لغات

CONVERSATIONAL VOCABULARY

APPEARANCES CAN BE DECEIVING

Hi there, folks. I’m now going to talk about some of the words and phrases that Dan and I used in our conversation about the lesson Appearances Can Be Deceiving.

1. wimpy

The first is wimpy. Dan is talking to me, and he says, “I kind of think a half marathon is a little wimpy.” What does this mean?

Well, wimpy comes from, originally, the verb, “to whimper,” which means to kind of cry or complain in a very meek, soft way. So a wimp is basically a person who is cowardly, afraid, weak, not very effective, not very good at something, a wimp.

You can say, “I’m a wimp,” whenever you’re afraid or you don’t feel that you’re up to the challenge of something, so if someone asks you to get on the back of their motorcycle and go for a ride and you feel afraid, you can say, “No thanks, I’m a wimp. Sorry.” It just means, “I’m afraid. I’m not really up for that. I’m not really ready for that, I’m a wimp.”

You can wimp out as well. To wimp out, this phrasal verb, means to give up or to quit due to fear or due to not feeling strong enough or good enough. For example, some children climbed to the top of a very high diving board, and they wimp out. They can’t jump, they’re too afraid.

This happens with roller coasters, people wait in line and right when they’re about to get on the roller coaster, they wimp out. They lose their nerve. They lose their courage, right? They wimp out. Have you ever wimped out?

1. let loose

The next is let loose. We’re talking about being in good times, being in good times, and we spend money, and we let loose, even though that could be leading to something negative. So to let loose basically means to let go, to be free from inhibitions, to not hold back, to just do things freely. I often think of the image of very excited barking dogs tied to a post with chains, and if you let the dogs loose, you take away the chains, you let the dogs loose, what do they do? Well, they don’t sit there, they take off running, and barking, and jumping, and they are let loose. You have let those dogs loose.

We can use this figuratively when we’re talking about just kind of relaxing, being free, not worrying too much about rules, and things that normally inhibit us from doing what we want to do. For example, the work week. You work hard during the week, you have to be there on time, you have to act a certain way, sometimes dress a certain way at work, so you work hard during the week, but on the weekends, you let loose, right? You just relax, you wear what you want, you wake up when you want. You just have fun, you let loose.

Now, you can also let someone loose on something, and it has a slightly different meaning. It just means to allow them to do what they want without any supervision, so we can let the kids, our children, loose on the playground. We let them loose on the playground. It just means let them run wild, like this. What do you do when you let loose on the weekends?

1. be into

All right, the next is to be into something. Perhaps many of you know this already, but I just want to draw your attention to it in case you don’t. I’m talking about lottery tickets, and I tell Dan, “Well, buying lottery tickets is not something that I’m really into. I rarely do it. I’ve done it a few times, but it’s not something I’m into.”

So when you’re into something, it just means that you have an ongoing interest in it. You like it, and you do it regularly.

So some people are into buying lottery tickets. They do it every week, and every month, and they spend money over the course of time. It’s kind of habitual, they’re into it, and they enjoy it. What are you into?

For example, some of my students are into K-pop, they like listening to Korean pop music. They’re into it. They talk about it, they have favorite bands. Sometimes some of them even dress like some of their favorite K-pop stars. They’re into it.

Right now, I’m into running. I like jogging. I’m into it. What are you into? What do you do regularly that you enjoy?

1. blow it

Okay, the next is blow it. Blow it. We’re talking about this man who made a statement that all this money that he won in the lottery is not going to change his life. He’s not going to blow it. He doesn’t want to blow it. That’s what Dan says, and then I respond by saying, “Yeah, he’s not going to blow his money.”

So actually, there are actually two different meanings going on here. The first is to blow money. When you blow money, it means you spend it lavishly. That means you spend a lot of it for short-term gain, often short-term pleasure. It’s the opposite of making a good, wise investment with that money.

So let’s take an example. A guy named Billy, it’s his payday. He gets paid once a month, and on his payday, he has a big night out with his friends. They have dinner, they go drinking at a club, and he wakes up the next morning and he realizes that he blew almost $500, which is a large part of his paycheck. He felt bad about it. He had a good night, but now he’s going to have to really struggle the rest of the month, because he blew so much money.

So when you blow money, it means you just spend a lot of it kind of quickly, and for short-term gain. It’d be different if he had taken that money and invested it in something, or invested it in his education, or invested it in something that can improve the quality of his life. That’s not blowing money, even though you’re spending the same amount.

Now, you can blow an opportunity, and that’s often what people mean when they say, “Blow it. I’m not going to blow it.” That means to squander or lose an opportunity. So some people say that, “You have one chance to make a first impression, a good first impression. Don’t blow it. Don’t ruin it. Don’t lose that chance. Don’t blow it.”

I know a man who started a new job, and he was eager to make a good first impression on all the employees in the office, but on his first day, he showed up late, he wasn’t dressed properly, he fell asleep during one of the meetings. He really blew it, right? He blew it. He lost his opportunity to make a good first impression.

Right now, you have a chance to really improve your English with our lessons by doing a little bit of study every day. You need to build that momentum. It should be a daily habit. Don’t blow it, right? This is your opportunity. Don’t blow it. Don’t lose it.

1. heavier vs more heavily

All right, moving on. I’m actually not going to talk about a definition here, this is more about usage, language usage, and this is something that Dan says. We’re talking about whether or not if we won the lottery, whether we would prefer to have the money in one lump sum, or to get paid in yearly installments over the course of time. And I said, “Well, I don’t know what I would do, it depends on the math. It depends on the numbers.” And Dan says, “Well, you may get taxed heavier. You’ll get taxed probably heavier.”

What I want to point out is that grammatically speaking, Dan is combining a comparative adjective, heavier, with the verb, “to get taxed,” to get taxed. And generally, and according to our grammar books, we would add an adverb here.

You would get taxed more heavily. We wouldn’t say, “Get taxed heavier,” strictly according to a grammar book.

But here’s what I want to point out. Dan’s a native speaker, and we often speak in ways that are not in line with what grammar books say. That’s real English, that’s how people speak, and this is very common for people to use adjectives sometimes to describe verbs. That’s part of the natural speech patterns of many, many people, including me, including Dan.

And so even though grammatically he probably should have said, “You’ll get taxed more heavily,” he says, “You’ll get taxed heavier,” and both … One sounds a lot more academic, but the other sounds a lot more comfortable in daily conversation. So yeah, you should be aware that, not to get caught up in worrying about whether your grammar is correct or not. Just speak and get your meaning across, and then you can use times like this to reflect on usage.

1. sticky

Okay, let’s move on. The next is sticky. This is an adjective. I refer to having lots of money suddenly as being a sticky situation. Right, it’s a sticky situation, because it’s one thing to hang out with your friends and family and have a good time, but as soon as you put a large amount of money into the equation, into the situation, it can become sticky. People may want your money, they may try to get your money, they may treat you differently because you have that money, and it becomes suddenly problematic and difficult to navigate, and emotions can run high, and feelings can be stirred up. So that’s a sticky situation. It just means, “difficult, problematic.”

You think about something that’s sticky, things stick to it, so it’s difficult to move.

It’s difficult to maneuver, right? You can get stuck if you’re not careful, so that’s sort of the literal meaning of sticky, and you can apply it to a situation in a more figurative way. Problematic, difficult. A sticky situation, a sticky issue, some problems are sticky. You can have a sticky relationship with a person or group of people, et cetera. Are you involved in any sticky relationships or situations right now?

1. get busted

Okay, moving on. Get busted. Dan says about this man that won the lottery, “I think he just got busted within the last couple of years.” What does that mean to get busted? Well, the verb, “to bust,” means to break, or burst, or split open, or split apart, right? You bust something to break it open. So actually, when you get busted, it means you get caught doing something that you wanted nobody to know about. You wanted it to be a secret, but you got caught.

So let’s imagine a teenager. Their parents give the teenager a curfew, meaning that he or she has to be home by let’s say 11:00 p.m., but the teenager’s friends like to sometimes party on the weekends in the middle of the night, so the teenager sneaks out of the window of the bedroom, and comes back in before the sun comes up, thinking that his or her parents won’t know about it. Maybe for a while, he or she gets away with it, but eventually, she gets busted, or he gets busted, right? The parents find out, so you get busted, you get caught doing something that you didn’t want someone to know about. You get busted.

Another example might be a husband who smoked for many years, and promised to give up smoking, but was secretly doing it, and his wife busted him, right? He got busted by his wife. His wife busted him. She caught him smoking again. He got busted.

Now, when you get busted by the police, that means you get caught by the police.

That’s another common meaning of, “get busted.” That often leads to arrest, you get arrested. So to get busted in this case, Dan meant he got arrested, he got busted. He got caught and arrested.

1. the slammer

And then I say, “So he’s now in the slammer.” And the slammer is jail or prison. He got busted, now he’s in the slammer.

Why do we call it a slammer? Well, the verb, “to slam,” means to shut violently, to bang something, makes a loud sound, just like the door to the jail cell is made of heavy metal, and when the prison guard closes it forcefully, it makes a slamming noise. He slams it shut. You’re in the slammer, right? You’re in jail, you’re in prison.

And if you’re in prison, you could try to bust out. To bust out of prison means to break out of prison. So there’s that term bust again, and in a phrasal verb. To bust out of something means to break the wall and escape, to bust out like this. Have you ever busted out of prison?

1. make good with

Let’s go onto the next one. This is to make good with. Dan says he wants to, “Make good with his friends and family that he grew apart from while he was in prison.” To make good with, this just means to make things straight again, to make things balanced, to make things right, to set things straight. You make good with your friends and family when your relationship has been damaged.

Take for example a guy named Robert. Robert wasn’t around very much when his kids were growing up because he was too busy with work. He had to travel for many, many weeks at a time because of his job, and he really didn’t get to spend much time with his kids. And now that his kids are young adults and Robert doesn’t have to work so much anymore, he’s trying to spend more time with them. He’s trying to make good with his children.

It doesn’t always mean to repair or heal, you can also make good with people to keep a relationship healthy, to keep it balanced. For example, maybe at Christmastime you go around to your neighbors and you give them baked cookies that you made. And you’re doing that to make good with them, just to keep a good relationship going. Maybe if you didn’t do that, you would lose contact with your neighbors, so you do things to reach out and make good with them. You just kind of make things balanced, keep things going, keep things flowing well, right? To make good with someone.

Now, that’s a little different than make good on something, which means to follow through with a promise, is to make good on something. So if you promise to do something, you have to make good on that promise, you have to make good on it.

It means you have to keep it. You have to follow through, you have to make good on your word, what you said you were going to do. It’s a little bit different, but connected.

1. the abyss

Okay, finally, the abyss. What’s the abyss? Dan … were joking as we often do towards the end of the conversation, and I asked Dan jokingly, “Will you be my shepherd, Dan?” Dan says, “Sure,” and I said, “Okay, I’ll follow you.” Dan says, “I’ll lead the way.” And I said, “I’ll follow you blindly into the abyss,” right? Into the abyss.

The abyss, if you ever hear that term, it just means, “the unknown, the unfathomable, the unimaginable.” We imagine it as a deep, dark hole, a deep, dark, bottomless pit. You can’t see to the bottom, you don’t really know what’s in there. And there’s this sort of image if you get too close, you could fall into it and disappear into oblivion. It’s the abyss, the mysterious unknown.

You can also add, “abyss of,” and then like a negative … kind of a negative noun or term, like, “abyss of anger.” He fell into the abyss of anger. He got so angry that he was trapped in an abyss filled with anger. The abyss of sadness. Her husband died, and she fell into the abyss of sadness. The abyss of loneliness, the abyss of sorrow. So you can add abyss in front of these negative terms to poetically describe a state of loneliness, or sadness, or sorrow, or grief, or something like this. Okay, what do you see when you look into the abyss?

All right, that brings me to the end of this lesson. I hope you found those useful, and if you have questions, please post them in the forum.