it's not a long term thing, that it's a short term thing, that it won't last a long time. So maybe one person is telling someone else about this new, cool way to invest your money. Invest means to to put money into something and then later get money out. Get a return means you actually make more money than you put in on some some of those air called investment schemes. A scheme is like a way of doing something or a structure system way of doing something. And it's new. It's untested. If things are new and untested, should we trust him? Well, maybe not with our life savings, right? So we should be careful. So if someone was trying to convince you, convince you to do something that to you didn't seem safe because it's a new and untested thing, would you do it if there may be doing it because they get a little money to. Would you do it? Definitely not. And you might even feel a little insulted that this person would even ask you to do this. Why would you think I'm so gullible and stupid to do that? This is untested. That's all my money. You think I will do that? What's wrong with you? I'm hurt. I'm hurt that you think I'm so dumb, so gullible, and you want to let them know that. So we say I wasn't born yesterday. So obviously I'm not going to do that. Talk about risk. Talk about something. This is a very common expression. Maybe it's a noun like risk risk. Is something being risky? Something that is risky or not safe could be an adjective. Basically, what this means is the thing that we're talking about is maybe one of the best examples of this kind of thing. Risk. This is a great example of a risky thing. He's so crazy. The thing that he's doing is crazy. Talk about crazy. This person is maybe the best example of what I consider to be crazy. Okay, so hopefully that's clear. Let's look at one more example. I wasn't born yesterday. Of course I know that fixing the health care system is complex. I just think that we could be doing a lot better. So in this one, perhaps, were having a conversation with someone about health care. And we have presented a very optimistic view of a system that would work. But maybe it doesn't seem to be realistic. And so the person we're talking with feels that we may be a little bit naive if you're naive, it means you don't have experience in life. You don't know how things really work. You look at things from a very bright viewpoint. Maybe because you just don't know you don't have the experience. And I've presented this very optimistic view of how AH, good health care system could work. And you think it's not realistic, not practical. It's not practical. I'm not considering the rial factors involved in how health care works, right? Okay. And I know you think that maybe you make a comment to tell me. Don't you think that's just a little bit naive? That's quite naive, Very naive of you to say that. And I say, You know, I wasn't born yesterday that say I have experience. I know how this works. I realize that I'm not stupid. I'm not naive. Do you think I was born yesterday? Of course I know that. Of course I know that. And then we can maybe explain ourselves a little bit more. I just think we could be doing a lot better. I just think we could be doing a lot better. It's like a way to say, I know you think I'm silly. I'm not. I understand the situation, however, and then we can give an explanation and for that kind of thing in that kind of situation and that kind of conversation, it is really, really useful.
27. Can't Beat That: can't beat that can't beat that. Yeah, unbeatable. Unbeatable. Now, basically, this means it's really good. Something is really good. And maybe other things other things aren't better are better. Basically, that's the idea, right? It's almost like we're saying this is a great deal or I found something that's hard to find , and it's hard to find anything that's better than this thing. And so it's sort of like another thing coming along couldn't be this good. And so that means it couldn't beat this. If something beats this, that means it's better or stronger, right? So let's say we're talking about a sale for prices, prices of something. If somebody says you can't, you can't beat our prices This is something you see on TV commercials, advertisements all the time in America all the time can't beat our prices. That means our prices are low. That doesn't mean our products are cheap, are bad. It just means that we have great prices and you won't be able to find the same things that we sell at other stores. For a lower price, we have the lowest possible prices are prices are unbeatable. You can't beat our prices or nobody beats our prices. Nobody. So what would that mean If somebody beats our prices? That means there's another store over there. They sell the same thing, but instead of instead of it being a dollar and 99 cents, maybe they sell it for a dollar and 49 cents. So they have beat our prices. If they beat our prices, beat our prices, we will match them. That's another thing you hear. If you find anything that beats our prices, we will match them. That means we will sell it to you for the same price. Basically, now it can also be for ah, lot of other things. If we're talking about something that we really like, right. I really can't beat a movie by this director. If there's a film director who you really like to make the best movies, in your opinion, you would say, this person's movies, this director's movies, this director's movies are unbeatable or hard to beat. Maybe you're talking about food. The food is unbeatable. The food here is really hard to beat. It's the best sushi I've ever had. You can't eat it. It's hard to beat, so it's like saying It's really good, but it's also like saying it's the best one out. They're an unbeatable is just an adjective that's used to say that. OK, so now let's look at Let's look at a few examples. The job comes with a free apartment. Wow, you can't beat that. You can't beat that. Okay, if a job comes with a free apartment, that means when you get the job, you also get a place to live, a place to live. You don't have to pay rent, right? It's free. Wow, that's great. You can't beat that now. Does this really mean that nothing is better than that? Well, maybe not this. This really just means that's great. That's great. That's great. That's really great. That's a very good deal. That's a good situation, a good a good set up or situation. So when you hear good news or when something good happens and you want to comment on it, even if it's not the best, it doesn't have to actually be the best. You don't have to be comparing other things, though. This was better. This one's better. No, it's a general impression. Can't beat this. You can't beat this you're doing something you really enjoy where you get something and you feel you're lucky to have it because it's a really good, really good Ah situation. You might say you can't beat this if you're in it now you can't beat this. Someone else talks about another thing or you talk about another thing Then you would say you can't beat that. We often cut out you and just say wow cant beat that can beat that very casual, very casual casual You can't beat swimming on a sunny day You can't beat swimming on a sunny day This is a really common sentence this style of sentence When something great happens, we say you can't beat and then you say the thing that you think is great once again it doesn't really mean that it really can't be beat. There might be other things that air Justus Good. But this is an enjoyable thing, very enjoyable. And you feel at that moment what could be better? In fact, you could say that what could be better than this? What could be better than this? And that is not a real question. That is a rhetorical question. So nobody has to answer it. It's rhetorical. Could anything be better than this? Relaxing in the pool nice and cool on a hot, sunny day or a summer day? This is great. This is great, very enjoyable. And if you're doing it now, if you're actually sitting in the pool in the water, then you would just say You can't beat this, Can't beat this. And then if someone's beside you, they might say, Yep, yep, or you said it. You said it. That means I totally agree. You said it or totally or yeah, I agree. I agree. You really can't Can't what? You really can't beat it. The Black Friday prices this year are unbeatable are unbeatable every year we have in America, something called Black Friday. If you remember Black Friday is the day on which people go shopping like crazy people because the prices of things in stores are very, very low. Everything's cheap. It's a special day of the year. It's the day after Thanksgiving, by the way, it's the day after Thanksgiving, and people are going crazy, and the reason they're going crazy is because the prices are crazy, crazy, low. They're crazy, low things were crazy, cheap and the prices cannot be beat. The prices cannot be beat. Actually, we should say beaten, but some people will say, Can't be me Can't be be. And that probably means that no other time in the year will have lower prices than right now. It may not even be about the other stores. Like I mentioned earlier. It may be about just this day. This day has the lowest prices. Prices are unbeatable that can't be beat. Come today, buy stuff today and people in America do definitely. OK, so a couple of different meanings here. Make sure you make your own examples to really explore the meanings and trying to make different examples from my quite different that will help you really push yourself and get an even deeper feeling for for this expression.
28. Up for Grabs: Up for grabs. Up for grabs. This is a very useful expression and I use it quite often. Basically, it means up for grabs, means available to anybody willing or able to take it, available to anybody willing or able to take it. That's basically how it's used. And we might also say, it means an uncertain, an uncertain outcome or result. We don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen. All right, so let's make a visual first. Let's make a visual first to remember this one. Okay, we've got our visual. We're going to have a bunch of flowers. A bunch, a bunch, bunch, bunch of flowers. Also called a bouquet BYU QU ET. I think that's right. And there's a tradition in Western weddings in America. We do this where you have the, the bunch of flowers. You have the bunch of flowers. Okay. And there like this and they're tied right here. Okay. Well that's not very good, but okay. You get the idea. And they're flying through the air. Why? Why? Well, it's because down here you have the bride. Okay. Bride at a wedding. And the bride has thrown the flowers behind her back over her head like this. And the flowers are now flying up into the air. This bouquet of flowers, this bouquet of flowers. Okay. Now there are 15 ladies back here. And we can call them bridesmaids, who are maybe people beside the bride, the woman at the wedding, or maybe other ladies too. Okay. It's it's pretty much always ladies and they're all trying to catch it. One reaches up, jumps in the air, catches it in her hand. She grabbed it. She grabs it, reaches up and she grabs it in her hand. Or my drawing here. I'm drawing an arm. Okay. So she grabs it in her hand with her giant thumbs and her huge weird fingers. And now she's got it. This is the ladies beautiful arm. So sorry. This is by far my worst drawing ever. Okay. She has grabbed she has grabbed the flowers. Okay. So they weren't. Now this is the literal meaning. This is the literal meaning, and this is how you can remember it. We can use it in other ways. Something is up the flowers and then someone grabs them. But it could've been anybody. Could have been this lady with the sexy arms or it could have been any other lady, any, any of the other 14 ladies could have grabbed it too. So the outcome was uncertain. Uncertain. That's the idea. And it was available to be taken by anybody. So we say it was up for grabs. Up for grabs. All right. Maybe you like the World Cup. Maybe you watch the World Cup. I don't really. I don't really understand sports, but you have a ball called a football or a soccer ball That's not a ball. Forget about that. You know what the World Cup is. Teams from around the world play football or soccer. Finally, you have a winner and sometimes there's a team that's so good, you know that they're going to win. So you say, Yeah, of course, I don't know. Let's say, let's use ridiculous country. Let's say, Oh, Andorra, Andorra is going to win. And Dora will win because they're so good, so good. Some, some of you watching this, I think that this is silly thing to say. I know I don't even know if they have a football team anyway indoors going to when they're so good. So we, we might not say this. Then. However, if all of the teams are very good, then the result would be totally unclear. And someone might say, Hey, who do you think's going to win the World Cup this year? I don't know. I don't know. It's up for grabs. It's up for grabs. So we use up for grabs this way when we want to say, we don't know what will happen. Anybody could take it, take the trophy, become the winter, or when we want to offer something. Hey, by the way, these two tickets for this concert are up for grabs if anybody wants them. They are up for grabs if anybody wants them. Okay? So this is the idea. This is the idea offering something or being unsure what will happen. So now let's look at some examples. So there is an office and a bunch of salespeople. It's a sales team. And sales teams, They often do some kind of incentive. And incentive is the reason you do something, right? You want to get money, you want to get some kind of reward. That is, your incentive. Incentive is not punishment. It's something that you want to get to your incentive. So maybe the supervisor or manager of the team wants to provide an incentive. There's a huge bonus up for grabs to whoever sells the most. This month. There's a huge bonus up for grabs to whoever, to whoever sells the most this month. Okay? So maybe there are five people and they're all now racing to get the most sales. So this is good for the company because these people are now incentivized to do well. And finally, this person gets the most number 2 cells the most, has the highest sales numbers and gets the bonus. Bonus is often an amount of money. Some people get a Christmas bonus at the end of the year. That is money that you get from the company for for working there all year, or a bonus at the end of the month, you are the winner. You get the bonus. Okay? So this is a simple way to use up for grabs. But let's look at another way that we can use this. The election is up for grabs. Anybody could win, okay, So this is like I said about the World Cup before. Maybe there's a presidential election. And in America we have a presidential election and you have two candidates, candidates. And sometimes if one is very, very popular and one is not popular, he wouldn't say this, you'll say this is a clear favorite. Someone might say, I'm calling it. I'm calling it now. I'm calling it now. That means this will be the result. But if they're about the same level and nobody knows who's going to win. We might say before, I don't know who's going to win. It's really up for grabs, up for grabs. So that's not really to say that the presidency is up for grabs. Although it is, what this means though, is, I don't know what's going to happen. Anybody could get it. Either of them could get it. And if one did and not the other, I wouldn't be surprised because it's very uncertain. Uncertain. The previous example we talked about the bonus being up for grabs. That doesn't focus on not knowing who will get it. The focus there is, this thing is available, this thing is available, this bonus is available for you to take. It's up there in the air. I the manager, I am offering it to you. Okay. It's up for grabs. I'm offering it. So we could say something like, hey, if anybody wants my sofa, Just give me a call. It's up for grabs. If anybody wants my sofa, give me a call, it's up for grabs and you post that. And then maybe one of your friends says, Ooh, I'd like it, I want your sofa. Maybe you were getting a new one. So you don't want your old sofa, but someone else might want it when it's available and anybody can take it. You say it's up for grabs. You don't care who takes it.
29. Easier Said Than Done: easier said than done. Easier said than done. Finally, an expression that we can understand just by looking at the words good. So this one, I think, is quite easy to understand. So we'll spend more of our time talking about how to use it in conversation in daily life. Well, easier said than done means it's easier to say that something is possible. Then it is to actually do that thing all right, That's basically it. If somebody says, Oh, yeah, that's easy Aiken do that. Whatever it may be about, someone might respond with Easier said than done, which may be a challenge, and often that is how it's used. We use this as a response. When somebody says something is relatively easy, Sorry that has an eat, then we will challenge them by saying Easier said that done. And often it's when something happens and this person is making a comment. One person is commenting. Oh yes, getting five million subscribers on Facebook. That's a piece of cake. That's easy, huh? Easier said. Then done. That means why don't you do it? If it's so easy, Why why doesn't everybody do it? Often? It's used like that not only though not only I realized that looks like and h what that is that isn't an not not only used like this, it's also used This expression, easier said than done might be used. When we want to just talk about the difficulty of something pure difficulty, and we might just use this expression to describe how difficult something is, We could say it is difficult. For example, buying a house is difficult. We can replace that with Buying a house is easier said than done. Pretty simple. So let's look at some specific examples so that we can get a better feeling about how to use this expression, which basically means it's easier to say that something is possible or talk about doing it than it is to actually do it. Let's let's look at an example. Climbing Mount Everest is a piece of cake. Now we know that a piece of cake means that something is easy and of course it could be sarcastic. But somebody might say it to mean these days because it's kind of like a touristy thing, and you have so many people helping you and oxygen tanks. It's actually easy. Let's say this person really means what they say. They mean it. If somebody means what they say, they're not being sarcastic. You can say No, I I really mean it. Climbing Mount Everest is a piece of cake. It's easy. Oh, okay, well, that's easier said than done. That's easier said than done. I may be saying this as a challenge, but I may also be just saying it as a way to make you feel like you should be more cautious about the things you say. Sometimes people say things carelessly in their careless, and they just say things. And maybe a friend will try to remind their friend that saying careless things makes them look silly. And maybe they should be a little more cautious or careful about their opinions. Hey, I know people who climb Mount Everest have a lot of help and they have oxygen tanks, but it's still hard. It's still the highest mountain in the world. It's definitely easier said than done definitely, easier said than done. And sometimes this expression is used to be critical to be critical of the person who says it to be critical of this person because there's something called an armchair philosopher. An armchair philosopher is someone who just throws out a lot of opinions about things, sometimes carelessly, and this can be annoying to others. And when we feel annoyed, we might show our annoyance by saying something like, Well, that's easier said than done. Why don't you say less stuff and do more stuff? If you think it's so easy, why don't you do it? If you think this movie is so bad, why don't you write a movie? At least they at least they wrote a movie. You're just sitting around saying your opinions. Eso. Sometimes you can be critical of others this way, but it can be used in lots of different ways, sometimes just to describe difficulty. So let's look at an example of that. Getting into Harvard is easier said than done Noticed this expression does not really change. We could say I suppose Mawr easily said than done, but not really. Generally we always say, Easier said, then done. Just to be clear, we can just say this, such as in the previous example, as a response, Easier said, then done by itself with nothing else, someone might say getting into Harvard is difficult, all right. But if we want to emphasize the idea of the struggle of getting into Harvard, being something that we can have is a goal. But actually reaching that goal is really difficult, and there are many steps along the way. Maybe it's an arduous journey. Maybe it's an arduous journey, we would say Easier said than done instead of difficulty. To maybe emphasize that there's a big contrast between saying I'm going to go to Harvard when you're 16 years old and actually doing it. That doesn't mean that you can't actually do it. It just means, Hey, that's great to have a goal. But you're going to need toe work very hard to reach or attain your goal to reach or attain your goal because it's easier said than done. So this one, this example is not usually not critical. It's simply a description, simply a description and a useful way to talk about things that are hard as a way to focus on the journey of the difficulty and maybe the contrast between the statement of the thing , the gold maybe and the path to actually reaching the goal. So hopefully that's clear. this one. It's very common and actually quite useful in casual situations or formal situations. If you're in a meeting, you could say I don't know. This is really much easier said than done. But with your friends, when they say something like an armchair philosopher, you might say Easier said than done. Why don't you do it? Okay, so pretty common.
30. Made of Money: made of money made of money. It's a way to say that someone is not just wealthy but crazy, wealthy, very wealthy. And maybe we're using it to say that were a bit envious of that person's wealth. Maybe we're using it to just say off course. Of course, they can afford whatever it is. If we see a very wealthy person by a huge, huge yacht, which is a very large boat, we might say, Of course they're made of money. They're made of money, that family. So this one's easy to remember, because if you imagine a person made of money that gives you the feeling of them being very wealthy, however, this expression is often used when we want to tell people that we can't afford something and we say something like, Do you think? Do you think I'm made of money or somebody asks for something? Maybe a kid asks his dad for something that his dad can't afford or maybe doesn't want to pay for. His dad might say, You think I'm made of money, don't you? So that one might not be rich so much as just you really don't think about how much things cost. Do you? I'm your I'm your dad. I need to pay for everything that you buy. You don't have your own money. So if you demand things from me, if you demand I buy you things you need to. You need to consider that my money is limited. I'm not super wealthy. So when you ask me to buy you a new computer and you have a computer, that's just fine. You think I'm made of money? You think I'm made of money? You're not really. It means you're not thinking about the person who's supplying the money. You're not thinking about the person who's paying for it. You're not thinking about how maybe they need to. They need to be careful with money. They need to have a budget, their own budget and their money is not unlimited. It doesn't always mean I can't afford that. And it doesn't always mean I won't buy you that maybe the dad buys his son that computer. But it's a statement. It's ah, it's an expression that reminds the kid that hey, you have to know when to not ask for things. So let's look at a couple examples so that we can get a better feeling for this one. So this example could be any sort of relationship where one person usually supports financially and the other asks for things usually and says when they need something. And it could be a girlfriend. Boyfriend could be husband, wife, son, daughter. Anyway, let's say this is Let's just use the sun as before you want to buy another car. Notice the tone Here is a tone of disbelief. You want to buy another car? What's wrong with your car? What's wrong with the car you have now? This boy, this kid who may be spoiled, spoiled kid, is someone who gets whatever he wants. And uh huh. Maybe his parents never say no. Always buy him everything you want. You want to buy another car? What's wrong with your car? You think I'm made of money You think I made of money? So by saying this one, the parent is saying you're showing me disrespect here by asking me for everything that you want your spoiled and you're not considering my own financial situation, that I have to work hard to support you and buy you a new car. Okay, Now, here's $200,000. Go buy yourself a BMW. So using it this way again doesn't mean that this person can't afford it. It might, but it might also just be a reminder to the person who is asking. My friend is made of money. You should see his house. Okay. What does this mean? Well, my friend is made of money. Means really, my friend is very to be very wealthy. And when I say you should see his house, what it means is his house is proof of his wealth. Maybe that means that his house is very extravagant or luxurious. Something is extravagant. That means it's it looks like a house that a wealthy, very wealthy person would buy. Maybe it's huge. Maybe it has 20 bedrooms. Maybe it has a swimming pool and a tennis court. And all of those things, it's extravagant. Okay. And by saying you should see his house, I'm saying the house, Once you see it, we'll let you know exactly how made of money my friend is okay. Basically, that's the idea. If he was made of money like Warren Buffet, for example, one of the richest people in the world, but he lived in a very, very modest house. What we wouldn't say that we wouldn't say. Warren Buffett is made of money. Look at his house. No, because he lives in a very small, normal house, even though he's rich. But we might say Warren Buffett is made of money. Look at his bank account or something like that. The thing that proves how rich are made of money someone is.
31. Beyond Belief: beyond belief beyond belief. This phrases, I think very interesting because it's it's usually used as an adjective. It's usually used as an adjective, but it doesn't really sound like one. If we say something like crazy or amazing or unbelievable, right? If we say something like this, any of these or similar words, we understand that it's talking about. We're describing some kind of thing, right? It's It's an adjective. It's an adjective. May be a person, or maybe ah, view right or maybe an action, maybe something in the news. I can't believe what I saw in the news. It's crazy. We're Look at that view. It's amazing. Where did you hear what she said? Unbelievable. Unbelievable. You could mean this in a good way or a bad way. Usually a good way, though, for Amazing uh, Sometimes we say it's amazing how stupid people are right so you could use it in a bad way . Crazy good way or a bad way. If you If you see something that amazes you, you can say that's crazy. That's crazy. It is used in a good way. This expression beyond belief is used in pretty much the same way Sometimes we just say beyond belief, young belief. And we can use it in the same category as these beyond belief beyond belief if it's a good thing or a bad thing, and we'll look at some examples will often, though, use this in a sentence like the quality of these office chairs is beyond belief. Hey, now, does that mean the office chairs are great or their terrible beyond belief in a good way or a bad way? Well, if we use the word quality, we're probably going to feel as though this is a good thing. So if someone just says the quality of these office chairs is beyond belief, I will generally feel that they're great office chairs. Quality of these office chairs is amazing. Crazy. Maybe if they're so good that you can't believe it. Okay, If we wanted to say this in a bad way, we would say the poor quality of these office chairs is beyond belief, the poor quality. I know it looks like Oh, I did write the word poop. Uh ah. Should I edit this out of the course or leave it in? Because it's funny, not the poop quality. No, the poor, the poor quality, poor quality of these office chairs. Okay, so that's the idea. If we're just going to, though, try to understand why these two words are together beyond means outside of something outside of something Gonna write sth there to mean something. Belief is what we're able to believe. So if this circle represents what we're able to believe anything outside of the circle or beyond, the circle is beyond belief. Okay, so that's that's basically it. We could we could say that it means surprising as well. Sometimes when you hear things that are surprising, you can also say, Wow, that is so beyond belief. Okay, so let's let's look at a few examples as we usually do. Your stupidity is beyond belief. So here we're talking about a negative thing. Okay, pretty simple. That means your stupidity is more than just normal, stupid. I can't believe how stupid you are. That would be a way to rephrase this example. We wanted to rephrase this rephrase means to say something in a different way. I cannot believe how stupid you are, which is, by the way, also a common expression. I can't believe how delicious this is I can't believe how amazing she is. I can't believe how great that is. I can't believe how stupid you are. Can't cannot. Same thing. Okay, so this is basically the same thing. The same thing about things that are good or bad. Here, we're talking about a bad thing. Someone's stupidity, someone's stupidity. Okay, let's look at another example Now, this could be one person talking or two people. It doesn't really matter. Look at that mountain. We're looking at a mountain so beautiful beyond belief beyond belief. Now here we're talking about how beautiful something is. But we've already said beautiful. Why do we need to add beyond belief? And can we just say it by itself? Can we say it is beautiful beyond belief? Is that okay? As a sentence, the answer is yes. And that's why this expression is useful. Can we say it is crazy? Beautiful. Yeah, I guess. I guess some people will say that it just doesn't sound. I think as natural as this does, this is a very natural way to add some some power to the adjective of beautiful. So it is beautiful beyond belief. It is stupid beyond belief. Could we say it is beyond belief? Stupid. It is beyond belief. Beautiful. No, no, it goes after right after something like this. Okay, um and and we can put it by itself to it is so beautiful or so beautiful beyond belief, beyond belief. What you said in there was crazy. What you said in there was crazy beyond belief. It was crazy beyond belief. So you can kind of separate it or put it into, ah, whole sentence. And it works really well. So this is a very, very smooth I think expression that actually a lot of English learners I feel, don't don't know indefinitely don't use. But a lot of native English speakers, especially in America, will use this expression all the time when they want to either strengthen an adjective like beautiful or crazy or sometimes in action, something that happened, or when they want to just express ah, feeling off amazement or surprise. Or maybe wonder at some thing
32. Take Your Breath Away: take your breath away or take my breath away. We can change this out with whoever we like. There my is her. Okay, so this has usually two different meanings. One meaning is surprise or shock, and the best way to remember it is to think about this action because my breath is being taken away on gasping. It's called a gasp when something shocks you, maybe because it's scary, or maybe because it's just surprising. Or maybe because maybe be baby BBB. Maybe because it's it's just a so amazing that you can't believe it, right? Whatever. If something shocks you, you can say really, really took my breath away. You didn't expect it toe happen the other way. That this is used, though, really focuses on beauty. Beauty. If something is so beautiful that it's almost like you can't believe it, you can't believe it. You can say it takes your breath away. Then we have another word that we use as an adjective, which is breathtaking. Breath taking. Something can be breathtaking. For example, you're standing on top of a mountain and it's just so beautiful, right? The view is so beautiful. Well, you can say this is absolutely breathtaking. It takes my breath away. It takes my breath away. Or you could say she she's so beautiful. She is breathtaking or her dress. Her wedding dress is breath taking Takes my breath away. OK, so we use it like that. But again, sometimes it's used to talk about shock or surprise in general. Just this one. When we gasped, we say Shocked me, took my breath away. But we don't say it was breathtaking. Breathtaking is usually on. Lee used to talk about things that are pleasing to look at beautiful things. Breath taking the view of the lake under the stars took my breath away. Took my breath away. OK, so imagine a lake at night time. It's very quiet. The water is very still where we could say placid Placid is what we could use to, uh, to give someone a peaceful feeling, very placid water and the reflections of the stars and maybe even the Milky Way. The Milky Way, which is the line of the galaxy across the sky, reflected on the lake a breathtaking. It took my breath away. There's actually a famous song from a movie. The movie is called a top gun, and I think the song is called Take My Breath Away and that one is about being in love that being in love is almost too much to handle. So it could be used in that way, maybe as the first meaning. We talked about something that almost maybe almost shocks you that you're so much in love now. It's not usually used that way. So actually, the usage in the song Take my Breath Away is a little bit weird because we're usually talking about surprise or beauty. But, yeah, it can be used creatively. Sometimes I'm just talking about the most common uses. Okay, let's look at one more example. How would you describe this painting? So someone's in a gallery. Maybe gallery is a place where we will go often to look it art. Okay, we see a bunch of paintings and someone asks someone else. We won't worry about who someone says. How would you describe this painting? Or maybe what do you think? What do you I think about this one? Do you think about this one breathtaking One word is enough. It's breathtaking or breath taking, and you could say it takes my breath away. It takes my breath away. I'll be totally honest. This is one of the expressions that we're talking about in this course that I don't use very much. When I want to say that something is beautiful, I'll say it's beautiful usually. And if I want to say that something shocks me, I might say that it shocked me and I might sometimes use breathtaking or to talk about things that are beautiful, like a view from a mountain I might use breath taking. But there are. The reason we're going over. This one is that there are quite a few people who who use this regularly often, and so I think it's important to include it. But I just wanted to let you know that this is one that I use less often, pretty much every other one we've talked about so far. I use often, often, usually otherwise I would not have included them or this one in this course. Yeah, but this one, not really. My style doesn't quite fit me, and that's something you have to think about when you're learning expressions. Maybe you completely understand. One of the expressions were learning you get it, but maybe you feel it doesn't fit your personality. Your way of speaking. That's very important because you don't want to speak like someone you're not. That would be weird. You talk this way in your native language and in a completely different way in English. That's strange. So you need to understand these expressions deeply, more deeply, so that you can know whether or not there right for you to use. Otherwise, they're good to understand so that you can watch movies and have conversations, but pay attention to whether or not they actually fit your way of speaking. Okay, so let's go on to the next one.
33. All But: all but all but this is a way to basically say something is almost completely that it's often an adjective, almost completely something something. And we might put an adjective here. We might also talk about an action. We might also put a verb here. Okay? And you could you could put it down there as well. Almost completely something something. And we'll look at some examples, but I want to give you a visual. Something to think about. Okay, let's have Let's have our visual so that this can really stick. We're going to talk about a graph. OK? And here's our graph. This is revenue. This is time. And these air years, this is 2000 3 2004 2005 2006 This is 06 This is 07 Alright. And here's revenue revenue means how much money is coming in. Okay, it's going pretty good. Not bad. Not bad, Right? OK. Oh, no. 00 Hey, There's a good one. Hey, uh 00 Not good. Not good. All right, so we're so close to being bankrupt. We're not bankrupt. Bankrupt means that we have officially formally said we don't have any more money. Maybe we have to stop. But anyway, we don't have money anymore. Officially, we're out of money. Okay. And at this time during this period, there was money. It started to go down. And we say Now, well, basically everything, except this is what we are, right? That's the last thing we haven't done so almost completely. This and it's like the last thing, the last thing remaining. And so we say this company, this company is all but bankrupt. This company is all but bankrupt. Okay, But we could we could say it as a verb. A kids say this company has has has all but gone bankrupt. Bankrupt. Okay, this company has all but gone bankrupt. That means we've had to fire employees. We've had to sell parts of the company. We've had to basically cut expenses here and there. We've done so many things anyway, it's not going well. Everything bad has happened here in the money department, except this. So we're all but bankrupt. All right, this is the idea. If we're going to put this in a in a pie chart than basically basically, this is the only thing left. A tiny little 1% and everything else is the other. We've done everything but that. Okay, that's the idea. Let's look at some examples Carol had all but for gotten about everything she'd learned in science class back in high school. But when her five year old son asked what stars were made of, she suddenly remembered and said, Mostly hydrogen. So if she's all but for gotten, that means there's still something left. And this is often how this is used when that little something left is the thing that is needed to answer a question, solve a problem or make something happen here. The thing that is needed is the knowledge about stars that many of them are made of. Mostly hydrogen right hydrogen is the first, the first element on the periodic table right and stars like ours are mostly made of hydrogen. So most of the knowledge she learned in high school 99% was gone. She all but forgotten all but for gotten so the focus there is on not quite not quite, because the thing we're going to talk about is one of the things that's needed to answer her son's question, right? If she's for gotten about everything. Then she won't know the answer to her son's question. So this is a good way to often set up set up some later solution to a problem. The problem here is that her son doesn't know the answer. Okay, that's how this one is often used. One friend finds out how another friend has been living and it's not good. You never leave the house. You barely eat. Almost never. You barely eat. You sleep 16 hours a day, you've all but died. Now this is a little bit extreme. Okay? This person hasn't all but died. But it's a way to try to maybe shake this person out of depression. If your friend is very depressed and this is a real problem, your friend maybe never eats and sleeps all day and just stays at home. It doesn't do anything you might say. You've all that died. You've all that died. You're all but dead. We could say as an adjective, you're all but dead or you're all but in the ground. We could say that to all but in the ground whole. But but in the ground. And it might help to make this person realize. Oh, wow. Yeah. My life is not going very well. This is not good and might help them to recover shaking them out of their their depression . I'm all but retired. I only goto work to sign papers. Okay, so basically, I don't work. I don't go to work every day. I don't go to meetings. Maybe this person is in their sixties and their lifestyle is like the lifestyle off a retired person. They live like a retired person. But officially, they haven't actually announced retirement. They haven't. They haven't announced announced it, and they still go into work. But just for five or 10 minutes, the lifestyle is a retired lifestyle. Okay, so when we say I've all but retired here or I'm all but retired, what we're saying is your If this is a pie chart of your lifestyle, this is how much not retired. You are 1%. This is how much not retired you are. And this is all how much retired you are. Okay. How much we can say that you're retired based on your lifestyle. OK, so I think we've all but finished talking about this expression. I just want to say, Make your own examples as a way to make them stick. I know I've said it before. I definitely say it again. If you do something actively, it helps it stay in your mind, which is, I think, really important.
34. Sick and Tired: sick and tired of sick and tired of Okay, what does this mean? And I've added of here because it's almost pretty much always in the in the expression in this particular ah phrase, but it's not really part of the main meaning, so it's usually with it, but not exactly related to what it means. OK, so sick and tired. What does this mean? Does this mean we're sick? Actually, with a fever, it's or blue that throwing up? No, it doesn't. That's not what it means. It doesn't really mean that were sick. Okay, we really tired, like sleepy or exhausted or physically weak. I also know when we say sick and tired. What we really mean is we don't want to see, do or experience something anymore, because this is important because because we have seen done and experienced too much too much. In other words, we have this feeling not because we've never seen it or done it or experienced it, but because we've seen or done or experienced it way too much way too often. If someone says, Hey, would you like Would you like a piece of durian to kind of fruit? It smells bad and you say, Oh, no, no, I don't want that. Why not? I don't like how it smells. Can you say I'm sick and tired of Durian? No. No. But if you eat durian every day and you love it at first, but because you eat it every day, you do. You you do that too much. I mean, eating durian. Then you can say I'm sick and tired of durian or eating durian every day. I'm sick and tired of the thing, or I'm sick and tired of eating the thing and or doing the thing. Okay, You can also just use tired. You could say I'm tired of durian on. Tired of eating durian? No, thank you. No, thank you. Okay, But having this sick and tired, sick and tired makes it a little bit stronger. And I think it's more natural, stronger and more natural, sick and tired of now. Maybe you've seen all of the lessons so far in this course. And you're sick and tired of my face. Maybe. Maybe reasonable, Reasonable. If I were you, I might be too. It might be too. So you might want to take a break. Take two days off and then come back. We're going to be learning lots more useful things in this course, so make sure to come back. But three idea here is that we can't imagine doing more of something that we've done a lot of could be for things. We've eaten, things we've seen things we've done. It could be for all kinds of things, even a person. I'm sick and tired of him him now. It's usually because of his behavior, the way that he acts. But because of that, we don't want to be around him anymore. We've been around him too much. I'm sick and tired of him. Him okay, and that includes all of his actions that maybe we don't like. Sometimes this is just because of time, and it's not that we hate it because of what it is. It's that we begin to hate it because of too much experience, although sometimes it is because of the bad thing about it, like him. If he's a bad guy and he does, bad things were were sick and tired of him because of those things because of those things , and if you were a good guy, maybe we wouldn't be sick and tired off him. Okay? Oh, can we say sick of it? I'm sick of it. Yeah, but we can say that to so sick and tired of it. Sick of it, tired of it. All of these air. Okay, I think sick and tired, though, is a really useful phrase. And keep in mind, it's pretty much always followed by of Okay, so let's look at some examples. I am sick and tired of this weather. Looking forward to spring. I'm sick and tired of this weather. We could say, Of course, I'm looking forward to spring, but saying just looking forward to spring, Yeah, it's not a correct sentence, but this is how people actually speak. So this is kind of Ah ah spoken example. People will often cut out the I'm looking forward to that, looking forward to it very much. Okay. Looking forward to means excited about that. Ready for that? Does it have to be that the weather is actually bad? Could it be that we're sick and tired of sunny weather? Yeah, I say that all the time. I might say I'm sick and tired of this weather. Can't wait until autumn and winter. Sick and tired of this weather. I don't like sunny weather. I don't like the sun on I don't like heat. I like the winter like cold weather. People say I'm crazy for that, but it is true. I really, really don't like this summer. And, uh, I don't know why my father, though, would say the opposite. He would say exactly. This springtime coming means it's getting warmer. He hates the winter. He moved to a warmer place just because of that, right? I'm sick and tired of this weather looking forward to summer so we could say that too. You must be sick and tired of people asking where you come from. Yep, a bit. Okay, so this is an action now, People asking people asking This is a sort of thing that happens almost an event that happens. Uh, something that you experience, remember we talked about can be something you experience. Could be something you do in action, right? Sick and tired of always traveling, right, You never have a chance to stay in one place. Okay? Sick and tired of people asking people asking This is something you experience and this could be. Maybe somebody who's from another country and they go to a country where there are few people who look like them. And people are always asking, Where do you come from, where you come from, Where do you come from? And then someone might notice that everybody's asking and say You must be sick and tired of people asking where you come from When I travel abroad, people often ask, Where do you come from to come from Canada? America, Russia, Where do you come from? I say I come from America and that someone else might say You must be sick and tired of that. And I could say, Yep, a bit or yet a little. Or I might say, No, not really, Not really. In fact, if people ask me where I come from, I don't mind. I think it's great. People are curious. People want to know. I might ask other people, Where do you come from? I think it's a good question to start a conversation. So if you ever meet me in real life, don't think that I'm sick and tired off hearing this question. You can ask me which may be City I come from, you can ask me any other question you like. I think it's a good way to start a conversation. So if someone asked me this, I would say No, not really. No, not really.
35. Head Over Heels: head over heels, head over heels. Okay, now this one head over heels is usually used to talk about love or being in love. But when we say the word love, we can mean it in some different ways. Sometimes you see on old Couple and they're walking together and you say, Wow, that's really love. So would we use head over heels to describe that? Probably not. Head over heels is usually used to talk about that early love, infatuation, infatuation, maybe even to an unhealthy level. Maybe too much, right. If you are crazy about someone crazy about someone which is also very common, you are head over heels about them and you can say I'm head over heels about about her or him. That doesn't mean that the other person is head over heels about you. So you could be head over heels about someone totally infatuated, totally in love, obsessed even about someone. And they might not feel the same way about you. Maybe they dio. Maybe they're also head over heels about you. Okay, that's great. But the basic idea here is really we're talking about a very strong feeling off of love. Romantic love or infatuation. It's not used for the love we have for our friends or family members. We we use it to talk about romantic love romantic, and it does give us a kind of unbalanced feeling. They can't really last forever. That level of excitement, that level of craziness, because it comes from actually going head over heels, head over heels is when we do a somersault and a somersault is when you flip over like this , your whole body flips over. You go head over heels. You actually flip over so it comes from that. It's almost like you're so crazy about someone that you're you're flipping over or and this is these air. You're here. Legs here, thistles, bad these air your arms. You're flipping over about this person who ah, it's it's really strong. Basically, that's the idea. But we can also use this expression head over heels when we want to talk about being really crazy about something So you could also use it to to talk about a new thing that you're learning or a new movie you've just seen that you absolutely love or uh, something else that you're just crazy about. You have a high emotion about it, so it's usually used for a romantic stuff. But it can be used for other things, too. And we will look at two examples, one of each, so that we can have better feeling about this. She's head over heels about Johnny, but he doesn't even know about it. She'll be crushed if she finds out he already has a girlfriend. Okay, so let's break this one down and talk about it a little bit. So this part expresses her very strong emotion. She's head over heels about. So that's the the proposition we can use to connect to what it's about. She's head over heels about Johnny, but he doesn't even know about it. What is it? What is it? She he doesn't even know that she is really infatuated or in love. He's not even aware of it. He doesn't even know what's happening. Okay, maybe they are just co workers or something, and, um, he has no idea. And she whoever she is, has this feeling privately. So again you could have it privately and the other person doesn't have it. Or maybe the other person does. They were they were head over heels. Let's use it as an adjective here, over heels in love with each other. They were head over heels in love with each other. So there it's mutual, both sides. It's mutual. It's mutual. All right, so let's go back to this example, Okay? Actually, know what? I'm gonna leave this for you. I'll leave it there. She's head over heels about Johnny, but he doesn't even know about it. About her infatuation about her head over heels, feeling she'll be crushed if she finds out he already has a girlfriend. So Johnny has a girlfriend, and she doesn't know that if she if she learns about it, it will. It will be so terrible for her. She'll be absolutely. She'll be absolutely destroyed by it emotionally. If were destroyed by something. It hurts our emotions in a in a strong way. She'll be destroyed or crushed. So here, crushed is about. We can imagine crushing a can of soda. That's not that the person is actually crushed, but it's like their emotions. Air crushed, right. She'll be very upset if she finds out she has no chance of dating Johnny. Now crash. You may also remember can mean this to really love someone to be infatuated with them, so that could be a little confusing, maybe a little bit confusing. But don't let it confuse you. This meaning of crushed means that she's upset. She's destroyed. If something disappointing happens to you, you can say, I'm I'm crushed. I'm crushed. It's like you've been crunched like a like a soda can. But the other meaning is I have a crush to have a crush on someone. And here she has a crush on Johnny, so that's a different meaning of crush. She has a crush. She has a crush. She's head over heels about him, or they are head over heels in love with each other. The different thing about crush and head over heels is that crushes. Usually one way, one person has a crush on another person, but the other person usually doesn't feel the same way. And sometimes a crush means you don't even know them personally. Maybe it's a famous person. You have a crush on that person. Okay, this one will give us a feeling that it's a very strong emotion, but it might pass very quickly. In other words, maybe she has this feeling now, but in two weeks she might like a different boy. How's the new job? I'm head over heels about it, head over heels about it. I'm gonna add that it's perfect for me. I think I've finally found my true calling. So now we're not talking about something romantic. We're just talking about everyday life. But there's still a strong emotion and you really like it. You're crazy about it. You love it. It's just not romantic here. So this is This is not how its most often used. I want to be clear that 90% of the time this is used to talk about that previous type of head over heels, being infatuated, having a crush on someone. And this one is OK, but not as common. Definitely. My true calling means it's almost like you found your your purpose in life. Your passion, your real passion. So you weren't doing this before? You didn't know you had this passion. Now you found out you had it. Wow! Everything is different. Everything has changed. You have found your true calling. True calling. True calling is about finding the direction of your life, knowing what you want to do? Maybe with your career, I'd like you to think about your past. When you write your example to practice using this expression, think about someone who you really? I had a crush on someone you were head over heels about. Describe that person. Talk about what your life was like during that time. Write it like a journal entry. Write it like a journal entry and use lots of detail. And make sure to use this expression. Head over heels, head over heels. Okay. If you're head over heels about someone right now, then use that talk about that. That's totally fine. Just make it personal, right? You're practicing it. You're trying to fit this expression into your description in a natural way. All right, I'll see you in the next one.
36. Have the Guts: have the guts have the guts, the guts, guts. What is the basic meaning of? Of guts? Well, really means intestines. Or sometimes it means the the deep insides or inner part of something so deep in the guts of the machine is a big machine. And deep inside, we say the guts of that machine. You also have what sometimes are called your guts near your stomach. Your stomach area. Hey, I got punched right in the gut. Sometimes we just call it the gut. I got punched in the gut in the stomach. We talked before about your gut. Go with your gut. Go with your gut. It means go with what feels right. Feels right. So guts is sort of this. This area, when we hear the word gut or guts were thinking of this area. Okay. What does have the guts mean? Does that mean I have guts? Everybody has intestines or guts, right? We've all got that. So what does this mean? Have the guts confusing? Well, actually, it means to have courage. And that's all it means to have courage, have courage. Wow. She has guts. She has guts. Do you have the guts So sometimes we say the sometimes we don't Sometimes we just say Guts , guts Wow, Wow, He's got guts. What does that mean? He's got guts. It means he's very brave. He's not afraid. He has courage. She has courage. She's very brave To have the courage means to have the guts to have courage means to have guts. So we don't have to have the and we can change this to had has have. All of these are okay, all of these air Fine. But I think the more interesting thing here is what it means to have guts or courage. It could be a physical thing like skydiving. It it takes guts to jump out of a plane, right? If you go skydiving, if you go sky diving, that means you jump out of an airplane with a parachute and that takes courage. If you're If you're a very timid person and you're afraid of everything because you're very timid, then you don't have the courage. You don't have the guts, OK, it takes guts so often when we talk about something that's scary, we say it takes guts to do that or if someone does it, we say about them, who she has guts. She's got guts. He's got guts. But this doesn't have to be about something that's physically dangerous. We could also be talking about something that is scary in another way, which requires another type of courage. For example, some people think that it takes courage to travel to another country. Maybe it's risky in some places or just leaving your own country. The people who are around you usually might say All you've got, you've got guts. You have guts to travel to unknown places. Maybe to you it's not so scary. But some people think it is so They say you have courage, you have guts. Courage just feels very formal. You have so much courage that you have a very courageous so that's good to use your very courageous. But guts is is a little more informal. What about something between people? What about telling your boss? No, you have to do this. No, it doesn't make sense to talk back and not be afraid of a scary boss. Is that guts? Yeah, well, you've got guts to talk back to. To him, he's He's crazy. He's really tough or any other kind of thing. Maybe you, ah, you accuse someone who's very dangerous of doing something. For example, there's a murderer on the loose and they finally catch him and you know it's him, you know, if he finds out that you're the one who says it's him, if he ever gets out, he might kill you. So may be dangerous. So you say I It was him. It was him. I'm sure it took a lot of guts. It took a lot of guts to say that. So hopefully you get the idea. Still, let's look at a couple examples. Most people don't have the guts to start their own business. Most people don't have the bravery or courage to start their own business. Same thing, same thing. Why not? Why? Well, because it's risky. You don't know if you're going to make money. You don't know where the money is going to come from. You need to support yourself. You don't have a boss to tell you what to do, right, so it's kind of a scary thing, and a lot of people don't do it because it's a scary thing. So that's why we say most people don't have the guts to start a business that's not critical of people who don't do it actually may be. The people who don't do it are also smart, but it's just that not everybody has the sense of bravery to do that. So saying that someone has guts might be a way to say Oh, great, you're very That's very good. But it's not always Oh, the other people are not good. No, it doesn't mean that doesn't mean that. So we went up in an airplane to go skydiving to go skydiving and there are two people left . Three other people have jumped already and one is too scared. I can't. You can't. You can't do it. I can't jump. I can't jumps too scary. I came up into the into the sky and I looked down and ah, it's so high. I have got a parachute, but I'm still scared. The other person beside them, who has no fear the last person says Jump jump! Don't you have the guts almost to make them feel guilty for not jumping to sort of push them or pressure to push them or pressure them into jumping? Don't you have the guts, huh? Are you? Are you a chicken? A chicken is someone who doesn't have the guts to do something. Usually it's something dangerous, like sports or something scary. Something that you can get hurt doing. Are you a chicken? And often kids will use that. Don't call me a chicken. I'm not a chicken. And then they do the thing. But first you have to say, Are you a chicken? To make them feel guilty about not doing it like they're weak for not doing it right? Don't you have the guts? It's sort of like the adult version of Are you chicken, You chicken? Don't you have the guts? Same thing, Same idea. Okay, so when you want to make somebody feel a little guilty and do something, say this one.
37. Out of Whack: out of whack out of whack. Things are often things are out of whack. I hope things don't get out of wax, were often using things and then describing them as being out of whack. This is so out of whack. This is so out of whack. Okay, so what does it mean? To be out of whack? Well, out of whack means something that isn't as it should be. Something that isn't as it should be should be like this. But it's not like that. It's like this. Sometimes we say it's just messed up. It's messed up, totally messed up, really out of whack. Sometimes we say out of out of this is a more formal way to express it. Alignment out of alignment, out of alignment. So this could be about rules. Could be about a group of people, and they have a certain set of rules that they follow. But now they're not following them, so it's out of whack. Could be about about the government, and the some part of it is not working properly. It's out of whack. Could be about a device. Your phone. Something is wrong with it. It's behaving strangely. It's out of whack. It's out of whack. Sounds weird, but it's very, very common sometimes to make it stronger, we say all a little out of whack Have you ever have you ever used Excel? And you have many numbers, right? And you change One thing we have you haven't excel open and you change one thing over here . Change this number and suddenly all the numbers are wrong. Everything is messed up. Oh, my God, What have I done? Everything is all out of whack. What am I going to do? Oh, just fix this number. Oh, now it's ok. Huh? Good. So this thing affected affected all the other numbers on my spreadsheet, which is my excel. It's actually called a spread sheet. OK, By changing that number, I changed all the other numbers. Now all the other numbers air wrong doing this through through the spreadsheet, all out of whack so we can say, throwing something out of whack to throw it out of whack. It's in alignment. Everything is good. And then she now it's been thrown out of whack out of alignment. Now it's messed up now it's not right. It's not what it should be okay. Let's look at some examples. My back is really out of whack. My back My back is really out of whack. So in your back you have these these things which are sometimes called spinal disks. Spinal disc on this one is over here. This isn't good. Or it just not straight. Right? Maybe your back looks like that, huh? So it's a very painful and you say, Oh, I think my spine is out of whack. It's now not in alignment, not in alignment should be lined up, but it's not. So we say it is out of whack and that means probably it's causing you some pain. So something physical like this that's causing you pain because something's not right. Something's not as it should be in your body. You can say I think my problem is out of whack or is all out of whack. I haven't been able to think clearly these days. My life my life is so out of whack. I'm just distracted. I guess I'm just distracted, I guess. Okay, so maybe you're trying to get something done trying Teoh trying to be productive. Maybe you even have a deadline to hit and you're behind on the deadline. The deadline hasn't come yet, but you might not finish it in time. And it's because you haven't been able to think clearly. Your mind is just not clear. Not like it usually is eso Now we say my life is so out of whack my life is out of whack. Okay, well, think about the spine. Example. One pieces out. What is the cause? Well, it could be something at work or just ah, depression. Something happened in your life. Ah, a lot of different things might might cause it. But anyway, there's one thing that's causing now things to be out of balance, out of balance. And because of that thing, that's out of balance. Not able to think clearly. I'm just distracted. I guess maybe you're focused on this. You're obsessed with something. You can't stop thinking about this. Maybe you feel like you're you're sick and you're a little bit sick, but you're worrying a lot about maybe it's something more serious. You're doing lots of online research and you can't stop thinking. Oh, maybe I'm going to die And only God, Maybe you're not even very sick, but You're just so worried and stressed, distracted, distracted. So it's it's now caused the balance of your whole life to be off. You're not finishing your work on time. You're not spending enough time with your friends. Maybe you're not eating properly. You're not eating the amount you should. Maybe you're not exercising as much as you used to. Whatever it is, I don't want to be too specific because it can be used in a lot of different ways. But the idea of my life being out of whack or is so out of whack that idea is that I need to balance it again. I need to stop focusing too much on this and I need to get things in order. And if you don't mind me using a bad word, people will say I need to get my shit together or I will just say I need to get it together . I need to get it together. I need to get it together. That means that we need to align our lives sort of like a lining our spine t get everything straight now so that things are balanced again. Get your life back in order. Get it together. I think that's why this expression is so useful. Because it's very versatile. Can be used in lots of different ways. Okay, good luck with your examples. I'll see you in the next one.
38. A Steal: a steal. Ah, steel. It's very important to make sure you use this one as a noun. Very important, because if you just say steel as a verb, that's a different thing. That means to take something that's not yours. Oh, my camera was stolen. Did you steal? Did you steal my my jacket? Did you steal my jacket? Did you take my jacket without asking? But that's not how we're using it here. If we say well, a steel noun, then where were using it to mean Great price? Great deal. Great bargain. If you've got something for a great price, you've got a great deal on something. If you've got a great bargain, that means you didn't pay too much for what you got. You got a lot of value for the price that you paid. And then when people ask you about it, they say, How much did you pay? And you say, Oh is $15 then they say, Oh, what a steal. What a steel You might say $15 on Lee. $15 Onley, $15. It waas us steel. It was a steal. So this basically means you got such a great price. It feels like you were stealing it. Now it doesn't mean that you were really stealing it. It just means in America it means that you paid a low price for something that might usually be much more expensive. You can say it about what you bought, and other people can say it about what you bought for you buying that thing. We can't use it as an adjective. We can't say I got a steal camera. No, I got a camera. A really nice camera for only 600. Normal prices. 800. It was a steal. It was a steal. And if you say the same thing, I got an $800 camera on sale for 600. Then someone else might say, Wow, that's a steal. Wow, That's a great steal. That's a steal. That's really a steal. What a steal. What a steel! What is deal? They could say, Wow, that's a great price. Wow, that's a great deal. While that's a great bargain, Okay, with great deal, we say that's a great deal. A great deal. Can we say a great steal? No, no, that sounds a little strange. We just say a steel or really a steal. What about a great bargain? Can we say that yet? We can see a great bargain, a great price. Okay, so we can put really in front of it. Or really? Ah, but we usually don't say all great and then say steal. Some people might say it, but it's not very common. Okay, so some examples this apartment is a steel. Let's take it before someone else does. So we're looking for a new apartment where maybe with the broker or agent is the person who shows us the apartments, maybe the landlord owner. But if it's a broker or agent, that's not the owner. It's called a riel riel, estate agent or broker, and they're showing us around. And we find an apartment and the normal rent the normal rent for this apartment. Maybe it's a two bedroom apartment, a two bedroom apartment. Uh, normally it is, let's say, 1000 $300. But this one that we're looking at is in a good location, and it's on Lee 1000 $100 the location is great. So we say this is really a steal. What a steal! What a steel. Let's rent it. Let's sign the contract. Let's sign the lease to call it at least that signed the lease. That is the contract for an apartment, maybe for one year, sometimes two years, usually one year. Let's sign the lease before someone else does, because it's such a great price. It's rare to find something like this, and we're usually talking about things as a steal if they are rare, like we made a great discovery and we should hurry up and get it before they're gone or before someone else takes it. Do you think this shirt is too expensive? Do you think this shirt is too expensive? It's $40. That's $40. Do you think this shirt is too expensive? Then the friend says, Well, it isn't exactly a steal isn't exactly a steal. This is basically saying, Well, it's not cheap. It's It's not cheap. Maybe it's a little above average. The price. The price is above normal or average. Okay, and we're wondering were wondering if we should buy it? We really like it. I really like this shirt, but normally a shirt like this would be 30 $32. This one is $40 might be a little too expensive. So then I asked My friend, This is too expensive. My friend says, Well, maybe it's a little bit expensive. Yes, my friend isn't saying yes, Way too expensive. It's kind of like agreeing, but not really. It's like agreeing, but not really. Sometimes we can avoid agreeing completely by saying things this way. Well, it's not exactly which is the opposite is not exactly cheap. I'm kind of suggesting that it's expensive without agreeing strongly without agreeing strongly. And maybe I just communicate that way. Some people just say things that are much less than what they really mean. So what this person really means is, yes, it's too expensive. Or maybe maybe they just don't want to agree completely, that it is too expensive or they don't want to say yes. It's very expensive because they don't want to influence to influence this person, so they can just say that that it isn't very cheap, very cheap might be $25. If they thought that they might say, Are you kidding me? Too expensive? No, it's $25. It's a steel. It's a steal. You should get it, you should get it. But it's not that it's not that. So what's the last thing that you got for a really good price? Record yourself talking about that experience, and don't forget to use this expression in your description.
39. Long Shot: long shot, long shot. Often we say it's it's a long shot. It's a long shot or sometimes it's a bit of a long shot. We also say not by a long shot, not by a long shot. Now these have to kind of different meanings. So let's quickly talk about what each of these means. So this one, it's a bit of a long shot. It is a long shot. It is unlikely to happen. It is very, maybe even very, very unlikely to happen, but we hope it does. So we're talking about something that we would love to happen in the future, maybe a goal, something that we really dream about at night, maybe its getting super rich. And there's one thing we're going to try to get there anyway, some kind of unlikely goal. And we describe trying it, trying to get there, a single effort that we're going to make to do that to get there, and we say, I know it's a long shot. I know it's unlikely, but I have to try because it's my dream. If I don't try, I will always regret it. I know it's a long shot, so here We're kind of recognizing how unlikely it is. It's a long shot. It's a long shot and you'll see this in movies because in movies they're always talking about exciting plans. Of course, the thing that they're trying is successful at the end. But in the middle of the movie, they're making a plan to rob a bank, to steal from some criminal or to just do something crazy. And when they talk about the chances of success and there's maybe only a 2% chance chance of success, someone in the movie might say who it is really a long shot. It is really a long shot, but we have to try. We have to try, and that's what makes the movie exciting. It's exciting because it's unlikely it's exciting. The action in the movie or the TV show is exciting because it's unlikely and because it's a long shot. If it were 100% likely to succeed, that would be a boring movie. This is going to happen. We will be successful. Oh, okay. Why should I watch this movie suspense? But in real life, this might be stressful to someone. I have to do it. But It's a long shot, and it's really stressful not knowing whether or not I will succeed. Okay, now, this one, this one is a little simpler. I think this one means not even close. Not even close. So we tried something, and we want to know how close we were to succeeding. We didn't succeed. It was not a success. But we want to know. Did we fail by this much or this much? And the answer is this much. And we say, instead of by a lot, we say by a long shot. Did I do it? That I get there? Not by a long shot, Not by a long shot. Did you pass your exam? Not by a long shot. So maybe a passing grade would be a 70. You didn't pass. You didn't succeed by a long shot. Okay, so they're kind of similar, but this one is focusing more on how unlikely something is. Whereas this one is talking about focusing more on how far, in fact, you didn't succeed. Can be physical or nonphysical. Ah, goal. Or something we tried to do. And then we failed to do that. We missed by a lot or it could be something like playing golf. Hit the ball and you want to know if it's close to the hole or not. And it's not. Not by a long shot. My dream is to be an actor. It's a long shot, but I still want to try. How likely are you to become a famous actor or actress if you try? If you go to auditions every day, But you know that hundreds of other people are going to the same auditions and they're really good to, Maybe you're good, but they're good to. How likely is it that you're going to become, ah, super famous actor or actress? Well, it's possible, right, but it's also a long shot. Do we ever say it's It's a long shot, so I won't try? Yeah, you could. You might say The reason that you're not going to try to become an actor or actress is that it is a long shot. But most of the time, the most common way to use this expression is to encourage yourself or to let others know that it's going to be difficulty. It's going to be uncertain, but you are going to do it so it's usually used more like this one and not so much like this one. Not nearly as much. Do you think you'll be able to pay rent this month without borrowing money from your parents? Not by a long shot, Not by a long shot. Okay, so maybe this person has financial problems. This person has financial problems and they can't. They can't easily make ends meet, right? Struggling, struggling, struggling. And last time, time before the time before they had to borrow money, this person had to borrow money from their parents. Why? Because I can't pay my rent. I can't pay my rent. Maybe rent is $1200 per month. Rent is what you pay to your maybe your landlord for the place where you live. And, ah, this month you can only pay $650. Now, if it were 1000 1000 180 then that would be very close. And you might say, Mom, Then I just need to borrow $20. I just need $20 please. Okay. Have $20. Hey, we're proud of you for making almost enough to pay your rent by yourself. That's great. Uh, Mom, Dad, I only have $650. I need to borrow a lot this month again. I couldn't pay my rent by a long shot. I couldn't pay my rent by a long shot. It's so embarrassing. So humiliating. I hate asking my parents for money. I need to make more money. Okay, so this one is also very common. Although I think the other one it's a long shot is even more common.
40. From the Get-go: From the get-go. From the get go. Notice I'm not saying get go. Okay. This is a pronunciation point for American English. Sometimes at the end of a word, if there's a T, instead of saying, I will say and stop. Okay? Often for sounds like this, where we need to quickly move on to the next sound because it's part of really one word. Or maybe it's part of a compound word, which is like two words put together. In this case, we have get and go with a hyphen in the middle. So if you say get-go, gets, go, get go, That's okay, that's fine. But you can also say get, get-go, okay? If you want to learn more about pronunciation, you can check out my other courses. I have two other courses about pronunciation. So anyway, basically this means from the beginning or from the start. And we talk about things that are true from the start. Something that began to happen in a relationship or the first day of a job, something happened or began to happen right at the beginning. Sometimes things begin to happen later on, maybe after a few days or a few weeks. This happens right at the beginning from the get go, from the get-go. Now, just to be clear, when I say something is true from the beginning, maybe we're talking about a state, right? Something that's true is often called a state. It's there. So it's a state condition. We might be talking about some event. We might be talking about an adjective. For example, we could say something like I was, I was nervous from the get go. I was nervous from the get-go. So maybe we come up with a plan and maybe the plan is to go hiking at night, group of friends, right? And right from the moment we start talking about the plan, I was nervous. Not only leaving, not only going on the trip, not later, but right from the beginning from the planning. Hi was nervous from the get-go. I was nervous from the get-go from the start, from the beginning. Actually, this sounds more, more native, more natural. Okay? Simple meaning, but it can be used in lots of different ways because it can be about an event or something that began to happen actions, right? Maybe regular ongoing actions. So one person treating someone poorly, maybe instead of waiting several weeks after they meet them, they start treating them poorly from the beginning. Okay. That's an ongoing action right? From the get-go, a state. Right. Something is broken. That's the state. It's done, it's broken. From the get-go. Okay, that would be, that would be the adjective. Can use adjectives like nervous though to talk about how we feel, a feeling. So can be used for lots of different things. I think we should look at a couple of examples so that we can get a better feeling for this one. I've been excited about moving to Andorra from the get-go. From the get-go. All right, so this is the condition of the person excited about moving. This is the idea of doing something. And Dora is, I think, the smallest country in the world. I think it's the smallest. If you don't count the, the Vatican, Vatican City from the beginning. What is beginning? From the beginning of moving, maybe, but probably the beginning of talking about moving to Andorra. Two people start talking about it. Maybe maybe we should move to end aura. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I've been excited about moving to Andorra from the get-go, the other person may be mentioned that they feel like they're the only one who was excited. I feel like I'm the only one who's excited about this. No. No. I've been excited about moving from the get-go. From the get-go. We could replace this here with since we first started talking about it, right? We could replace this, this from the get-go with this, since we first started talking about it. So the reason that this is useful is that it helps us replace longer explanations. And then people can just guess what the beginning is. We're probably talking about talking about it, not talking about beginning to move, right? Because excitement is usually what you have before you start doing something. So it's based on the context. The context, okay, could we replace the adjective with an action, an ongoing action that started when we started talking about it. Yeah. We could say I've been telling all my friends about moving to Andorra from the get-go. I've been telling all my friends. Now we might want to change the sentence a little bit. If we do that. I've been telling all my friends about maybe our move to our maybe our plan to move to end or from the get-go. Get-go is still from when we started talking about it. Okay, So we can, we can sometimes replace the adjective with another action just to be clear, it doesn't have to be an adjective. It's just something that began or started at the beginning. There's the beginning. And another thing also begins whether it's a condition or a thought, or an emotion, a feeling, or an ongoing action. Okay, Let's look at one more example. So here we have two collaborators, people working together on a project, a project. And there are some issues. There are some issues. This person has some problems with this person. This person doesn't like this person's attitude, attitude or way of thinking, way of doing things, maybe behavior. Okay. And because maybe this person hasn't mentioned it so far. They've been working together for a while. This person is becoming very frustrated and has reached a breaking point. A breaking point is a point at which things break, hey, that's easy, that's easy to understand, right? That means this person is beyond beyond able to fix the situation and resolve it. Okay. So they say, I've decided not to work with you on this project because of your attitude, your very negative and I have issues with it. Okay. Well, you should have told me from the get-go. You should have told me from the get-go, why? If this person had the idea that this person is very negative and didn't say anything, then it's maybe partly this person's fault because if this person had mentioned it or set it, then they could have worked it out. To work it out means to deal with it. To maybe to resolve it through discussion, through conversation, and maybe through, through debate even. Or maybe they could have decided very early to stop working together, to stop collaborating. And if they had stopped collaborating, they might have saved time. It might not have wasted time and energy. So this person is maybe right in saying, Hey, hey, that's, you know, I am the way I am. Tell me from the beginning, but it's too late now. It's too late now. You should have told me from start. You should have told me from the get go. Okay, Hopefully this one is clear. I think it's a very useful way to talk about something that started a long time ago at a beginning point and has continued until now. Usually an ongoing action, something that is true. Perhaps an adjective would be the way someone feels, for example, very useful. Make your own examples so that you can really get the feeling for this expression.
41. Just in the Nick of Time: just in the nick of time, just in the nick of time. This is, ah, useful way to talk about, uh, how something almost didn't happen because it was almost too late. So here we're talking about an unknown outcome right up until this thing happened, it did happen. The good result happened, right? But it happened right before it was too late for it to happen. Okay, so, uh, maybe it's a lifesaving situation. Where, where they were waiting for a a heart transplant. There. They're getting their heart change. They're getting a new heart right there getting a heart transplant, a new heart. And, uh, they don't have the heart yet because it's it's on the way. And there's someone on a plane bringing the heart to the hospital. The new heart. Who knows what's going to happen? It's really down to the wire, down to the wire. That means the outcome is unknown, right? Until the last moments. Okay. And then ah, right before the patient was about to to be lost to die, the heart arrived. They did the transplant, and the patients survived. And then later, when they're describing what happened, they'll say, and the heart arrived just in the nick of time. We could say just in time the heart arrived just in time means kind of the same thing. This is when it's supposed to happen. Or it must happen by this time. And it happens right there, right in front of it. Not well before. But if you say just in the nick of time, it adds even mawr suspense to it and makes it feel even closer. Even mawr dangerous. Maybe it's not only about life or death things. It could be about sports matches. It could be about a lot of a lot of different things. It's just describing something being very close to right there, very close to being too late. Okay? And we're talking about actions. It happened just in the nick of time. Why did I write the word lake here? Too late? Well, that's not good either. L a T. What's up with my pen? L A to late. Sorry about that. This would be too late, but it happens right here. Okay. Just in the nick of time. Let's look at some examples. So maybe we have a friend waiting for another friend to pick her up. She was out doing something and she asked her friend to come and pick her up in his car. Right, Okay. And it's about to rain. And if it rains a lot, we say, Sometimes it's pouring rain as though you're pouring water on everything. It's pouring rain. If there's pouring rain, you get very wet. You may get drenched. I got drenched. And maybe if you have your phone on you, But maybe your phone could be ruined. That could be a bad, bad thing. Bad situation. Okay, so my friend drove up. Now, does that mean my friend's car was going up into the sky? No. If somebody comes close to you in their car, we say they drove up. Or maybe I'm standing under a roof, maybe standing under a roof, waiting next to ah, wherever it is, Maybe a school or some kind of building. I'm waiting here. I can see that it's going to rain. Then here comes my friend's car, my friend's car, who comes up 10 seconds before it started pouring rain. He was just in the nick of time, so that means here comes the car. The car stops, she gets in the car two seconds later, it's raining like crazy. Okay? And she would have. She would have been drenched. So she got in just in the nick of time. She got in the car just in the nick of time. He arrived just in the nick of time. Let's look at another example. I don't know if you've seen Harry Potter. Harry Potter is ah, boy who can do magic. He goes to ah ah, magical school l magical School called. It looks like scrotal. I'm gonna write that again school, and he's always in danger. Somebody is always about to kill him. For some reason, there are lots of different reasons. He's always in a lot of danger. There's always some crazy, dangerous person trying to do something bad to him, maybe kill him and it seems like he's just about to maybe die. And right before that happens, he's either saved or he saves himself or something. Lucky happens lots of different reasons, but anyway, he gets out of that dangerous situation always. But it's always right before the terrible thing happens, which is obviously very exciting, OK, and that that's written like that to be more exciting. Okay, so Harry Potter always escapes danger just in the nick of time. Escapes escapes just in the nick of time. So here's a dangerous thing about to happen. Ah, thing about to fall on little Harry Potter with his little glasses, his lightning scar. No feet. This is Harry Potter and something's falling on him. And then he ah, he gets out right before it lands. So he escapes just in the nick of time. I don't think no. In fact, I'm quite sure nothing like this ever happens in the books or in the movies, but they should. They should make a Harry Potter story where there's a weird box about to fall on Harry Potter. It will be called Harry Potter and the Falling Bucks. Sorry for my bad jokes. I'm sorry. I always who will finish something just in the nick of time. Maybe it's a video I'm putting out. Or sometimes I'm explaining something, and I finish my point just in the nick of time. And then the battery on my camera dies. So I say the last word, and then the battery dies and I have to replace the battery. So I finished just in the nick of time, just in the nick of time
42. All Along: all alone all along. Okay, This one is, I think, quite interesting because it allows us to express something very specifically That's kind of hard to express, otherwise, kind of hard to say otherwise. If something has been true from the beginning until now until now, and this thing has been true for the whole time, for the whole time we can use all along. This has been true all along all along. Now it's often used to say some bad thing was happening all along, but it's also used to talk about good things that happen all along. So, for example, we could say I've been I've been rooting for them all along all along. So let's say there's, Ah, there's, Ah, game on, uh, football. Let's say, I know I use football a lot, but hey, it's of course, about American expressions. So American football and there are two teams, and beginning of the game, you ask me, who do you think is going to win? Who are you rooting for? If you're rooting for someone, if you're rooting for one team, that means you want them to win. I'm rooting for Christie. I'm rooting for this team and I say on duh, the game goes on, The game goes on, the game goes on, the game goes on and near the end of the game near the end of the game, this team and now has let's say they have 2121 points and this team has only seven. And I say now, huh? I've been rooting for them all along. Now maybe that's a lie. Maybe it's not true. In fact, it's probably not true, because I because I actually, uh, didn't say anything here. I said, I don't know, but I say, I say I've been rooting for them all along to tell you that I knew I hoped they would win from the beginning. In fact, I just waited for them to be ahead right at the end, and then I decided to say I'm rooting for them, but it could be true. We could make the same example if it were true all along. From the beginning, I was rooting for this team and half they actually one or they were winning. I was right. I was rooting for them all along. I was doing this all along all along, so Let's now that we have a feeling for what this means. Look at a couple examples. You've been here all along. I didn't see you over there. You've been here all along. I didn't see you over there. Okay? So I invited you to to have a coffee to grab a coffee with me, And I got there maybe first or I thought I was there first. Actually. Maybe not. I thought I got there first, and now I'm waiting for you. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. 20 minutes, 30 minutes. I'm still waiting. I'm still waiting at the coffee shop, waiting for you to arrive. We're supposed to have coffee together, so I get up to go to the bathroom and go all the way back to the back of the coffee shop to where the bathroom is. And then I see you there. You're sitting at a table. I thought I was waiting for you, but in fact, I wasn't. You've been waiting for me and I just didn't know where you were sitting. So I say you've been here all along. You've been here all along. I didn't see you over there. I didn't see over there. I didn't see where you were sitting from the time I got here. Until now, I didn't see you. But you've been here all along. Another way to say that is the whole the whole time you've been here the whole time. You've been here the whole time. Also very common. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, you want to sit over there or sit here? Oh, I can I can go over there. All right. Well, I'm just going to go to the restroom, and then then we can We can talk. Sounds good. Sounds good. Tam has been lying to you all along. Tam has been lying to you all along. Actually, she doesn't live here. So maybe maybe I'm Tams of Tam's boyfriend. And I think Tam lives with this person who's Tam's roommate. Okay? And I've never actually been there before, but I know she lives there. And so I One day I just try to surprise her. I go there, I knock on the door and someone the roommate opens the door and I say I stand here. Tam. No, no, she, um she's not here. Well, she lives here, right? And then there's a conversation that happens, and I find out that for some reason maybe she told me she lived here. But actually, doesn't she live somewhere else? Who? Mystery. Mystery. Uh, there's a whole story. There is a whole movie there. You can use that as a movie. A movie plot if you want. This is not a true story, by the way. Just an example. And, uh So finally, after I realized what I can't believe she has been lying to me this whole time. Yes, this whole time Tam has been lying to you all along. From the beginning, I thought she lived here. She doesn't actually, she doesn't live here. What? What? Why would she Why would she lie to me? Why? Okay, so the whole time all along, basically the same thing. The most common usage is from the beginning until now. But it could also be for a long time for a long time. But usually it is from the beginning. From the beginning, you've been a spy all along. I see. Huh? Huh? You might see that in in a movie somewhere. OK,
43. Coming Right Up: coming right up. Coming right up. Coming right up. Okay. Basically, this means something. Something is happening very soon. But often most often used to say, I will bring it soon, shortly or soon. Or in a way, just a moment. Just a moment. Now. It doesn't have to be bringing. We could be We could be doing something on a computer or maybe about to say something coming right up. Coming right up. That means it's about to happen. Something is going to happen soon. It's coming right up. Maybe we're watching TV and and someone says, When is this show going to start? When is it going to start? Yeah, it's coming right up. It's coming right up. It's going to happen very soon. Nobody's really bringing it right. It's just happening. Soon this one, I will bring it shortly. You've made a request of me. You've made a request of me. Can you do this? Yeah. Short coming right up. Using it that way shows my eagerness, my willingness to do it, to do it quickly, to not delay and not be lazy. Yeah, I'll do it. Coming right up. And you're often often hear this If you go to a restaurant in America, you order something, the waiter or waitress After they hear your order and write it down, we'll say, All right, coming right up. Coming right up. I would say this is by far by far the most common place that you will hear this particular expression, however again used toe also mean something happening. Soon it doesn't have to be bringing food. It could be again saying something. I'm going to say something soon or another sort of task, and it could be used to say, an event that's coming your 50th birthday is coming right up. That means you're going to be 50 years old soon. And your birthday is going to be maybe in a couple of weeks. Oh, yeah, you're right. Don't don't remind me. Don't remind me. That means I don't even want to think about that. The fact that it's very soon coming right up doesn't mean I don't want to think about it. That just means your birthday is soon. Okay, so let's now that we understand basically what this means. Let's look at some examples so we can better understand how to use it as I said. The most commonplace to hear coming right up is in a restaurant when you order something. So you might say to the waiter or the waitress to the waiter or waitress waitress is the lady, um, have a salad I'll have. By the way, if you're ordering food, we often also say, I'd like, uh, salad very common to I'll have a salad and a glass of red wine. I have a salad and a glass of red wine now to show enthusiasm. And again, this is for an American restaurant. Because waiters and waitresses in America want to get tips, I want to get tips. If you want to learn more about that, check out my videos on YouTube. I have several videos about tipping in America. Anyway, Uh, coming right up is a way to show enthusiasm. I will bring it to you soon. I will, as quickly as possible give you your salad and your glass of red wine. It sounds very enthusiastic, enthusiastic and even chipper. Chipper sounds very chipper. If someone is upbeat or active and they have a good personality, we might say, Oh, you're so chipper, chipper, very friendly, very friendly and energetic, very chipper. You look very chipper today. Sounds weird, right? Especially if you say it too many times. Okay. Another example. Could you show me the latest progress on the mock ups? Sure. Coming right up. Coming right up. Now, this is something that's happening on a computer. So it's not that the person is going to bring anything. Maybe it's that they're going to open something on a computer. But it's like just a moment. I will do that. I will show you that a mock up is an early version of something. An early version of something, maybe a website, maybe an app, maybe some sort of tool, uh, whatever. Maybe a design and were mocking it up to try to give people a feeling about what it's going to look like. Finally, it's not the final thing, not the finished product. It's the earlier version anyway. Yes, I will show you. I will show you just a moment. Coming right up. So one thing to just keep in mind is that it can be by itself coming right up? Yep. Coming right up. Or it can be together. The in a whole sentence. For example, my birthday. The thing that's going to happen is, is coming right up, coming right up, Make your own examples. Try to get a feeling for how to actually use this. If you can be comfortable writing it down, it might be easier for you to use if you want to use it in a conversation.
44. Sooner or Later: sooner or later, sooner or later, basically sooner or later is the same as eventually eventually or one of these days. One of these days, one of these days, or at some point at some point. Basically, these are all the same. It's about something some event or action that will happen in the future. It's just that we don't know when it will happen so often. When we use sooner or later. It's sort of like saying maybe you think you're doing something now and it will have no bad consequences. There are quite a few ways to use this one. Eventually one of these days, sooner or later, quite a few ways we could just mean that something will happen and we just don't know when it will happen. OK, in the future, we just don't know if it's tomorrow or next week or next month. We have no idea. We don't know, but sometimes it's used to tell someone that maybe they're doing something wrong, and the consequences of their actions will come. Some consequences that will happen in the future. We just don't know when because of some bad behavior, okay? And it could be ah specific thing, like a crime or something more general. So, for example, if someone has a poor diet, we might say, Well, sooner or later, sooner or later you are going to wish you had taken care of yourself. That means right now you're not taking care of yourself. You don't have a good diet, you're not healthy. And eventually it will catch up with you. It will. It will catch up with you. The consequence. It could be something more specific. It could be again, as I mentioned, a crime. Or maybe a bad behavior between ah, girlfriend boyfriend could be lots of different things. So it's used for this specific consequence for an action we may also use sooner or later, when we're trying to put off something, put off something or ah, bigger word that we could use here. Procrastinate, Procrastinate to procrastinate is to delay, delay, delay, delay, delay, something that we are supposed to take care of to continuously delay something we should do . We procrastinate. We put it off, then we might say, Well, sooner or later we're going to have to do this eventually. We're going to have to do this. So the thing that we need to do is not going to go away. It's not going to disappear if we don't do it, it's always going to be there. And we use sooner or later to talk about the fact that we will have to at some point in the future, deal with it. So maybe we, we we might as well do it. Now listen, why should we put this off? Why should we procrastinate sooner or later? We're going to have to take care of this. We're going to have to do it. So why don't we just do it now? We might as well do it now. OK, so it's a very useful little expression again, generally the same as eventually one of these days. So let's look at some examples. Sooner or later, you're going to have to visit your parents. Sooner or later, you're going to have to visit your parents. This is the one that I just talked about, putting something off, delaying. Maybe, for whatever reason, someone doesn't really like to go visit their parents. Maybe they're ashamed of something they did, and they don't want to face their parents or whatever. For whatever reason. They just don't really want to go see their parents. Sooner or later, though, you're going to have to visit your parents. So it's kind of like saying maybe you should go sooner rather than later sooner rather van later, sooner rather than later, because you you can't put it off forever. Okay, Maybe you're embarrassed about something that happened and you're ashamed to face your parents. Well, you might as well just do it now sooner rather than later. Better to do it now, because you can't just not see them for years and years and years. You can't put it off. You have to see them. Sooner were later. I don't know when, but sooner or later I'm going to change jobs. I'm going to change jobs. It means I don't like my job or I don't like something about my job or I really want to improve my career. I really want to improve my career, but I don't have a specific date in mind. So this is just something that will happen in the future. I know for sure for sure that I will not stay at this company at this job for the rest of my life. I am 100% sure. However, I haven't decided when. I will actually change when I will go from this job to another job. Maybe I just haven't thought about it enough. Or maybe I need to do some more research. But anyway, it's going to happen sooner or later. This is a great way to talk about just the general future general future without being too specific, we can say it's going to happen someday. Here we can also say it's going to happen. It's going to happen someday, someday, next month, next year in two years. Who knows? Sooner or later, your smoking habit is going to catch up with you. This is like the example I mentioned before, except before I said, You're going to wish you had taken better care of yourself. I could say that here. I could say sooner or later you're going to wish you had stopped smoking much earlier. You're going to wish that. But if we want to say it just like this, that's fine. Sooner or later, your smoking habit is going to catch up with you. What does this mean catch up with you? Well, it means that we do some bad habit. Bad or unhealthy thing or habit. Bad or unhealthy thing or habit. And it's going okay. No, no consequences. LA, blah, blah, blah for maybe years. For years. There are no consequences for this bad habit. But if you keep doing it for a long time, it's going to catch up with you. That means the consequences will be there. If you had stopped here, maybe there would be no consequences. But if you keep going for a long time, yes. For this period of time, there aren't any. But here there are consequences. You get very sick. Maybe you get you smoke a lot. Maybe cancer or something, right? Or emphysema, some sort of smoking related illness, whatever, whatever. It will catch up with you sooner or later. What that means is, could be 10 years could be 20 years. It means it will happen eventually someday. And that might be a good way to encourage a friend to stop doing something that everybody knows is unhealthy, to sort of push them right to maybe make them feel a little bit guilty so that they might say, Oh, yeah, I really need to quit. I'm gonna quit. I'm gonna quit here. Cold turkey, Cold turkey. Yes, Turkey. Come That turkey cold turkey means you suddenly stopped doing something. Quit drinking coffee. Cold turkey. Quit smoking cold turkey. You don't slowly decrease. Okay, Anyway, that's what sooner or later means, and that is how we use it.
45. Time Flies: time flies, time flies. This is actually very simple. It means it seems like it seems like time is moving quickly. Seems like time is moving quickly. That's that's what it means, basically. But we might say it for different reasons. When you finish doing something that took a long period of time, let's say several years, you finish it, you look back and you go several years. How has it been several years? It seems to me like it's only been several months. I can't believe how quickly the years passed time really flies or in the past tense time flu. And sometimes we'll add by time flew by. Sometimes we'll add just time just flew by. But it doesn't have to be years. It could be longer, like a whole lifetime, and it could be much shorter, like several minutes or several hours. We have another expression that's really common, which is time flies when you're having fun. So if you do something you enjoy, maybe you're working. But you're working on something you really like. You like doing that so it seems like time moves very quickly. You want to do it more right? If time doesn't fly and it's going very slowly or it seems very slow. Maybe because you're doing something you hate, You might say time. Really? What do you think I'm going to say? Drags D R A. G s time really drags drags. Seems so slow. So two people are sitting down at a coffee shop. They're old friends and they're catching up. Catching up means talking because they haven't seen each other in a while, right? Just chatting. And one says, After a while, it's already for 30. The other says, Wow, time has flown by. I thought it's only been 20 minutes. We've already been here. Three hours have already been here three hours. Okay? Seems like time went quickly, we might say. Then where did the time go? Where did the time go? Now that's not a real question. That's something called a rhetorical rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is a question, but it's to really make some sort of comment. We really want to just make a comment about something, and it doesn't need to be answered because that doesn't really mean anything. Where where did the time go? Doesn't mean the time really went somewhere. Well, I guess it went into the past right? But this expression is actually the same as time flies. Time flies. It's like saying I can't believe how quickly it seems. Time has gone. Okay, so this is common to this one's coming to, although this one feels mawr formal and again we can adhere. Time really flies when we want to make it sound more a little bit more casual, friends might say, Wow, time really flies Time really flies and maybe maybe it's been many years since they met, but it seems like it's only been a few, so they could talk about that time period as well. Can you believe that? Last time we met was five years ago. It seems like it was. It was only last year. Yeah, time really flies. Time really flies. Maybe you're getting advice from one of your grand parents. And let's say one of your grandparent's is ah, in their in their eighties pretty old elderly, we could say elderly. And, uh, we're talking about whatever and and you get some advice. The advice is, time flies. Time flies. Enjoy life while you're young. That means to me, to a person who's 80. It hasn't seemed like this very, very long, impossibly long period of time. 80 years. It's really flown by. It has flown by. So my advice to you young person, is to try to enjoy each moment saver. Savor life. That means enjoy everything that you can while you can. Because when you're my age, you might say the same thing. You might say time has really flown by, so I think this is a very interesting expression because it can be used for short periods of ton and long periods of time. And it could be used for very serious things and things which are very casual, simple comments on how time seems to pass When you're making your examples, why not write out a dialogue and have one character talk about a short time spent like ours and another talk about a long time span like years? Good luck with that
46. In the Long Run: in the long run in the long run. Okay, so we have to two basic timescales. We have what happens in the near future, and we have what happens in the far future. Or at least we could say later. Sometimes we call this in the short term, for example, short term goals and in the long term, for example, long term goals. What do you want to do this week? What do you want to do in 10 years? Basically, So this is the short term. This is the long term, and sometimes we do something in the short term. That's very good for us. If I do this now, I'll get a lot of money or something. But doing this in the short term may not be good for the long term, because maybe this stops us from doing something that would be better for this. Or maybe we don't have something now and then we maybe work hard or get new skills or whatever and later we get something, we get something really good. This expression is often used to talk about that kind of thing. Something will either be good or bad in the long run in the long run and we say things like in the long run in the long run, I think I think this will really pay off. What does that mean? This will really pay off. It means now maybe I'm not getting something. But if I put something in now, if I work hard now or invest now or maybe educate myself now, whatever I do something now, I don't get anything. Now, later, I will have something more. It will pay off in the long run. It does not have to be money, not only money. Whatever you think. Success is whatever you think is better in the future. It that works for right. So of course it could be simply about money. Right now, I don't have much money, but I'm going to school. I'm working hard. I'm going to get my master's degree, which I think for me will pay off in the long run. It will pay off in the long run. Okay, that's how we talk about it. And again we can say the opposite. I don't know if this will pay off in the long run or in the long run in the long run. It may be a bad move here. Move means decision, so a move can be a decision. If you decide something, you can say, Oh, that was a good move. Well, that was not a good move. That was a bad move. So you you do something now to get what you want now, but later, maybe it hurts you. So maybe in the long run, it may not be a good idea. May have been a bad move. Okay, Can we use it like an adjective? Oh, it's a good long run idea. It's a good long run idea. No, not usually, we say in the long run, usually by itself, and we don't usually use it like long term. Exactly, because we can say a long term plan or strategy or idea or whatever. But we generally will not say we don't say a long run idea. We use this phrase just like this just like this, to describe those things further in the future. It doesn't have to be years, right? If if the scale is minutes today's or maybe minutes toe hours, then you can still use long run. Maybe you play a video game with your friends and in one game that several hours long something maybe bad in the short term and really good in the long run. So it's not about how much time is passing. It's really about the comparison between now and later and the difference between those two things. The difference in what is good now, as opposed to what is good later or the other way. So, for example, we could say studying is hard, not easy, not fun, Right? But in the long run, you won't regret it. You won't regret it, so that's not saying exactly what we'll get in the future in the long run. But what we are saying is because we're studying hard now, things will be good later. And we will say to ourselves, Huh, I'm glad I studied hard. No regrets, no regrets. I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad I put in the work back then. Back then. I'm glad I put in the work back then thes days. I'm working out at the gym every day. I hope it will pay off payoff in the long run, but I guess we'll see. I guess we'll see. I guess we'll see means, I don't know for sure. You don't know it's going to pay off in the long run. Do you know? Because maybe you don't lift correctly. Maybe you don't know what you're doing. It's possible, right? It's possible that you work hard for six months at the gym, but you were doing it all wrong and it doesn't pay off. What would be the payoff? Getting big muscles right? You want big muscles? Maybe, for example, or you want to get really thin, really fit in shape, fit in shape. So this hope is not guaranteeing the future, not promising the future. It's saying this is why I'm working out every day. This is the reason I'm doing it. And I wanted to just mention one other example because I said this phrase, actually, yesterday to a friend. I said in the long run, So I just want to just want to tell you what it is. So I have a friend who's selling something, and it's not very good to be totally honest with you. It's not a very good product. Quality is low. It's pretty low quality, not terrible, but kind of low. And his plan is to pay a lot of money for marketing, marketing so that lots of people see it. The thing that he's selling and buy it right, which in the short term has been working. A lot of people are buying it, lots of sales, but because the quality is not good, in my opinion, the thing that will happen is people will find out it's not very good and they will write reviews and they will complain. And then the brand image will have problems in the long run. Yes, so now it's really great. But as soon as people start to realize this is not a good product, then you're not going to be able to sell anymore because people will find out. Oh yeah, I see the marketing. But I heard from my friend. It's not good. People will realize that. So this is what I said to my friend. I said so I know you're making a lot of sales right now, and that's great. But in the long run, I don't think your strategy is that great. I think you need to focus more on your product and then once you have a great product, you can you can focus on marketing, but if you don't have a great product first, then it's going to hurt you in the long run. Okay, that's how we use it. Come up with your own examples. Think about something from your own life. Make it as realistic as you can, and I'll see you in the next one.
47. On the Fly: on the fly on the fly. Okay, If you do something on the fly, a few deal with something on the fly. It's usually unplanned as you go. And we could also say sometimes spontaneous and sometimes not. Careful now, there might be a number of reasons we would do something on the fly. We maybe had to deal with something on the fly because something completely unexpected happened. Like the toilet started leaking all over and I had to figure out how to fix it on the fly. I don't know how to fix the toilet, but I had to figure out how to fix the toilet. I had to figure it out on the fly as I went as I went. I don't know what I'm doing. I didn't have a plan. I didn't know this would happen. Usually we're dealing with some sort of emergency, some kind of unexpected thing, right? We had no idea this was going to happen. Then it happened. So we have to deal with it without a plan on the fly. Sometimes we use on the fly. When we're talking about talking, we don't have a plan, but we talk about something So we say we come up with ideas or we speak on the fly. Yeah, I just did that on the fly. I think there's a good way to remember this, and it's kind of a silly example, but anyway, we'll use it. All right, here's a cliff and you are standing here, Doctor, um, that's you and someone pew pushes you off the cliff your own. Now, if you fall, you will die if you hit the ground. But, um, if you figure out how to make a parachute out of, maybe you're close as you're falling. So that right before you hit the ground, you land softly. People say What happened? You said I made a parachute, a parachute out of my socks and my jacket as I was falling down as I was falling in mid air . What now, of course, that's a ridiculous, silly, stupid, stupid example. You couldn't make a parachute as you're falling with your socks, right. However, it's a good way to remember it, and that's the idea. When you're standing here, you didn't have any intention of falling, so you're not ready. You're not prepared. You don't have a parachute. And so When someone pushes you and you start falling, you had better start to be resourceful. And it is often used to say that someone is a resourceful, able to come up with ideas in the moment without a plan to fix a problem, solve a problem or save themselves, save others, save a project. Or maybe save a presentation if they forget what they were supposed to say. Sometimes I just do things on the fly, and it usually works out. What am I saying about myself? I might be saying, I'm not the type of person who likes to plan. I I don't I don't always. I don't always plan very well. Okay, What else am I saying? Well, because I'm saying it usually works out. Works out all right. Means it's pretty successful. Pretty successful. Pretty successful. Um, that means I must be pretty resourceful. It must be pretty resourceful. Okay, that's what I'm saying about myself. I'm not saying it about myself. I mean, in this example. That's what this example is about. I just do things on the fly out A clear plan before him. Did you write that speech yourself? It was great. It was great. I made it up on the fly, Actually. Thanks. So maybe someone stands up and does a speech about something. Maybe at a wedding. Maybe there's a wedding. And one person a friend of the groom Groom, by the way, is the man. And the girl is the bride. One person stands up for some reason, gives a speech, talks about their relationship, whatever. It's very good. Maybe it's very funny. Everybody laughs. And then later someone says, Did you write that speech by yourself? It was great. That means Did somebody help you write it? Not only did nobody help me write it, but it wasn't written at all. I made it up on the fly. Actually, thanks. Actually here means in fact, in fact made it up. Means you created it. I made it up. It comes from your mind. You make something up. You. Sometimes you lie. You made that up. That's a lie. But sometimes it means you're creative. You come up with or create a new idea. Made up a speech, said just what I wanted to say. And it
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