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CONVERSATIONAL VOCABULARY

MIND GAMES

Hi, everyone, Fast Fluency Formula members. This is Aaron. I’m now going to talk about some of the vocabulary terms and phrases that Dan used and I used in our conversation about this month’s core audio theme, which is all about delusions. Let’s get started.

1. haven’t done nothing

The first one is, “You haven’t done nothing.” This is what Dan says in response to my teasing him about the fact that I’m his friend, his business partner, and his mentor. Of course, we’re just joking around. Dan uses a very interesting phrase, “You haven’t done nothing,” which is a double negative. It’s grammatically incorrect. This is not a mistake that Dan makes. He purposely uses a double negative in order to create a very colloquial feel, very non-formal, very down-to-earth feeling. You’ll hear people talk this way in very casual situations, sometimes, when they’re joking around or they’re just being really friendly with other people.

Another example might be, “That ain’t no good. That isn’t any good.” Or “I ain’t got no time. I don’t got no time for this.” That’s another way of saying, “I don’t have any time.” Or “Hey, that won’t do you no good.” Meaning, that won’t do you any good. It won’t benefit you. These are things that people say, especially in American English that have a very down-to-earth colloquial feeling to them. I don’t recommend that you try to speak this way. You should be aware of it when you hear it. It’s not necessarily a mistake. It’s the way people talk.

1. a bum

All right. Let’s move on to the next one, “bum.” Again, I’m teasing Dan and he says, “You’re a bum of a mentor. I want my money back. I want my family’s money back.” A bum of a mentor.

You can probably guess the meaning of that. It has a very negative meaning. It means, “I’m no good. I’m a bum of a mentor.” Now, usually, when you hear the word “bum,” you hear it in 2 different contexts. It has 2 different meanings. The first meaning is a homeless person, a beggar, someone who lives in the streets, they don’t have a job, they don’t have place to live.

They’re not really fulfilling a role in the society that contributes to society. Therefore, they’re called, “bums.” It’s a terrible way to speak about people. It has a very derogatory meaning.

Please don’t use this to describe people. You’ll hear it. You’ll hear people say, “He’s a bum. That guy, he’s a bum. He’s no good. He doesn’t contribute.” That’s one meaning.

Another meaning is just someone who devotes a lot of time to something at the expense of other things in their life. We talk about ski bums. “He’s a ski bum. She’s a ski bum.” That means that all they do is ski. They just hang around the slopes and maybe, they teach skiing or maybe they don’t. Maybe they just ski. All they want to do is ski, nothing else. They’re ski bums, like this. That has a neutral meaning. It’s not necessarily a negative or a positive one. Anyway, Dan uses this to describe my skills as a mentor and of course, we’re joking around. He says, “You’re a bum of a mentor. You’re no good. You’re a terrible mentor. I want my money back.” That’s what bum means.

1. tin-foiled

Next one, “tin-foiled.” I say to Dan, “Delusions, Dan. Delusions.” He says, “Yeah, actually, I had a neighbor growing up who tin-foiled all his windows in his bedroom.” What does this mean?

Actually, Dan is doing something very interesting here and also, something very common in the English language. He’s taking a noun, tinfoil and changing it to a verb, tin-foiled. Usually, we use tinfoil as a noun. That is, of course, that metal paper, that thin metal paper that we often use in the kitchen to wrap food, to wrap leftovers, or to cook with sometimes in a toaster oven or in the oven itself. He’s using it as a verb. He’s talking about someone who takes tinfoil and wraps all his windows or covers all his windows in his bedroom with the tinfoil.

In a very common proper way, you would say, “Dan’s friend pasted tinfoil. Dan’s friend put tinfoil on all of his windows. Dan’s friend wrapped his windows in tinfoil.” Dan changes it to a verb, “He tin-foiled all of his windows in his bedroom.” That’s probably an uncommon way to do it. It’s perfectly fine because everyone understands what that means. I think that’s one of the beauties of the English language is how versatile it is, how we can take a noun and change it into a verb and people will understand you. It’s a perfect act of communication in many circumstances. Let’s move on to the next one.

1. swing

The next one is, “swing.” This comes up in our conversation when Dan is talking about the lawyers who are questioning Theo as to why Theo is contacting them about getting Herson out of jail or out of detention. They’re saying, “Why don’t you just use your swing in the Defense Intelligence Agency to get him out? Why are you contacting us?” Swing, in this instance, really means influence. If Theo or this guy, Josh, truly works for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA, surely, he has enough power and connections to get Herson out of jail without the use of standard lawyers in this case.

1. pull some strings

Swing, in the sense, means influence, connections. This is actually a rare use of the word, “swing.” Usually, people would say, “pull.” Use some of your pull, use some of your connections to get him out. Pull some strings to get him out. Again, this goes back to the beauty of the English language. Dan says, “Use some of your swing to get him out.” I immediately knew what that meant. Because swing is a noun which implies some influence or movement. Even though it’s not usually used in this way, I immediately understand it. That’s what I love about English.

You can create new language in the moment. It’s great that way.

1. left and right

Let’s move on to the next one, “left and right.” Dan says that his agency needed to see whether Herson could stand up to the pressure of heated situations which, obviously, he couldn’t. He was running away left and right. If you imagine him running away from the bank in different situations, it’s happening all over the place, from many different locations, from many different directions. Something that happens frequently. Herson was running away left and right.

Obviously, he couldn’t stand up to the pressure of heated situations.

Let me give you some more examples of this. Let’s say, you go to a summer picnic and there’s lots of mosquitoes and you get bitten many times. You can say, “Yeah, I went to the summer picnic and man, there were so many mosquitoes. I was attacked by them left and right. I was being attacked left and right.” Maybe, a war hero comes back home from the battlefield who saved the lives of not only his fellow soldiers but also some local civilians. He did all this wonderful brave things in war. When he comes home, he’s praised left and right by the media.

He’s praised left and right by his community. Let’s say, you. You’re trying to speak fluent English. If you can learn to speak fluent English, man, that’ll make a big difference on your life.

You’ll be making new contacts left and right. You’ll have many new opportunities opening up left and right, like this. It just means, “All over the place, from many directions.”

1. dangling the carrot

All right. Let’s move on to the next one, “dangling the carrot.” We’re talking about Theo.

Actually, his name is Josh, the delusional CIA agent named Theo who is trying to convince Carolina to join his delusion and start robbing banks. He was dangling the carrot in front of her saying, “You’re going to get some money and maybe, I’ll get you a government job like this.” In an effort to influence her or to motivate her to join his delusional plan, he dangled the carrot in front of her. What does this mean? To dangle means to hold in the air, on a string and shake it back and forth. You dangle a carrot. It’s dangling. It’s floating in the air in front of someone. Of course, this comes from the carrot and the stick.

When we talk about motivating people, there are 2 ways to motivate them. One is to give them a reward. In this case, a carrot. Something sweet and nutritional that people like to eat. If you dangle that in front of them, hang it in the air in front of them, they’ll move toward it. You’re getting them to move towards something by dangling a carrot. The opposite, of course, is the stick. That’s what you use to hit people from behind in order to get them to move forward.

There’s 2 different ways of getting people to move forward, to motivate them. One is with the stick and the other is with a carrot. Both are forms of extrinsic motivation. “He’s dangling the carrot.” It’s offering an attractive reward to motivate someone. A bait, a worm on a hook for a fish, like this.

Let me give you an example. My daughter recently expressed interest in playing the guitar. We have an old beat up guitar lying around our house. She’s starting to practice with that. I told her, “Hey, if you continue practicing and you start getting really more and more interested in the guitar and you’re making progress, I’ll buy you a new guitar.” That motivates her because she thinks, “Wow. If I can continue doing this, maybe, I’ll get a brand new guitar that’s my own.

It doesn’t belong to my dad. It’s mine.” That motivates her. I’m dangling the carrot in front of her.

1. ATF Agent

Let’s move on to the next one, “ATF Agent.” Dan, I think, mentions this in his talking about this guy, Theo, who later contacted some hospital saying he was an ATF Agent. I suppose, many people don’t know what this is. ATF are 3 letters that stand for alcohol, tobacco, and firearms.

This is actually a bureau or a department of the US Government that has agents that investigate violations into the sales or the trafficking of firearms, tobacco, alcohol, explosives, et cetera. That’s what an ATF Agent is. There’s actually all kinds of different agencies in the United States Government that can be confusing because they’re all related to intelligence or criminal investigations. One of them is Homeland Security. That’s a relatively new agency that was formed after 9/11. They handle domestic analysis of threat levels for terrorism and things like that. They’re also closely connected with immigration. The CIA is a famous one. They’re not actually a law enforcement agency. They mostly do intelligence gathering, especially international, geopolitical issues. That kind of thing.

There’s the NSA. That’s the National Security Agency. They’re closely related to the Department of Defense. They investigate, mostly, gathering intelligence on signals, transfers of information, that thing, on an international level. There’s the FBI. They’re also very famous. They handle a lot of national, domestic, criminal activities, the investigation of things that happen interstate.

Meaning, from state to state. Things like, kidnapping, terrorism, a lot of domestic stuff. There’s the DEA. They’re the Drug Enforcement Agency. They handled drug issues. There’s the Department of Defense itself which is the military, essentially. There’s all kinds of different departments. They overlap. They work together sometimes. Sometimes they fight. You’ll hear all these different acronyms; CIA, NSA, FBI, ATF. It can get quite confusing. Anyway, be aware of those.

1. the zombie boom

All right. Just a few more here. The next one is, “boom.” We’re talking about, actually, zombies.

Dan mentions this. He brings it up. He says, “You know the true history of zombies is, we’ve got the zombie boom on TV. With all these zombie TV shows and movies.” First of all, boom, that’s the sound of a bomb going off, boom. If you imagine a boom where suddenly there’s a huge increase or upswing in the popularity or frequency of some phenomenon.

Traditionally or usually, you hear this term, “boom” associated with some period of rapid economic growth. It’s usually a financial economic term. There was a big boom in the housing market back in the 90s or in the late 90s there was boom, there was economic boom in internet companies. You hear the term, “business is booming. Oh, business is booming right now. Profits are soaring. They’re increasing. We’re doing lots of business. Business is very healthy, very good. It’s booming.” You can also hear this term outside of financial contexts such as a zombie boom, the increase of all these zombie TV shows and movies. A smartphone boom in the last 5 years or so. Suddenly, everyone is using smartphones. It just basically means, a trend, a fad, something that flourishes rapidly, increases in intensity. It’s a boom, just like a bomb going off, boom, like this.

1. run-of-the-mill

The very last one is, “run-of-the-mill.” This comes up in our conversation when we’re talking about delusions of grandeur. A delusion of grandeur is when people feel that they’re far more important than they actually are. They believe that they’re great human beings. In fact, what they are is just run-of-the-mill people. They’re not exceptional. They’re just normal, average, ordinary people like you and I. That’s exactly what we would expect. They’re not really exceptional human beings.

Run-of-the-mill, you can guess the meaning of this. It just means, normal, average, nothing exceptional. This actually comes from clothing mills. A mill is a clothing factory. If you imagine, a factory producing clothing on a very large scale, when you run that factory, when you turn it on, when you run all those machines, you get the identical pieces of clothing coming out the end and going into a bag or a box to be sold and shipped off to a retail store or something like this. It’s run-of-the-mill. The run-of-the-mill is the exact same thing, comes out of the factory, quality controlled. It’s identical. Each piece of clothing is identical. Just run-of-the-mill, normal, average like this.

That brings us to the end of these 10 words and phrases that I hope you will find useful in your listening and in your speaking. If you have any questions, please do go to our forums and ask.

I’ll be happy to give you more examples of how to use these terms and phrases.