لغات

##Conversational Vocabulary

1. muggy

Hi there ladies and gentlemen. Aaron here. I’m now going to talk about some of the words and phrases Dan and I used in our conversation about forgiveness, and the first one is muggy. I asked Dan, “Are you enjoying the hot weather of the summer,” and Dan says, “Oh yeah, it’s hot.” I say, “It’s dripping hot,” and Dan says, “Swelteringly muggy.”

Muggy basically refers to air that is full of water. It’s 100% humidity. It is muggy.

When you walk out into a muggy day the air sweats on you. Lots of people don’t like muggy weather. I don’t mind it so much. Swelteringly muggy means hot and muggy, because to swelter, the verb, means to be uncomfortably hot. We often use this to refer to a day or the weather, like it’s a sweltering hot day or it’s sweltering heat, and as Dan says it’s swelteringly muggy out there, so hot and muggy.

1. moral compass

The next is moral compass. I’m talking about how forgiveness makes us feel much better when we forgive someone, and Dan says, “Oh, and that’s why you should do it, because it feels good? Is that your guiding moral compass?” We’re just joking around, but a compass is a tool that we use to determine which way is north, south, east and west. It’s kind of a circle and it has a needle and the needle always points to the north.That’s a compass, and a moral compass … Moral of course refers to your sense of what is right and wrong. So if you have a good moral compass it means that you are aware of right and wrong when you make decisions and you always choose to do what is right, not what is wrong. Some people have a weak moral compass and they don’t make good decisions on what is right and what is wrong and it leads to trouble.

Some people have a very strict moral compass. They never compromise their morals. They always do what is right, even if it causes some pain and suffering to others. Then some people have no moral compass at all. Maybe you know some people like this, if not in your life then in the news or in stories of literature, some evil person that has no moral compass. They don’t care about other people. They only care about themselves and they make decisions based on what benefits them, not what is right and what is wrong. Okay, how’s your moral compass by the way?

1. a big fan of

The next one I really like. You should use this one. This is a good one. It’s to be a big fan of something. We’re talking about pop ups, the man that created pop ups.

I say to Dan I’ve never been a big fan of pop ups. Of course a fan is someone who is enthusiastically for something. We often think of sports fans, people who go to sports games to support a particular team and they dress up in those teams’

colors and they chant for that team with other fans and they put lots and lots of energy and passion into the game that’s taking place. That gives the athletes energy and support, moral support as well as emotional support.If you’re a fan of something it means you really, really like it. You’re passionate about it. You love it. I’ve never been a big fan of means I’ve never liked … I’ve never liked pop ups. I’ve never been a big fan of them. Or to not be a fan of something means you don’t like it very much at all. I am not a fan of speeding drivers. They’re dangerous, like this.

What are you a fan of? I am a fan of hiking in the woods. I’m a big fan of hiking in the woods. I love it. I think it’s healthy. I think it’s a great activity, to get close to nature, get exercise, breathe some oxygen laden air. I’m a big fan of hiking like this.

1. monster

Okay, the next is monster. We’re talking about the guy that created the pop up and Dan says he was looking for a solution to a problem initially, but he ended up creating this monster. So of course a monster, as you know from horror movies, is a large, frightening, scary beast or a crazy person, right? It could also refer to a poorly behaved child, a little monster. He’s cute on the outside, but he’s a little monster on the inside like this.

But as Dan is using it, it means anything that gets out of control. It ends up doing something that the creator did not intend for it to do. Some things we lose control of, some of our creations, and they become monsters, things that have negative consequences. It has a negative connotation. We wouldn’t use monster to describe something that evolved into something positive, only something negative, so a monster, it became a monster. It caused people many problems.

People hated the pop up. It was a monster.5. piggyback

All right, the next is to piggyback. Here’s another good one. Dan is talking about the pop up ad and he says that the creator feels that enabling advertising to piggyback on top of free content was one of the worse things that he did or helped to do. What does this mean, piggyback? Well, a piggyback ride is when generally a smaller person jumps on the back of a larger person and that larger person runs or walks and the other person is getting a free ride basically on the back of another person.

You usually see this with children and their parents. A child might piggyback on his mother’s back for fun or on the way to the market. Or your father might give you a piggyback ride when you guys are playing in the park because it’s fun, it’s enjoyable. Yeah, that’s what piggyback means. To carry someone on your back is to give them a piggyback ride.

I don’t know if you remember the space shuttle, the American space shuttle, but when it would come out of space and land, in order to move from one airport to another airport within the United States they would put the space shuttle on top of like a 747 airplane and that would be a piggyback ride. Basically the shuttle was piggybacking on a normal commercial type airplane to get back to Florida.

They usually used to land in California and it would piggyback on another airplane to get to Florida.You could also use this in let’s say a business context. For example, in the United States 20 or 30 years ago many gas stations started to allow convenience stores to move into their space so that the convenience store could piggyback off of the constant traffic, if you will, of customers coming in to get gas. They figured that’s a great opportunity to sell them things like drinks and supplies that they might need or candy or snacks or whatever, so convenience stores started piggybacking off of the gas stations. Now if you are in America and you pull over off the expressway and you go into a gas station there’s often a very large convenience store there because it’s piggybacking off of the gasoline delivery business.

Another way you might use this is with wireless networks. For example, if you stay let’s say at a vacation home and it doesn’t have internet access but the house next door has a wireless network and they didn’t password protect it, well if you wanted to you could piggyback off of their wireless network and actually use that network because they didn’t protect it. You’re piggybacking off that network. Now if you have a strict moral compass you might not do that without asking first.6. to crumble

All right, the next is to crumble. This is another good one. We’re talking about again this guy that created the pop up, and I was talking about how advertising on free content allows us to get that free content without paying for it. That’s how we can get access to lots of news, because advertisers are funding that news creation business, so there’s a good thing about advertising. Maybe there’s a positive side to pop up ads. Dan says, “Yeah, you know that’s the way TV works too,” but I’m not so sure he was right, that the internet would crumble just because of this, if that didn’t happen.

To crumble means to basically fall apart into many pieces. Actually a crumb is a very small piece of bread that falls off. Or let’s say a cracker … If you crack a cracker in half it’s very dry, it’s very hard. There may be a few pieces that come off of it, so you have two halves and then you have maybe a few crumbs on the table, little pieces of it.To crumble means to break into little pieces, and we even have kind of an idiom that we use. We say, “That’s the way the cookie crumbles,” meaning that’s the way things happen in life. You can’t can’t control it, just like when you break a cookie in half you can’t control how those crumbs fall onto the table. That’s just the way it is. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. You have to deal with it.

You can emotionally crumble under stress. Some people crumble under stress.

They crumble in difficult situations. That means they fail to either do the right thing or they fail to follow through with what they’re doing. They crumble under the stress. They crumble under pressure. They crumble in difficult situations.

Perhaps you too have crumbled in difficult situations. You’ve fallen apart. You’ve lost control. You didn’t achieve what you wanted to do. You crumbled. We see that in sports a lot. Some people rise to the occasion and they accomplish their goals and other people crumble under the pressure like this.

1. a war zone

Okay, the next is war zone. What is a war zone? Well, literally a war zone … A zone is a region or an area where a war is taking place. Right now in the world there are parts of Afghanistan that are war zones. There are parts of … Well, actually Syria is a war zone. There are various war zones in places like Africa, certain areas of Southeast Asia perhaps. There are war zones all over the world and they’re areas … They’re very dangerous. They’re full of conflict.We can use this metaphorically to talk about other things in life that are full of disarray, full of conflict, full of danger, and they’re usually very unorganized.

They’re a complete mess sometimes. It’s a war zone. Let’s say we normally keep our house very clean, but if you go into my older daughter’s room it’s a war zone in there, right? There’s stuff all over the floor. It’s everywhere. It’s a total mess. It’s a war zone.

Dan actually uses this phrase when he’s talking about the comment section to this article about Hector Black, the guy that forgave the man that killed his daughter in such a brutal way. If you look in the comments section, it’s a war zone in there. It’s full of conflict, people arguing, people getting very upset. Any place that is just full of conflict, full of disorder, disarray, it’s a war zone. Perhaps you know some war zones in your life.

1. far out

Far out … I’m sure we’ve covered this in the past, but it’s good to point it out again. I talk about this situation with Hector Black and how it’s quite far out. It’s a far out situation. I usually think of … When I use that phrase far out, I think of far out into space, it’s just so far removed from what we would normally expect. It’s far out. It just means it’s extreme.In this case it’s such an abnormal situation … We normally would think of someone who’s daughter was brutally murdered as being full of bitterness and hatred for maybe the rest of their lives, but here’s a guy who forgives, and not only does he forgive, but he makes friends with the man that did it, the murderer. Wow, that’s far out. That’s extreme. That’s not normal. That’s not ordinary. It’s far out there.

You can actually use this phrase, far out, as an exclamation in place of something like cool or awesome. You could say, “Wow, far out. That’s far out. Look at that sunset. Man, that’s far out,” meaning it’s a very extreme, beautiful sunset. It’s not the kind of sunset you get every day. Maybe you see a sunset like that several times in your life. “Wow, far out. Look at that moon, that big full moon. That’s far out.” Use that. That’s a good one.

1. to creep someone out

Okay, just a couple more. To creep someone out. To creep someone out. We’re talking again about Hector Black and how these guys became good buddies, or at least they had a relationship that was like a friendship. Dan says, “How would you feel if you were the daughter and your father was making friends with the person that murdered you?” I’d say, “Wow, that would creep me out. That would be kind of creepy,” so to be creeped out means to be just made to feel very uncomfortable, a little bit scared, a little bit weird, just very uncomfortable.Actually insects like spiders and cockroaches, they creep around, so to creep means to kind of walk very quietly. We normally think of creepy thinks as like worms and insects and centipedes and spiders and things that would crawl on you and make you really scared and uncomfortable. Those are creepy things. So if something creeps you out, it makes you feel as if there are spiders walking all over your skin, like that. That would creep you out. That would creep anyone out.

It’s creepy, right, to have these things creeping around all over you, so anything that creeps you out, makes you feel uncomfortable, scared or weird. What creeps you out? What creeps you out?

1. flesh and blood

Finally, flesh and blood, your flesh and blood. That just means family. Of course flesh is your muscles, your meat, your skin, your fat. That’s your flesh, and blood runs through it. So your flesh and blood means people who are related to you by blood, in other words your family members. That’s your flesh and blood, so anytime you want use the word family you can occasionally switch it out and use flesh and blood, “They are my flesh and blood.”

All right. That brings me to the end of my commentary. I hope you found some of these words and phrases useful. Yeah, try and put some of them to use in your next conversation. All right, take care everybody.