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CONVERSATIONAL VOCABULARY

DREAMS CAN CHANGE THE WORLD

Hi there, folks. Aaron here of Deep English. In this commentary, I’d like to talk about some of the words and phrases that Dan and I used in our conversation about dreams…

1. along for the ride

…and the first is along for the ride. I actually say this when Dan is talking about Ringo Starr and how he actually didn’t have talent. That he benefited from the success of The Beatles but didn’t maybe contribute as much as the other people and I say yeah, they say he was along for the ride. What does that actually mean?

Well, if you imagine yourself sitting in the backseat of a car and you’re with a group of people and they’re going somewhere and one person’s driving, another person’s looking at a map, another person’s navigating, and you’re just sitting there, you’re doing nothing. You’re just enjoying the view outside the window, you’re along for the ride, in a literal sense.

But figuratively, this means participating in some kind of activity but not actively.

You’re not really seriously involved, you’re just kind of there, not contributing much. Let me give you a few examples of this. As part of my job as a teacher, sometimes I give demonstration classes and these are open to anyone who wants to come and so sometimes a prospective student of the school will show up to the class and bring along a friend or two. Those friends are just along for the ride, they’re not actually serious about joining the school and being an actual student of the school who pays tuition, they’re just accompanying their friend to the class.

They’re along for the ride.

Let’s imagine that you go with a friend to purchase something, something expensive like a new car and you’re with your friend and the salesperson starts asking you questions about what you want in a car and you can say to the salesperson, “Hey, he’s the one that’s buying the car, I’m just along for the ride.

Ask him the questions, don’t ask me.” That’s how it would be used.

In the case of Ringo Starr, some people say that he was along for the ride, that he didn’t have as much talent as the other Beatles. That he was a good drummer but he could’ve been replaced by someone else and The Beatles would have been as equally as successful as they were. I disagree. I think Ringo is probably a very talented musician and I think that the success of The Beatles depended upon the relationship of the four and if one of them, any one of them, were to have been replaced, perhaps The Beatles would not have been as successful as they were.

Ringo was very important, I think.

1. slice of the pie

Let’s move on to the next one, slice of the pie. We’re still talking about Ringo and Dan says, “Yeah, I don’t think he would be getting such a big slice of the pie as the others because Ringo … He was a good drummer but he couldn’t sing very well and he never wrote any of the songs.” Apparently, he wasn’t a song writer, so perhaps he didn’t get as many royalties as the others. I don’t know if that’s true or not but that’s what Dan is suggesting here, he’s not getting such a big slice of the pie.

In a literal sense, when you have a pie, which is a delicious thing, you have to cut it and you have to share those pieces with your friends and family. Figuratively, the pie represents benefits, right? It’s often in the form of money but it doesn’t have to be money, it could be something else. When you take a slice of the pie, you are sharing in those benefits. Now the question is how big is your slice of pie? We use this figuratively when we’re talking about people getting a share of some kind of benefit. If your buddy Frank wins the lottery, his family members will want a slice of the pie, right? It causes problems for Frank.

If a company makes lots of profits in a certain year, the workers will want a slice of the pie, right? They’ll want to share in those profits and in the case of Ringo, was he getting as big of a slice as the other members of the band or not? He’s one of the richest musicians in the world so I would imagine his slice was quite big.

1. call the shot

Moving on, the next one is call the shot. What does that mean? Call the shot.

Dan’s talking about when his wife became pregnant, he knew ahead of time that it was going to be a girl based on a dream that he had and his wife thinks that he’s making up this story but Dan insists that he’s not making it up, he called the shot. He says, “I was like Babe Ruth (the famous baseball player) pointing out to the stands, that’s where the ball was going.” Of course, the story is that Babe Ruth would point to the stands and that’s exactly where he would hit the ball for a home run.

To call a shot basically, in a literal sense, it means to predict the result of something related to your own effort before it happens. You’re calling the shot.

We do this when we play games like darts. Sometimes you have to call the number you’re going to hit and try to hit it. Or in billiards if you are going to hit the eight ball you have to call the shot, I’m going to hit it in the left corner pocket, and if it goes in the right corner pocket then you lose, right? You didn’t call the …

You didn’t hit the shot that you called essentially. That’s in a literal sense, and that’s how Dan is using it here. He’s saying that I called the shot, I predicted what was going to happen before it happened.

This is also used in a figurative way when it comes to organizations. The decision maker, right, is the one that calls the shots, that makes the decisions. The one that’s in control calls the shots, right? That person is a shot caller. Who’s the shot caller in your organization, right? Are you the shot caller in your organization? For example, let’s imagine there’s a company and the president of the company is a very visible man. He’s always on television, he’s giving speeches, he’s shaking hands at parties, and everyone thinks that he is the one that calls the shots in the company, but it’s not actually true. He’s just a figure head. It’s his chief operating officer who calls the shots, she is the one that’s actually running the company.

She’s the one making the big decisions and she’s the one that’s kind of telling the president what to do. She calls the shots, she’s the shot caller.

1. float your boat

Alright, moving on. Float your boat. We’re talking again about Dan’s prophetic vision that a daughter was going to be born and Dan thinks it’s something amazing and he feels that it was like a prophecy. I respond by saying, “Well, hey Dan, if it floats your boat.” Dan says, “If it floats my boat? Don’t try to minimize this discovery I had, Aaron.” What does that mean, to float your boat? Well, it just means whatever keeps you happy. Whatever floats your boat. Whatever keeps you happy, but here’s the important point, you only say this when it’s something that you yourself would not do or are interested in doing or if you don’t really care. That’s when we use it.

For example, let’s imagine you’re with a friend and you’re going to be with the friend out on the town all day long and your friend says, “Hey, let’s get some lunch. Let’s go to a Chinese food restaurant.” You go to eat Chinese food, you sit down, you look at this big menu, and your friend says, “What do you want? What do you want to eat?” You say, “Well, I don’t know, whatever floats your boat.” I’m not really that hungry and I like Chinese food, I’ll eat anything, so whatever you want, whatever floats your boat, right? I don’t really care, whatever you want.

Then your friend after lunch says, “Let’s go see a movie. What kind of movie do you want to see?” You’re like, “Oh well, whatever floats your boat. Whatever makes you happy. I’m happy to see whatever, it doesn’t matter to me.” Again, like you don’t care, you’re whatever floats your boat. Then later you’re in a shopping mall and your friend tries on this crazy jacket. It’s like a purple velvet jacket with sparkles and rainbows and your friend says, “Look at this great jacket, I’m going to buy it.” You look at it and you’re like, “What? Really? You’re going to buy that? Are you serious?” Your friend says, “Yeah, this is the best jacket I’ve ever seen.” Then you respond by saying, “Well, if it floats your boat. Whatever floats your boat.”

Right? Meaning that you don’t approve and it’s not something you would ever wear but if it makes your friend happy, who cares right? Whatever floats your boat. That’s how you use it.

1. ride your coattails

Moving on, ride your coattails. What is this? Ride your coattails. Dan immediately responds by saying, “How rude?” Right? “I’m not going to tell you any of my discoveries anymore.” Then Dan goes on to say, “Aaron, you’re like the Ringo Starr of this deep English team trying to ride on my coattails.” Okay, of course he’s joking but what does that mean to ride on my coattails? Well, literally coattails are the back of a man’s coat and by coat, we’re talking about like a jacket, like a formal jacket. If you look at the back of a man’s suit coat or suit jacket, you’ll see a little split at the end, those are the coattails.

A hundred years, a hundred fifty years ago, these coattails were often very, very long. They would go all the way down to the legs or the calf muscle area of a man’s back of his legs. These were very long and if that man was going somewhere in the figurative sense of being successful, if you imagine someone literally grabbing ahold of those coattails as that man moves forward towards success, they’re riding on his coattails. They’re basically latching on and achieving some kind of success of their own based on the effort of the man wearing the coat. Now you can sort of see what the meaning of this idiom is. It means to benefit from the success of others. You achieve success because you’re actually aligning yourself in a relationship with someone who is doing all the work.

This happens a lot in politics. Let’s imagine there’s someone running for President and that person is successful, becomes the President of the country. Well, that person’s Vice President, you could say is riding on the coattails of the President, is achieving success based on the success of the President, of the person they’re aligned with. This happens in academia sometimes. A lot of academics researchers publish papers together and sometimes one person is a brilliant academic, a brilliant researcher but co-authors papers with others and those people benefit from that person’s success, right? They’re riding on his or her coattails, right? Has anyone ever ridden on your coattails or do you ever ride on other people’s coattails? It happens in life.

1. I get that

Alright, moving on. I get that, that’s the next one. I get that. I get that. What does that mean, right? Dan’s talking about lucid dreaming and I say, “Okay, I get that, but what I don’t completely understand is why would someone want to do that?”

Right? This is a simple one, it just means I understand. I get that. I understand that. You’ll also hear it delivered as I get it. I get it, right? Get it? Do you get it? I get it, I get it. I got it, I got it. Right? Yes, I get it. No, I don’t get it, can you explain it more? I don’t get it. You get it? Got it? Good. Right? That’s what it means. It means I understand. You can use this anytime you want. It has a little bit more of a colloquial feel to it, just keep that in mind, but yeah, you can use it interchangeably with understand, right? Get it? Good.

1. bubble up

Alright, next one is bubble up. This is a phrasal verb. Bubble up. I’m talking about that dreams may actually serve some kind of useful purpose, like a psychic purpose of releasing tension or anxiety. Then I go on to say maybe things bubble up from the unconscious mind or the subconscious mind and you process it in some way in your dream. What does that actually mean, bubble up? Well, literally it describes that process of bubbles in a liquid container of some sort, bubbles of gas rising from below toward the surface. You’ll see this like in champagne, a champagne glass, little bubbles rising to the top. Or if you imagine a scuba diver.

If 20 meters below the surface of the water, her air that she’s breathing, when she exhales those bubbles slowly kind of rise to the top and bubble out like that.

Bubble up. Gas rising.

If you think about how those bubbles move, they sort of move gently, slowly, kind of here and there in an upward fashion. They don’t shoot to the top really fast, it’s just kind of a very slow gentle rising and we can use this figuratively, this phrasal verb, in a figurative way and when we’re speaking about things that kind of …

Things like thoughts, emotions, inspirations, things that come from deep within us that arise gently. We would never say anger bubbles up, right? It doesn’t. Anger erupts like a volcano but yeah, you might have some thoughts on something that bubble up, that slowly kind of arise in your mind. Or maybe an emotion like melancholy bubbles up on a rainy day, a cloudy, rainy day. Melancholy will bubble up. An inspiration might bubble up or it could erupt as well, but this basically just means a very gentle rising of something, it bubbles up.

1. pull over

Alright, another phrasal verb that I use is pull over. What does that mean? Pull over. Well, Dan’s asking me, “Have you ever been on a long road trip and you’re driving for hours and hours and then you suddenly feel like you’re going to fall asleep?” I say, “Yeah, that’s when I pull over and get coffee.” To pull over means to move a vehicle, usually a car or a truck, to the side of the road. That’s what it means, to move the car to the side of the road and stop, right? When you see police lights behind you, you need to pull over, you need to move to the side of the road. If you want to text a message to your friend on your smartphone and you’re driving, you need to pull over. Or if you suddenly have an argument with one of the passengers in your car, you should pull over, right? Otherwise it’s dangerous.

This is actually one of many different or several different phrasal verbs that you can use when driving a car. Another one would be pull up to, so if we pull over we move to the side of the road, if we pull up to the curb or pull up to the stoplight, it means to move in a forward direction, not a side direction. Now you can pull into a parking lot or pull into a garage or pull into a gas station, it means to go kind of in an inward direction, and likewise we can pull out again, we can pull out of the parking lot onto the road, right? It just means to drive out, right? Pull in, drive in, pull out, drive out. You can pull around to the back of something. Pull around back and let’s unload the truck there. These are all useful phrasal verbs when describing actions of driving.

1. coked up

Okay, just a few more here. Yet another phrasal verb, coked up. What does that mean? Coked up. Well, Dan’s talking about this doctor who created the residency a long time ago and he was addicted to cocaine in order to stay awake for all these long hours. Dan says he was all coked up, so what that means is he had a lot of cocaine in his system, right? I don’t know how, if he drank it or snorted it or whatever, but he was full of cocaine, he was coked up. If you hear that phrasal verb, it means someone has cocaine in their system and it’s a significant amount.

Now actually coke is short for cocaine. Coke is also short for Coca Cola and that is no coincidence. Actually, Coca Cola was originally invented in 1883 and it contained significant amounts of cocaine. People started abusing it until about 1903, so for about 20 years, Coca Cola was a drink that was actually created by a pharmacist so it has roots in medicine and drugs, so that’s why they called it Coke, Coca Cola, it contained cocaine. Interesting.

1. a wink of sleep

Okay, finally, a wink of sleep. I say, “Six years, Dan.” He says, “Six years what?” I said, “Six years.” Dan said, “Since you slept? You haven’t had a wink of sleep in six years?” Right? I say, “No, that’s the average amount of time we spend dreaming in our lifetimes.” A wink of sleep, this is collocation that you’ll hear from time to time and a wink of course is that very brief shutting of an eye, right? You can wink at someone, you can wink at someone to communicate something, to say yes or to say hello, or to flirt with another person, you just close your eyes quickly, one eye, but a wink in this sense, a wink of sleep, it means a very short amount of sleep.

The shortest amount of sleep that you can imagine is a wink of sleep, and we usually use this in the negative. I haven’t had a wink of sleep.

For example, last night there was a loud party in the house next door and I couldn’t get a wink of sleep, I could not sleep at all, right? I couldn’t get a wink of sleep. Or maybe you’re sick with a cold and you have a stuffy nose and your throat hurts and you’re coughing and sneezing and you have a headache and man, if that’s the case, you probably didn’t get a wink of sleep or you’re not going to get a wink of sleep unless you take some kind of medicine to put you out, right? To cause you to fall asleep. Those symptoms will cause you to not get a wink of sleep.

Okay, that brings us to the end of this commentary. I hope you found those useful. Please, try to use them in conversation and if you have questions, ask us in the forum.