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CONVERSATIONAL VOCABULARY

CAN HUMANS CHANGE?

Hi everyone. Aaron here. I’m now going to talk about some of the vocabulary terms that Dan and I used in our conversation this month.

1. take a stand

The first one is take a stand. Dan asks me at the beginning of the conversation, “Can we evolve beyond wars? Will wars ever end? What do you say, Aaron? Take a stand.” Dan orders me to take a stand, and that means to take a position, to hold a position, especially on a controversial or important issue. To not retreat, to not run away, to not be silent, but to state my opinion boldly. Take a stand.

This actually has its roots in a military sense, which means to hold your ground. To not run away when the enemy is attacking you. Maybe a famous example of this would be the Alamo in Texas. During the Texan Revolution, the Texan forces took a stand in this kind of like a church called the Alamo against the Mexican invaders, the Mexican attackers. They fought hard and they were outnumbered, but they didn’t retreat. They stayed and they fought. Unfortunately for them, they ended up being killed. The Mexicans won, but they took a stand. They didn’t run away.

You often find people taking stands in politics on a certain issue. They come out and they declare their opinion and they fight for it. They’re taking a stand for equal rights or they take a stand for justice or something like this. You can take a stand at work on a certain issue that might be controversial or risky or something like that.

The opposite of take a stand is to sit on the fence. You’ll sometimes hear this phrase, to sit on the fence. Don’t sit on the fence. Take a stand. Make your opinion known. Those who sit on the fence really don’t help anything. They don’t get involved. They don’t offer their voice. They are not engaged with the community. They sit on the fence. Don’t sit on the fence. Take a stand. Be an active participant in your community and fight for the causes you believe in. When was the last time you took a stand?

1. put it on the line

The next one is put it on the line. Dan’s talking about how Franz, this German ace fighter pilot, was a decorated, experienced fighter pilot. Then suddenly, in this incident, he felt compassion for the enemy. He was really putting it all on the line there. That’s what Dan says, “Putting it all on the line there.” He could’ve been arrested for treason and executed if that had come out.

What he’s saying here is Franz the German fighter pilot did something that he could’ve gotten in a lot of trouble for, in fact, so much trouble he could have been executed or maybe put in prison for life. He was putting it all on the line.

To put it on the line or to put it all on the line, is to risk everything. To take a very, very big risk.

That’s what Franz did, he took a risk. If he had gotten caught trying to help the enemy, he could’ve been punished severely. Some people put their job on the line when they act out with some kind of outlandish or crazy behavior, or if they take a risk at their job. Some people put their reputation on the line by supporting someone for a job that might be a controversial person. Some people put their life on the line as part of their livelihood. Firemen and policemen, they’re at risk of dying every day. They put their life on the line every day.

This phrase, put it on the line, I think it’s not really clear what the origin is, but I would imagine that the origin is related to gambling in some way, where you’re actually putting down your money or you’re putting down chips on an actual line that’s drawn on a table or a piece of felt.

It’s part of the rules of gambling. To put it on the line, it means you’re betting that money.

You’re putting that money up in a risky way to hopefully win but probably lose it. To put it on the line.

1. get legs

The next one is get legs. We’re talking about the fact that Franz did this very risky thing by helping the enemy, Charlie Brown and his crew in the plane and we’re talking about what happened. Why didn’t the German army capture Franz and punish him for what he did?

Dan was saying, “Well, maybe somebody saw it but it never came back to him.” That means it never went anywhere. The people that maybe did see it, the soldiers that did see it, they didn’t report it. They remained silent. I said, “Yeah, it never got any legs.”

To get legs means to gain traction or to gain momentum. Something that actually goes somewhere. It takes off, like an airplane. If it doesn’t get legs, it stalls. It never goes anywhere.

It dies away. I’m saying that this fact that he did this very risky thing to help the enemy, it could’ve gotten reported but that fact never went anywhere. It never got momentum or traction. It never got any legs. It died away.

If you make a proposal, for example, a new initiative at your office and people don’t support it, then it won’t get legs. It won’t go anywhere. If you can get other people to support it and people work hard together to make it happen, then it will get legs and it will go somewhere. It will develop. Sometimes in Parliament, lawmakers propose a new law and it never gets any legs because no one supports it. Maybe in a different context, someone puts a really interesting video on YouTube and people are all the time putting interesting videos on YouTube, but most of them never get any legs. They never go viral. They never become popular or famous. They just stay and they get maybe a dozen or a couple of hundred views and that’s it. Occasionally, there will be a video that’s very interesting and it’ll just suddenly get legs. It’ll get millions of views and it becomes viral. That’s how it got legs.

1. didn’t know each other from a man in the moon

The next one is didn’t know each other from a man in the moon. I actually say this. I say what I like about this story is that these two men, who didn’t know each other from a man in the moon, created a lifelong bond. This is actually just a collocation of words, from a man in the moon, that just means not at all. It goes with didn’t know. I didn’t know him at all. These two men didn’t know each other at all, from a man in the moon. They didn’t know each other from a man in the moon. Why do we say, “From a man in the moon”? I have no idea. Maybe because we don’t know who the man in the moon is.

I’m not exactly sure where this comes from, but I’ve heard it for a long time, even in my childhood. There’s a man in the moon. I guess it comes from looking up at the moon with your naked eye and seeing the craters there in the moon. They’re kind of little shadows. They’re black against a very bright white satellite that circles the Earth. I guess it’s just a legend or just some sort of belief or fairy tale that there’s a man that lives there. He’s the man in the moon, but we don’t know who he is. No one’s met him before. If you meet someone and you don’t know that person, you can say, “I don’t know him from a man in the moon. I don’t know her from a man in the moon.” It’s just a phrase you can use to talk about someone you don’t know.

Be aware of that.

1. my heart leapt right out of my mouth

The next one is my heart leapt right out of my mouth. I say this when I’m talking about getting attacked my monkeys. I said that suddenly one of them leapt out of the tree and they all started screaming at me with their teeth baring and they chased me and my heart leapt right out of my mouth. You can probably guess what that means. It means to be frightened immediately. To be really scared quickly. To be shocked with fear. Your heart leaps out of your mouth. If you imagine your heart beating and suddenly it beats so strongly it jumps out of your mouth into the air and beating in front of your face. That’s the idea.

This phrase, my heart leapt right out of my mouth, is said in different ways by different people.

Some people might say, “My heart leapt into my throat,” or, “My heart leapt into my mouth,”

or, “My heart leapt out of my chest.” Of course, I said, “My heart leapt out of my mouth,” but all of those mean the same thing, just got very scared in a shocking, extreme way. If you almost step on a snake while you’re walking from your car into your house, you might be so scared, you might say, “My heart leapt right out of my mouth when I almost stepped on a snake.”

Maybe you’re watching a horror movie in the theater and at the climax when the scariest part happens, your heart leaps out of your mouth. When you’re talking to someone about the movie you saw, you can say, “Oh wow, at the climax of that movie, the ghost appeared and my heart leapt right out of my mouth,” like this. That just means I got really scared.

1. harrowing

Somewhat related to that is the term harrowing. I was talking about how this experience of being attacked by monkeys was really frightening and when I’m finished talking about it, I say, “Yes, it was quite a harrowing experience.” This term, harrowing, is kind of rare. You don’t hear it that much but sometimes you will hear it, and it means extremely distressing. Very disturbing. Something that gives you a tremendous amount of stress is a harrowing experience. If you’re on an airplane and it almost crashes, that’s a harrowing experience. If you’re in a car and the car does crash but you’re uninjured, you weren’t hurt, and no one else was hurt, “Wow, that was so scary. It was so shocking. It was so disturbing. It was a harrowing experience.” Maybe you’re walking in the street and someone points a gun at you and says, “Give me your money,” and you’re afraid you’re going to get shot or injured and it’s a really harrowing experience. It’s very stressful. It’s very disturbing. Have you had any harrowing experiences recently?

1. undoing

The next one is undoing. We’re talking about the monkeys, the baboons, and how this treasure of garbage that they loved so much where they got all their food from was actually their undoing and it made them sick. An undoing is really the thing that brings you down. Your undoing is the thing that brings you down. It’s your downfall. In the case of the baboons, even though they loved this garbage so much and it gave them free food, basically, it ended up making them sick and some of the baboons died. It was their undoing. It brought them down.

We can use this in different ways. For example, some people, their greed is their undoing. I know a guy whose addiction to alcohol was his undoing. I know a woman whose poor diet was her undoing. She got so overweight and so unhealthy she ended up dying of a heart attack.

Her poor diet and lack of exercise was her undoing.

1. wiped out

Let’s move on to the next one: wiped out. This basically just means killed. Exterminated.

Eliminated. We’re talking about the alpha males that got sick from taking this garbage. They got tuberculous or something like that and it wiped them out. It killed them. It exterminated them.

They died. They were eliminated. That’s just basically another way of saying killed or eliminated. You can use it in many different contexts. It’s a nice little phrasal verb.

For example, the smallpox virus, back in the 1900s was wiped out in a matter of years once the vaccine was finally created and distributed. Nowadays, many species of animal are being wiped out each year due to climate change and deforestation. Who knows, maybe the human species will be wiped out by some kind of large scale natural disaster or maybe robots and their artificial intelligence will take over and they’ll subjugate the humans and exterminate them.

Who knows? Someday we will probably be wiped out. That’s not a nice thought, but who knows.

1. hightail it

Let’s move on. Number nine, this is actually the ninth one I’m mentioning here. Hightail it. I like this one. To hightail it. We’re talking about the baboons and how they would fight to get in to the garbage heap with other troops and then they would grab a bunch of drumsticks and cake and other food and hightail it back to their troop. To hightail it means to run away. To flee very quickly. Almost as if you’re in a panic. Actually, this comes from, the origin of this phrase comes from animals, like rabbits or horses or gazelles. When they run away, their tails go up in the air.

Their tails actually get high when they’re fleeing from danger. That’s just part of their biology.

They hightail it.

We could say the bank robbers, as soon as they got their money from the bank, they hightailed it out of town. They fleed town. They ran away very quickly. I was swimming in the ocean last week and I saw a bunch of big shark fins swimming around me and I hightailed it out of there. I swam as quickly as I could back to the shore because I was afraid I’d get bitten by a shark. I hightailed it out of there. To hightail it means to run away quickly.

Another interesting word that means the same thing is skedaddle. Skedaddle. Let’s skedaddle.

He skedaddled out of there. He skedaddled. It just means he hightailed it. He got out of there quickly.

1. a lost cause

Just a few more here. A lost cause is the next one. A lost cause. We’re talking about alpha males and how this troop actually benefited from the absence of alpha males after they were wiped out. They became more peaceful. I make a reference to the current American election and I say that maybe Donald Trump, like one of these alpha males, is not really one of the groomers.

He’s one of these violent forces. Dan says, “No, and I don’t think Hillary Clinton is either. Bernie Sanders on the other hand, but I think that’s a lost cause.” Basically what he’s saying is Bernie Sanders, actually, is a person who might be a groomer in terms of baboons. He’s not necessarily an alpha male. He might be someone that’s very cooperative and sensitive and stands up for the rights of all humans beings and thinks of the group rather than just a few individuals. That kind of thing, but he’s a lost cause. What he means is his movement to become President, his movement to take power and really influence American society as President is finished. It has no more chance of success. It’s a cause or a moment with no chance of success any longer. He’s a lost cause. He cannot win the presidency.

Some people who cannot overcome their drug addictions become a lost cause. We try to help them. We do everything we can, but they’re a lost cause. Sometimes trying to convince the administration at your institution where you work to change their policies is a lost cause. No one listens to you and you can try a million times and you never get anywhere. It’s a lost cause.

A lost cause is just something that you want to do, something that wants to get done, but there’s just no chance of success. It’s a lost cause. Are there any lost causes in your life? Are there any lost causes in your community or in your country?

1. a done deal

Last one, a done deal. A done deal. Again, this is what I say in response to Dan saying that Bernie Sanders is a lost cause, I say, “Yeah, that’s kind of a done deal, isn’t it?” By done deal, I mean something that’s already decided. It’s already too late to change. It’s finalized. I’m talking about how Bernie Sanders now is no longer in the running for President. He’s basically lost his chance to Hillary Clinton. It’s a done deal. It’s over. There’s no more chance. Whether or not I’m correct or not, is not the point. What I’m saying is I think it’s a done deal. It’s finished. You can’t change the decision. It’s already a done deal. You might hear someone say that. “You want to change the decision. Nope, sorry. It’s already been decided. It’s a done deal.”

Maybe you’re looking for a new job and they’ve already hired someone for the position and they say, “Sorry, it’s a done deal. Someone’s already been hired. It’s a done deal. You can’t get this job anymore.” Maybe you have to make a really important decision with a group of other people and the deadline for making that decision isn’t until next week. You can say amongst yourself, “Hey wait a minute, this is not a done deal. We still have seven days until we need to make the final decision. It’s not a done deal. We still can do this. We can still change the decision that has been made before and we can change things. It’s not a done deal.”

Those are actually eleven different phrases and vocabulary terms that Dan and I used in this conversation and I hope you find them useful. As always, I urge you, I implore you, to put these to use. It’s not enough to just taste these terms intellectually. You’ve got to put them into practice. To do that, you have to do it in a systematic way. You have to make an effort to use these, and that’s why I really urge you to try to get conversation practice and have these lists of words in front of you. Purposely try to use them when talking about this topic and using the conversation questions and using the vocab conversation questions. Try to put these to use.

It’ll be really helpful for you.

If you have any questions, put them in the forum and we’ll see you soon.