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CONVERSATIONAL VOCABULARY

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

Hi, Aaron here. I’m going to talk now about the use of some of the vocabulary words and phrases from the conversation Dan and I had on the homing behavior of certain animals.

1. homies/homeslice

Let’s just get started right away at the beginning of the conversation. Dan and I make some jokes by using a play on words. The word ‘homing’ actually sounds like ‘homie’ or ‘homie’ or ‘homes’ or ‘homeslice’. I say, “I think we’re talking about homies,” and Dan says, “Homies. What’s up homeslice?” And I say, “Yeah, you’re my homie, man.”

Basically, the word ‘homie’ means good friend. It’s in a very casual way someone who you’re close to, who you hang out with. That’s your homie. Generally, this is a male way of speaking, although you will occasionally hear women speak this way as well, but it’s mostly a male form of speaking. It comes from ‘homeboy’. ‘Homeboy’ or ‘homegirl’. A homeboy is someone who is from your neighborhood. It’s someone you grew up with. It’s someone who’s on your home team. It’s someone you trust that you lean upon for help and you help him. It’s a homie.

So you might say, “Hey, what’s up homie?” Or, “Hey, homes. How’s it going?” Or, “What’s going down, homeslice?” “Oh yeah, Fred. Yeah, he’s my homie.” So he’s my good friend. He’s someone I trust and I care about. He’s my homie. So Dan and I are homies. That’s the first one.

1. far-out

The second one is when we’re taking about the dogs who jump on the train and they commute every day to a part of the city in Moscow, Russia where they can get lots of food. They can beg for food. Then at the end of the day they take the train home just like a human worker might do. I say to Dan, “Yeah, actually when I first heard that, I couldn’t believe that dogs would actually get on a subway or a train and commute. That sounds so far-out. The term ‘far-out’ is the one that we’re looking at here.

Basically, ‘far-out’ just means amazing, unbelievable, incredible, far-out. It’s just far-out. It’s hard to believe. It’s an amazing fact. The fact that homing pigeons can find their way back home even though they’ve traveled for hundreds of miles in a box is far-out. It’s really hard to believe.

If it were proven that life exists on Mars, that would be totally far-out. So sometimes, we use words like totally or absolutely, or completely in front of the term ‘far-out’. So you might say, “Totally far-out.

Wow that’s totally far-out. That movie was totally far-out. It was absolutely far-out. Completely farout.” I couldn’t believe it. So that’s ‘far-out’. You can use that anytime you want.

1. call us out

The next one is ‘call us out’. As soon as we finished introducing this topic of dogs commuting in Moscow, Dan jokes and he says, “I think maybe some of our Russian listeners are going to call us out, like, “What are you talking about?”” And I say, “Yes, if that’s not true.” To call someone out, to call a person out means to tell that person that we know that you’re not telling the truth. We know that you’re giving us inaccurate information. And Dan responds by saying, “Well, I looked it up in multiple sources and it’s been documented.” So he’s trying to prove to the listeners that, actually, this is a fact. This is not fantasy. This is not something that he’s making up. But he’s still joking that maybe our Russian listeners will have more inside information on this topic and they might say, “Hey Dan and Aaron, actually, that’s not true. Even though it’s reported in many articles on the internet, this story is actually not true.” So he’s joking about that. If you are a Russian listener and you think that this is not correct, please let us know.

Anyway, to call someone out means to point out an error or a mistake or an inconsistency. Some people will say ‘call on’. They won’t say ‘call you out’. They’ll say ‘call on.’ They’ll ‘call you on’. “I’m going to call you on your lie.” “I’m going to call you on your inaccuracy.” “I’m going to call you on your bullshit,” which is a more vulgar way of putting it. Sometimes, politicians are ‘called out’ on their lies. We call them on their lies. Some professionals like doctors or lawyers or teachers, they don’t like to be called out on their mistakes. So if they make a mistake, you can call them on their mistake. You can call them out on their mistake. Sometimes we take out the term ‘out’. So ‘call on’ or ‘call someone out’, ‘call someone on’. Those are interchangeable at times. Those are two different ways of saying the same meaning. Okay. ‘Call out’.

1. wild

All right. Let’s move on to the next one. This is something that Dan says when he’s talking about the dogs again and how they commute from the suburbs to the cities. He says, ‘That’s such a wild story.

That is apparently true. I hope it’s true,” he says. Actually, a bit later in the conversation, Dan is talking about these hackers who add technology to their bodies. ‘Biohackers’ I think he calls it. There are some different pods that they put on their midsection that vibrate in the direction of north. And I say, “What? Yeah, that’s wild! Wow, that’s wild!” So I was so impressed by it, I said, “That’s wild.” This has almost an identical meaning to far-out. I could have said, “Yeah, that’s far-out. That’s wild.

That’s amazing. It’s incredible. It’s unbelievable.” The fact that dogs commute on a train every day, just like human beings to do their work, that’s just wild. That’s far-out. That’s so wild. That’s totally wild.

There’s lots of wild things in the world. Winged suit base jumping is wild. Do you know what winged suit base jumping is? It’s when you put on a suit with wings and you jump off of a mountain and you fly through the air. And just before you’re about to hit the ground, you open a parachute that you’re carrying and that saves you and softens your fall. That’s wild. That’s totally far-out. That’s incredibly wild.

1. Bermuda Triangles

Okay, a little bit later in the conversation. We’ll move on to the next one and this is ‘Bermuda Triangles’. Dan says, we’re talking about pigeons, homing pigeons and he says, “I was actually reading about certain Bermuda Triangles for pigeons where they‘re not able to navigate.” And he says, “I wonder if that has something to do with the sound, or if it has something to do with the magnetism on that certain area.” So certain ‘Bermuda Triangles’ for pigeons.

What are Bermuda Triangles for pigeons? Well, if you don’t know about the Bermuda Triangle, it’s a triangular region of ocean that is I would say, southeast of Florida in the United States and a bit east and northeast of the Bahamas and some of the Caribbean Islands all the way up to the island of the Bermuda. This area is notorious for the disappearance, the mysterious disappearance of a number of ships and airplanes over the past 40 years or 50 years. And so it has developed a reputation for mysterious disappearances. So Dan is using that to refer to areas where pigeons are not able to navigate, and he says that, “I was reading about certain Bermuda Triangles for pigeons.” So I suppose you could use this term the way Dan uses it about regions where things just don’t work or things mysteriously go wrong and people may understand you. But the Bermuda Triangle is a good thing to know in terms of what it actually is. It’s just a region where things disappear. Okay, mysterious things happen.

1. granular

All right. Let’s move on to the next one. This is ‘granular’. We’re talking about… Actually Dan says this, and he’s talking about how birds navigate and how maybe it’s actually something much more complicated than just knowing which way is north, which way is south, east and west. But it must be something much more complicated, much more fine and ‘granular’. So, ‘granular’.

‘Granular’ comes from the word ‘grain’ as in small pieces. Very, very small pieces, granules, grains of sand. It basically means detailed, finely detailed, very, very finely detailed. So if you describe something as granular, you’re describing it as very, very detailed. It’s not coarse, it’s not simple. It’s very extremely detailed, down to the last detail. In this case he’s talking about their ability to navigate. It’s much more complicated and detailed and granular than we might imagine.

1. tall tales

Let’s move on to the next one. This is tall tales. Dan is talking about a friend of his named Perry, and how Perry told him the story about a dog who found its way back home. Actually, the dog did not find its way back home. A guy lost his dog and then found his dog while hitchhiking. That was it. And then Dan says, “Yeah, but I don’t know. He had a lot of tall tales.” He’s talking about his friend Perry and how Perry used to have a lot of tall tales, so the story isn’t reliable.

So stories that are unreliable. Stories where the truth has been stretched or exaggerated to the extent that the storyteller’s credibility is questioned are called ‘tall tales’. Some people have a reputation for telling tall tales. When you listen to their stories, of course the tale is a story, when you listen to their tales, you have to take them with a grain of salt. That means just be careful about accepting everything they’re saying because the truth might be exaggerated. The truth might be stretched. That’s a tall tale. Beware of people who tell tall tales.

Also, a fisherman’s tale is a related phrase. We didn’t use it in the conversation. But if you ever hear of a fisherman’s tale, it has basically the same meaning. It’s a story whose truth has been exaggerated or stretched. Of course, it comes from the idea that if a fisherman catches a fish and maybe the fish is, oh I don’t know, 50 centimeters long. As the fisherman tells the story of catching this fighting fish, maybe the fish in his story grows to 1 meter long and the more he tells the story, the bigger the fish grows. After several years, that fish is now 3 meters long. Well, that’s a fisherman’s tale. It’s a tall tale. It’s not true. The fish actually used to only be 5-centimeters. The more he told the story, the more he exaggerated. So don’t tell tall tales.

1. cubby holes

The next one is ‘cubby holes’. We’re talking about… Actually, Dan makes a joke about the guinea pigs that my daughters have in the house. I think he mentions something about them traveling or finding their way home, and I said, “No, actually they like their home. They stay home and they don’t even like coming out their cubby holes. They’re not up for traveling.”

So a cubby hole. What is a cubby hole? And why is it called ‘cubby’? Well, I’m not really sure why it’s called ‘cubby’ but perhaps it has to do with the word ‘cub’ which means baby bear or baby mammal, in some ways. We often call certain mammals, ‘cubs’ and I’m thinking of bears, mostly.

But basically, bears are animals that hibernate and they often live in cages. Oh sorry, not cages – caves, or in holes in the ground. Those holes or caves, we think of them as being very warm, especially in the winter when they’re sleeping and hibernating. So ‘cubby holes’.

These are basically holes or spaces for children to hide and play in. That’s where you’ll mostly hear it. In North America, particularly the United States, people use ‘cubby hole’ to refer to a place for children to store things at school. So schools will often have a cubby hole for each child and the child can put his or her books in the cubby hole or boots or jackets or shoes or whatever, while the student is studying. He or she can keep some personal belongings in the cubby hole.

I use this in the conversation just to refer to the little holes, the little dark spaces that the guinea pigs like to hide in and that makes them feel safe. So those are cubby holes.

1. throwing up

All right. We’ve got two more. The next one is ‘throwing up’. Dan uses this phrase when he’s talking about an aboriginal woman from the continent of Australia who has a very sophisticated and granular, meaning detailed, way of perceiving direction and the ability to navigate, like many members of her tribe. He says in the conversation that she had a certain part of her brain that was throwing up a mental map of where she was in relation to her home. In this case, this phrasal verb means to project, to extend into space so that it can be observed. In this case, she is inside her brain. She is projecting an image that she can objectively see, and she could see where she was in relation to her home. That’s what it means.

Another way might be ‘to put up’. She put up a mental map. She constructed a mental map. She threw up, she was throwing up a mental map. That’s how it means. Be careful because this phrasal verb also has another meaning. If you say ‘to throw up’, actually this is usually how we use it, it means ‘to vomit’ or ‘to puke’. If you’re sick, you may throw up. If you get really sick or if you drink too much, you might throw up. My daughter got sick recently. She caught a virus and she was throwing up in the living room. It was not pleasant. Some people get sick in cars and trains and they throw up. So that means to vomit.

1. spaced out

All right, the very last one. This is where we, towards the end of the conversation, Dan’s talking about meeting a person who has no sense of direction and he gets the feeling that they’re not paying attention. I said, “Really?” and he says, “Yeah.” And I said, “No, maybe that’s just you, man. I sort of get the feeling that they’re in a different space. They‘re just different.” Dan says, “Well, that’s a nice way of saying it. It’s a nice way of saying you’re spaced out. You’re in a different space.” To be ‘spaced out’ means that, quite literally, you are in a different space mentally. It’s another way of saying you’re not focused. You’re unaware of what’s going on. You’re spaced out. Generally, this has a negative connotation. If you call someone ‘spaced out’ or if you command them, “Hey, don’t space out,” it sort of has a negative meaning. You don’t want to be spaced out. You want to be aware. You want to be clued into what is happening and what is going on around you. Some people are spaced out all the time. They’re just kind of in a different space. Their consciousness is perceiving the world in different ways. Some people interpret that negatively, but it doesn’t have to be interpreted negatively. But just be careful when you use the word ‘spaced out’. It could have a negative connotation.

But you should also not space out yourself. You should stay focused when you’re practicing English or when you’re listening to English conversations. Don’t space out. Stay focused. Concentrate.

Especially if you’re driving a car on the expressway at night, it’s really important not to space out.

Don’t check your cellphone for a new text or don’t get too caught up in a conversation with someone or with messing around with the radio or the CD player. That can end in a disaster. Don’t space out when you’re doing something that is important and your life depends on it. Don’t space out.

Okay guys, that’s the end of this vocabulary commentary. I hope you have enjoyed it. I hope you put these words to use. I’ll see you next month. Enjoy!