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CONVERSATIONAL VOCABULARY

IDENTITY CRISIS

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

1. the real deal

The first one is the real deal. We were talking about General Ludd and whether or not he was actually a real person or not. Dan says that there was this teenage kid who destroyed some machines 30 years earlier and some people say that he’s name was Ludd. They still use that name 30 years later to make General Ludd. Then Dan says, “Of course, he could be the real deal. He could have just escape.” What does that mean the real deal? In this instance, Dan is using this phrase to mean the real person, the actual person himself, the authentic person or thing.

In this sense, we might use an example like let’s say you see a new watch on my wrist and you say, “Aaron, where did you get that watch?” I said, “This is my new Rolex. I bought it when I was in Thailand.” You say, “I see, you bought it off the street? It’s not a real Rolex.” I might say, “No, no, this is the real deal. I paid $2,000 for this.” That’s when it would be used, to point to the fact that something is authentic, it’s real, it’s not fake or imaginary.

Now, there is another way we could use this phrase, the real deal. It could mean like a person or a thing that is considered to be a really, really good genuine example of its kind. For example, lots and lots of people say that they are artists. He’s an artist, she’s an artist, everyone is an artist. Just because you can draw or paint does that make you an artist? Yeah, I think it does but what about this one guy I know who lives in my neighborhood. He’s the real deal. He is actually a world famous artist and he makes a considerable amount of money selling his paintings and his paintings actually are in some of the world’s most famous art museums. He’s the real deal. He’s the real deal. It just means he’s a good example of something.

I know another woman who I’ve known for many, many years and she’s a writer. Yeah, of course lots of people say they are writers but she’s the real deal. She’s published and her books have been on the New York Times best-seller list. She’s the real deal. She’s a good example of a genuine writer, a real professional.

She’s the real deal. Do you know anyone that’s the real deal?

1. I don’t buy it

All right, I’m going to move on now to the next one, don’t buy it. I don’t buy it. We’re talking about the moon landing and Dan was saying, “Yeah, they say that the moon landing was not real. It was fake and they did it in a Hollywood studio.” I say, “Yeah, I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it.” That means I don’t believe it. If you don’t buy something it means you don’t believe it. There are some people who don’t buy global warming. They say, “I don’t buy it. Global warming is not real. It’s a fabrication. It’s fake.” I have a friend. He’s always late, always. He says, “Aaron, I’m coming to your house at 6:30, I promise I’ll be on time. “I love the guy but I don’t buy it. I don’t think he’s going to show up on time. He never shows up on time. I don’t buy it, what he says. It just means I don’t believe it.

1. don’t put words in my mouth

All right, let’s move to the next one, don’t put words in my mouth. This is what I say to Dan when we’re talking about the same thing, the moon landing being fake or not. I say, “Yeah, I don’t buy it.” What I’m talking about is I don’t buy the conspiracy theory that the moon landing was fake. Dan says, “You don’t buy the moon landing? Me neither.” I say, “No, Dan. That’s not what I’m talking about. How are we going to go way up there?” I say, “Don’t put words in my mouth, Dan. You know what I’m talking about. I don’t buy the conspiracy theory.”

When someone puts words in your mouth it means that they are claiming that you have said something that’s just not what you said at all. You can use this as a negative command, “Hey, don’t put words in my mouth. I didn’t say that. Don’t say that. That’s not what I said. Don’t put

words in my mouth.” Let’s say, a new restaurant opens up in your neighborhood and you go and you check it out for the first time. You have a meal there and you come away and your best friend says, “How was the restaurant?” They you say, “It was okay. The food was all right. It wasn’t bad. There were friendly people there and the atmosphere was okay. I mean, overall it wasn’t bad.” Then your friend immediately you hear her talking to someone on the phone and she says, “Yeah, my friend he hated that restaurant.” I might interrupt her and say, “Wait a minute. Don’t put words in my mouth. I didn’t say that. I said it was okay. I didn’t say I hated it.” She says, “No, no, no. You said you hated it.” She’s just putting words in my mouth. Don’t let people put words in your mouth and don’t put words in other people’s mouths. Let them speak for themselves.

1. around the corner

Okay, let’s move on to the next one, Around the corner. It’s around the corner. We’re talking about advances in technology and artificial intelligence. Dan says, “I think that will happen in our lifetime where there will be pretty accurate instant translation from one language to another.” Then I say, “I think it’s around the corner really.” When something is around the corner it means it’s coming soon.

Imagine yourself walking down the street and then you turn the corner you go around the corner and there it is, the thing you’re looking for. It’s coming next. It’s coming soon. It’s just around the corner. You’ll hear this phrase with the word just in front of it very frequently, it’s just around the corner.

Right now it’s June, in Japan the rainy season is just around the corner. It’s coming soon. It will be here maybe next week or the week after. It’s really hot and muggy and rainy.

A child might say to you, “Hey, daddy or mommy, why are people putting up lights in front of their house?” The response is, “Christmas is around the corner. It will be here in a couple of weeks.” That’s why people are putting up those colorful lights. Christmas is around the corner like this. Then around the corner from Christmas is New Year’s. Around the corner.

What’s around the corner for you in your life? Is anything interesting around the corner coming soon?

1. slice and dice

Okay, the next one is, slice and dice. Slice and dice. These go together. Dan is talking about our ability to process information and he says, “slice and dice information.” I say, “Yeah, it’s evolving pretty quickly.”

What this basically means when you slice and dice something it means to chop it up into little pieces. Actually this comes from cooking. To slice something means to cut it and to dice something means to chop it up in little pieces. We can slice onions and after we slice them then we can dice them. We can take the knife and then chop really fast and break them up into little tiny square pieces; that’s dicing. Slicing and dicing. Usually we use this phrase slice and dice when we’re talking about information, usually like data or reports or an essay or someone’s speech, some bundle of information.

If you slice and dice it that means you just break it down into its little pieces and analyze it like you closely examine it to try and make sense of it. To slice and dice something means really to break it up and learn about it. You can slice and dice data, you can slice and dice a report. You can slice and dice someone’s speech. Things like this. Have you ever sliced and diced something for the purposes of discussion? To learn more about it? It’s a good idea actually to slice and dice news articles to really look closely at them and see if you can see between the lines like what’s going on there.

Okay, anyway, that’s slice and dice.

1. in the sticks

The next one is in the sticks. This is the sixth one I’m talking about, in the sticks. We’re talking about this guy, the Unabomber who was very anti-technology and he lived way out in the sticks and he grew a beard. You can probably imagine in the sticks, it just means in the middle of nowhere. In the country side or in the mountain. Basically away from all the conveniences of modern life. If you live in the sticks maybe there’s no electricity. Maybe there’s no running water. Maybe there are no roads. You’re way out in the middle of nowhere or just maybe there are no shops and people. It’s just very remote. A remote place. Do you know anyone who lives in the sticks?

Maybe you live in the sticks. Maybe you’re listening to this from the sticks. I don’t really know where this comes from, in the sticks but I can imagine sticks referring to pieces of wood like trees. Growing out of the ground, those are big sticks so if you live in the sticks it’s like living in the forest or living way out in the brush or in the country side. Okay, in the sticks.

1. well off

The next one is well off. We’re talking about the workers before they became Luddites, they were weavers and different blue-collar workers, factory workers and their jobs were replaced by these high tech machines and they were very upset about it. Dan was saying how they had quite a bit of money and I said, “Really? I didn’t know that. They were actually pretty well off.” Dan said, “Yeah. They were really well off.”

You can probably guess from the context that well off means in a very, very good financial position. You’re either rich when you’re well off or you’re almost rich. You’ve got more money maybe than you need. You’re very, very financially comfortable. I live in a neighborhood where most people around here I wouldn’t say they are well off, they are like me. They are just middle class working people. Some of them are professionals. Some of them are blue-collar. I live in a very just like normal neighborhood. Nobody’s really all that well off.

But there is a guy down the street. I think he’s pretty well off. He owns many businesses around town and I suspect he’s well off and other people think he is too because we think he has a little bit of money. He’s very comfortable financially. Okay. You probably know some people who are well off. I wonder who’s well off in your neighborhood or in your community.

1. put it all on the line Okay. Let’s move on to another one. Put it all on the line. Put it all on the line. We’re still talking about these Luddites, these factory workers they had a lot to lose by these machines coming in and replace their jobs because their skills were very, very specific to a particular industry which means if they lose their jobs there’s nowhere for them to go. I said, “Yeah, that’s a dead end.” Dan says, “Yeah, that’s why they were really willing to put it all on the line.”

To put it all on the line basically means to take a very, very big risk, to risk failure. When you have nothing to lose you can put it all on the line. You can put your reputation on the line by actually this is happening in the states right now many politicians are deciding whether or not to put their reputation on the line by supporting Donald Trump, the presidential nominee for the Republican party because of his very controversial statements that some people say are racist and sexist and xenophobic. Whether or not that’s true, it’s what a lot of people believe and so to support Donald Trump for a politician they are really taking a risk.

It could pay off, it could be very good for them personally or it could ruin their political career should things turn sour or turn bad for Donald Trump. Some politicians are staying very silent on the issue. They are not actively supporting him but they are not saying that they don’t support because they are afraid their reputation is on the line. Some people put their financial future on the line by investing large amounts of money or their life savings in a stock or in a risky investment. They are really putting their financial future on the line by doing that.

Some people put their life on the line on a daily basis as part of their job. Fire fighters put their life on the line to help people and to put out fires. Policemen and policewomen, they put their lives on the line every time they pull someone over or chase after a criminal it’s a dangerous job. They put their life on the line. Have you ever put your life on the line for some reason whether it was to help someone or to experience a thrill when you were younger? That’s what it means to put it on the line to risk it. To risk it all.

1. the rug was pulled out from under them All right, the next one. We got a couple more here. The rug was pulled out from under them. The rug was pulled out from under them. This is what Dan says in response to this really incredible story about this young adults or actually maybe they were teenagers, the Canadians, the Americans/Canadians who didn’t realize they were actually Russian and their parents were spies. Those guys. They suddenly got their lives were turned upside down and the rug was pulled out from under them.

One day they were living peacefully, going to college, doing all the things that normally young people do and then suddenly they were kicked out of the country, sent back to Russia. They didn’t speak any Russian and they had to take on almost a completely new life and identity. The rug was pulled out from under them.

You can imagine what this means if you imagine standing on a rug and some really big strong person picks up one end of the rug and yanks it and pulls it really fast and really hard it slips right out from under your feet. Suddenly you’re no longer standing on the rug. That’s the visual image of this phrase. It basically means to suddenly take away someone’s support or someone’s help or something that they are depending on, that they are standing on or to do something really suddenly that causes someone extreme problems or causes a huge change in the way things are for them that can be negative. You pull the rug out from under them.

For example, let’s imagine that you are on a research team and you’re doing medical research and you’re depending on a grant from the government to continue your research and you’ve done it for several years. The results are successful. You’re almost there to the very end of the research project and then suddenly you’ve got one more year to go and the government pulls the rug right out from underneath you and says, “Sorry, but this year we’re cutting your research budget and not giving you anymore money. We’ve ran out of funds.” They’ve pulled the rug out from under you. You can’t continue the research even though you’re almost there to the end of it or at least to a point that you need to be. That might be an example of getting the rug pulled out from under you.

All right, has that ever happened to you? Have you ever had the rug pulled out from underneath you?

1. weighs in on

All right, last one, weighs in on. To weigh in on something. This is what I say in response to the fact that these young adults who had their lives taken away basically or completely changed by being forced to move to a foreign country. They decided to sue the Canadian government. Dan says, “I hope they win.” I say, “I wonder what Justin Trudeau has to say about this.” He’s the current Prime Minister of Canada and I say, “I wonder how he weighs in on it,” I could have also said, “I wonder how he will weigh in on it,” if I knew he was going to weigh in on it.

What does that mean, weigh in? To weigh something means to find out how much it weighs. How much weight it is. How many kilograms or how many pounds but what this means in actuality in the way it’s used it means to assert your opinion on something. To offer your opinion on a particular issue or situation.

Another way is to say to give your two cents on the issue. That’s another idiom to give your two cents. “That’s my two cents.” “Give me your two cents.” It just means weigh in on this. Give me your opinion of it.

Let’s say you discover you have a tumor in your body. You go to the doctor and the doctor says, “Sorry, it’s a cancerous tumor. We’re going to have to give you radiation to solve this and make it shrink.” The idea of receiving radiation for a tumor scares you. You read on the internet, you’re not really sure if that’s the right thing to do. You go to a second doctor to get a second opinion. Before you make your decision what you want to do you want that doctor to weigh in on this decision. You want her to weigh in on it. Then maybe you go to a third doctor and you want him to weigh in on it as well. You want several different perspectives, several different opinions before you make a decision. You want other experts to weigh in on the situation and offer their opinion.

It’s a good idea to get different opinions before you make big decisions in your life. You need other people to weigh in on those decisions.

All right, that brings me to the end of this vocabulary commentary. I hope you thought that these were helpful to you. Again, like I always say it doesn’t do you any good to listen to this commentary unless you put these words and phrases to use. I recommend writing in our forums, keeping a vocabulary journal, doing frequent conversations. Take this words and phrases. Make a list of them, keep that list handy when you’re doing writing and when you’re doing speaking and try to work it into what you’re creating through your speech and through your writing. That’s a great way to not forget what you’re learning here in this commentary. All right, have fun and we’ll see you hopefully in the forum soon.