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CONVERSATIONAL VOCABULARY

MEMENTO MORI

Hi there, everybody. This is Aaron of Deep English, and in this audio lesson, I would like to discuss some of the words and phrases that Dan and I use in our conversation about this month’s core audio topic, which is Memento Mori.

Memento mori. Let’s get started.

1. hanging in there

The first happens at the very beginning of the conversation. Dan asked me the question, “Hanging in there?” And I say, “Yeah, I’m hanging in there.” What does that mean exactly, hanging in there? Well, “hanging in there” is one common response to the question, “How are you?” or “How’s it going?” You can respond by saying, “I’m hanging in there,” and what that means is, “I’m doing okay. Things could be better, but I’m doing okay, and I’m not giving up.” That’s what it means, I’m hanging in there.

You could actually use this as a command to someone else, like a command of support or a command of encouragement. For example, let’s say you run into your friend on the street, and your friend looks terrible. He looks stressed out, and he looks like he might have a cold. He has a runny nose. He’s not very happy looking. And you say, “Hey, how’s it going, man?” And he says, “I’m really stressed out at work. I’m getting sick, you know. I’m not getting enough sleep.” And you could say to your friend, “Well, you know what? Hang in there. The weekend’s almost here. You’ll have plenty of time to catch up on your sleep and rest. Just hang in there, okay? Let me know if you need anything.” So I’m telling him to hang in there. I’m encouraging him to not give up.

1. take it

Okay, let’s move on to the next one. The next one is “take it”, take it. Dan was a little bit worried about the lesson topic this month. He was worried about how people were going to take it. What does that mean? Well, to take something means to respond to it or react to it. Very often, we use this with news. How is someone going to take the bad news that you give them? Are they going to take it well, or are they going to take it badly? For example, if you’re a doctor, sometimes you might have to deliver bad news to someone, maybe their loved one just passed away or someone has a terminal illness, and you’re telling them the news.

You have to be concerned about how people might take that news. How are they going to take it? Are they going to take it badly by getting very upset, or are they going to take it well by just listening and accepting it?

Have you ever been given some bad news, and if so, how did you take it? How did you take it? So Dan was worried about the fact that some people might take this in a bad way, that they might feel depressed about it instead of inspired by it.

How are people going to take it? How are they going to respond to it?

Now, you can also use this in the way of saying, “take it the wrong way”, not just take it badly but take it the wrong way. That’s a common collocation. If someone takes it the wrong way, they misinterpret or they misunderstand the message.

This happened to me once recently, fairly recently. I sent an email to a friend of mine, and in the email, I was joking with him. I was joking around, hoping that he would find it funny, but in fact he took it the wrong way. He got very angry and upset. He thought I was criticizing him or looking down on him, and so I had to call him in person and explain to him, that was not what I meant. You took it the wrong way.

Sometimes if you have to deliver some uncomfortable news to someone, you might preface that delivery by saying, “Don’t take this the wrong way, please.

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but …” For example, let’s say you have a coworker whose breath really smells badly, and it bothers everybody in the office.

Somebody has to deliver that news to that person. So you go to that person and you say, “Hey, listen, I want to tell you something, and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way, but is there something you could do about your breath? It’s really strong. The smell is very strong. I don’t know if you’re aware of it or not, but please don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not trying to criticize you. I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to make you aware of how badly your breath smells.” So please don’t take it the wrong way. Don’t misinterpret, don’t misunderstand it.

1. a downer

Okay, the next one is a “downer”. What’s a downer? A downer is something depressing, a piece of news or a situation that makes you feel sad or depressed, just very down. A downer. So Dan was worried that people would see our lesson as a downer, something that makes them sad or depressed. Talking about death is a downer for some people. The weather can be a downer. If it’s a dark, gray, rainy day outside, it makes people feel a bit down in the dumps, a bit depressed.

It’s a downer. Sometimes when we read the newspaper, we read stories that are real downers. In fact, some people avoid listening to the news altogether, because they see it as a downer. So that’s what a downer is. What are some downers for you?

1. fete

The next one is both a verb and a noun, and that is “fete”, F-E-T-E, fete. Dan actually uses this verb when he’s talking about the Roman general coming home from a great victory, to the center of the Roman Empire, Rome, and everyone’s feting this victorious general. So to fete means to celebrate or to entertain in a way that honors someone or a group of people who’ve done something great in some way. So you can fete a victorious general.

Actually, for example, in the United States, the professional baseball team that wins the World Series, which is like the championship, the World Series, they are often feted in their home city when they return home from the competition.

There’s often a parade. They have fireworks and speeches, and music bands come out and play, and everyone’s happy, and everyone’s cheering, and they fete this team.

Sometimes visiting heads of state are feted by the government, or famous people are sometimes feted by whatever city they visit or whatever community they visit.

So yeah, it means to entertain or honor in a festive kind of way. So the noun “fete”

is a festive celebration that honors a guest or that honors a small group of people. That’s a fete.

1. the wherewithal

Okay, moving on, we’re going to move on to the term “wherewithal”, wherewithal.

Dan actually uses this at the same time, in the same sentence as “fete”. He says, “As they are feting the victorious general, he has the wherewithal to remember, or make it someone’s job to help him remember, that death is on the way, that he will die. He’s not going to live forever.” So “the wherewithal to remember,” Dan says. What does this mean? Well, typically speaking, the wherewithal means the resources or the money or the equipment that you have to do something. You have the wherewithal to do something, you have the means of doing it, because you have the resources, the funds, the money, the equipment, the tools to do it.

You have the wherewithal to do it.

In this instance, Dan actually uses “wherewithal” in the way of having the awareness to do it, the foresight to make sure someone reminds him, the wherewithal. So it could mean awareness, it could mean foresight, but often it means money, resources, tools, funds, etc. For example, some people in the big city don’t have the wherewithal to pay their rent every month, and so they run into problems with their landlord. Maybe their job doesn’t pay them enough money, or maybe they have a gambling problem or a drinking problem, and they spend too much money in that area, so they end up not having the wherewithal, the funds, the resources, the money, to continue to pay their rent. And eventually they get evicted or they get in lots of trouble.

Some communities or societies on earth, in this world, don’t have the wherewithal to provide adequate electricity, food, running water to their citizens, and these are very underdeveloped, poorer areas of the world. They don’t have the wherewithal to do it. They don’t have the funds and the resources to provide their citizens with the kind of basics of modern life like this, the wherewithal.

1. flipped it on its head

Okay, moving on, next is “flipped on its head”, flipped on its head. Dan’s talking about this guy, Kevin Kelly, and about how certain Eastern philosophies like Hinduism or Buddhism tend to get people to focus on the present moment, so we don’t get caught up in our fantasies about the past and the future. And Dan says what he finds very interesting is that Kevin Kelly kind of flipped it on its head and said that the future is important too. So to flip something on its head literally means to turn it upside down. So if you flip, let’s say, a statue on its head, you’re going to put its feet in the air and its head on the table or on the ground.

But figuratively, and this is the way Dan is using it, it means to do something in a completely new or different way, especially in a way that people don’t expect or that might be the reverse of what people expect, or the reverse of how it’s normally done. Sometimes you’ll hear this as “turn on its head”, turn on its head rather than flip on its head, but both are fine. They mean the same thing. It just means to do something in a completely different way. For example, the rise of the internet in the late ’90s and the existence of mp3 files flipped the music industry on its head. It totally changed the music industry. Suddenly music was being created and shared in completely new and different ways, and it flipped the industry on its head. All of the structure and the patterns of how the music industry worked had to adapt and change in radical ways in order to continue thriving.

The success of Donald Trump recently, coming out of private life and being a sort of television reality star, he flipped American politics on its head. The way that he campaigned, the very nasty way, and the very strong things that he said, and his sort of egotistical way of not listening to other people and just saying whatever he wanted, that wasn’t normal in American politics. He flipped it on its head, and he became successful doing that. So yeah, it was a completely new and different way of doing something, that people didn’t expect.

Actually, artificial intelligence, that’s going to be the next big paradigm shift, in the same way, maybe, that mobile technologies really changed the way we live our lives in a way. The internet really changed the way we live our lives. Artificial intelligence is going to have a huge effect in the coming decades on the way human beings live and perceive ourselves, and it’s going to flip many industries: the education industry, the healthcare industry, the technology industry. It’s going to flip these industries on their heads. It may even flip society itself on its head, completely cause to start making adaptations and changing the way things are done. It’ll flip it on its head.

1. pop into one’s head

Okay, there’s another one that I use a bit later in the conversation: “pop into one’s head”. We’re talking about the same guy, Kevin Kelly, and how he spent the night in a church in Jerusalem and woke up, and this idea just popped into his head that he’s got six months to live. So when an idea pops into your head, it suddenly appears in your mind. You didn’t expect it. It just suddenly, out of nowhere, immediately, quickly comes into existence in your head. It’s very much the same as “springs to mind”, a very similar kind of idiom. It springs to mind, it pops into your head.

You can also say it pops into your mind, but you cannot say “spring to head”. You can say “spring to mind”, “pop into your head”, “pop into your mind”, but not “spring to head”. That doesn’t make any sense. For example, a brilliant idea can pop into your head when you least expect it. A lot of brilliant ideas pop into inventors’ minds when they least expect it, when they’re sitting under a tree or taking a shower, driving a car. These ideas pop into their head or pop into their mind like this.

Negative images or negative memories, memories that cause negative emotions, can pop into your head at the wrong times like this. And when you think of the concept of your impending death, what pops into your head? Negative images, images of fear, or images of something peaceful, something nice? It’s a very interesting question, what pops into your head?

1. find oneself + ~ing verb

Okay, another one Dan says a bit later is “find oneself doing something”. We’re talking again about this guy, Kevin Kelly, and Dan says, “and Kevin found himself …

during this six-month period, Kevin found himself writing lots of haiku,” or haikus, as he uses it in the plural sense. When you find yourself doing something, it means that you become aware that you’re doing something. You didn’t necessarily expect to do it or plan to do it, you just started doing it, and then you became aware that it was happening.

Let me give you a few examples. Let’s say you’re waiting in a traffic jam, and then suddenly you find yourself singing out loud a song. You start singing, but you’re not aware that you’re singing. As soon as you become aware, “Hey, I’m singing right now,” you’ve found yourself singing, in the same way that Kevin found himself writing lots of haiku during this period of his life where he believed he was going to die soon. He never planned on writing haiku, but it just happened that he found himself doing it. He became aware that he was doing this on a regular basis, and then he said to himself, “You know what? Gosh, I’m really into writing haikus. I’ve written dozens of them now.” At that point he finds himself writing haiku.

Another example might be a guy named Pedro who suddenly loses his job, and then he finds himself spending lots of time at home, watching videos and eating junk food. He didn’t plan to do it, but he did it one day, and then he did it another day and another day and another day, and then suddenly he found himself doing it. He realized, “I have a pattern here. I’m spending a lot of time doing this.” He finds himself doing it.

1. shake someone to the core

Okay, next is “shake someone to the core”, shake someone to the core. Dan asked the question, “What if you found out, if you only had one month left to live?” And I say, “Geez, that would probably shake you to the core.” What does that mean?

Well, the core is … actually, that phrase “to the core” means fully, completely, absolutely, 100%. To the core. And the word “core” itself means the center, the very center part of something. The core of an apple is the center of the apple where the seeds are, and it’s kind of hard, and it’s not so delicious to eat the core.

The core of the earth is filled with heat and fire and gas and probably some kind of molten liquid that’s at an extremely hot temperature. So that’s the core, the very center. “To the core” means completely, 100%, and to shake someone means to shock them or disturb them or surprise them. So if you’re shaken to the core, it means you are shocked to the very center of your being, 100%. Big tragic things can shake us to the core. Several years ago here in Japan, a giant tsunami swept through many villages in the northeastern part of the main island of Japan, and those villagers who escaped by running up to the top of the mountains watched their entire villages just ripped away and swept away by these giant waves, including the lives of many of their community members. That experience shook those people to the core. It changed their lives in pretty much a life-changing way.

It totally affected them in every way.

So it’s not just like … This has a meaning of like a potentially life-changing experience. For example, let’s say you’re at a Halloween party, and someone jumps out with a Dracula costume unexpectedly, and it really shocked you and scared you. You probably wouldn’t use, “Oh, it shocked me or it shook me to the core.” No, it didn’t shake you to the core, it just scared you. But something tragic like New Yorkers watching the World Trade Centers come down on 9/11 in 2001, that shook the New Yorkers to the core. That shook the whole country to the core.

It was a big tragic sort of unexpected shocking experience that really was lifechanging for a lot of people. So that shook people to the core. So this is a very extreme kind of idiom or statement.

1. gosh

Okay, the very final one is “gosh”, gosh. This is actually something I say at the very end. Dan’s talking about a fantasy thought experiment where you don’t learn the day you’re going to die, you learn how you’re going to die. And I say, “Oh, you learn how you’re going to die? Gosh, no, that would be terrible. I wouldn’t want that.” So “gosh”, what exactly does that mean? Well, you can probably figure out, it’s an exclamation. It’s something you use, a word that you use, to express surprise.

It could also be used for emphasis, and what’s important about it, I think … and this is the reason why I highlighted it … it’s a softer, more polite way of saying “God”. For some people, especially in my country, in America, if you say “God” as an exclamation, it can rub people the wrong way, slightly offend them. I guess certain extreme people, you could really offend them. So in polite situations, people change it to something like “gosh”. So “God” becomes “gosh”, “oh gosh”.

Instead of saying “God, no”, I said “Gosh, no”.

Other examples of this might be, instead of saying “hell”, people say “heck”.

Instead of saying “hell no”, people say “heck no”. “Get the hell out of here” would become “Get the heck out of here.” It just has a slightly softer, less crude, more polite way of saying the same thing but not as strongly. People say “shoot”

instead of “sh@t” or “frick” instead of “f@ck” like this. So anyway, you should be aware that when people say this, they’re trying to be polite. They’re trying to come across as more polite. And I probably do this unconsciously, or I’m not aware that I’m … I didn’t choose to say “gosh”, I just said “gosh”, because that was the context in which I was in.

I might have said “God, no” or “F@ck, no” or “Hell, no” if I were just talking with Dan and there was no microphone in front of me, but the fact that I am aware that what I say is being listened to by potentially thousands of people over the course of time, yeah, I’m a little bit more aware of what comes out of my mouth, and I want to just naturally be a little bit more polite and not so crude. So yeah, I hope that gives you a better idea of the context in which people use terms like gosh instead of God.

Okay, that brings us to the end of this commentary. I hope you found these words and phrases useful, and if you have any questions, please do ask us. We’re here to help you. We can give you more examples. We can explain further, and yeah, hopefully get your understanding up so that you can start using these in your own conversations. All right, everyone, have a good one.