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CONVERSATIONAL VOCABULARY

OVER THE HILL

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, this is a vocabulary commentary on the conversation that Dan and I had about age and age deception. Let’s get started. This is a really long one compared to our usual monthly Core Audio Vocab Commentary on the conversation. So take it one by one. There are many things to talk about this time. All right, let’s get started.

1. hot and bothered

Number one, ‘hot and bothered’. Dan says, “It’s kind of hot outside,” and I said, “Yeah, it’s an oven outside.” There’s a little metaphor for you. And then Dan says, “Are you hot and bothered?” And I say, “No, I’m not hot and bothered, just hot. Hot and sweaty,” and Dan says, “Yeah, it’s a steamy day.”

Basically, it’s a hot day in Kyoto, Japan. Dan’s making a joke when he says, “Are you hot and bothered?” Because ‘hot and bothered’ is a collocation that means angry, upset, and it’s related to heat. So if you imagine anger as heat, as some kind of uncomfortable feeling of extreme heat.

You’re hot and you’re bothered by the hot. You’re angry. You’re upset. You’re not feeling pleasant.

You’re hot and bothered. You’re likely to yell at other people or be annoyed with them. So he’s just making a joke. ”Are you hot and bothered?” And I said, “No, I’m not hot and bothered. I’m hot and sweaty.” Just plain hot.

You can use ‘hot and bothered’ to mean angry. When the man found out that his car was dented by another driver who ran into the car, he was hot and bothered. He was really upset about it.

1. act your age

All right, next one. Number two, ‘act your age’. Dan asks me, “People often tell you to act your age, don’t they Aaron?” And I said, “No. Well, they did when I was much younger. But these days, no.” This little phrase here, ‘act your age’ is generally what we say to children who are acting younger that their actual age.

Let’s imagine that there is a 12-year-old boy who is almost a teenager and yet he starts acting as if he were a 4 or a 5-year-old by getting very, very upset because he can’t have what he wants. And he starts yelling and hitting the table and getting really bent out of shape. Then we say, “Hey, act your age. You’re not a 5-year-old boy. You’re 12 now.” So this is what some people say mostly to young people, but you could say it to anybody. Basically, it’s a way to tell someone, “Hey, don’t act younger than you are. Act your own age,” or, “Don’t act older than you are. Act your own age.” Usually it’s ‘don’t act younger’ but I suppose you could tell someone, “Hey, act your age. You’re not 90 years old,” like that.

1. age is what you make of it

Okay, number 3, ‘age is what you make of it’. Dan says, “No, you actually act like a younger man, Aaron,” and I said, “Yeah, I feel much younger. I don’t feel like an old person.” And Dan says, “Age is just a number.” And I say, “Yeah, age is what you make of it. You‘re as old as you feel.” You can actually put any noun before this phrase ‘is what you make of it’. So I say, “Age is what you make of it,” and what I mean by that is the age that you are is the age that you feel. It’s what you make. It’s the reality that you create so even if your biological body is 60 years old, if you believe and feel that you’re much younger, then that’s the age you actually are. That’s the age you experience. So age is what you make of it.

We could say the same thing for lots of other abstract nouns like ‘happiness’. Happiness is what you make of it. That means it’s in you control to be happy. You just have to create that happiness. You have to make it happen.

Success is what you make of it. For some people, success means having lots and lots of money, but for other people like myself, success just means having a nice balance in life. Just being happy with what you have and having good relationships with other people and with yourself. That’s important, too. So happiness is what you make of it. Success is what you make of it.

Life is what you make of it. You create your own reality. So that’s what it means. That’s a common expression.

1. …and all that kind of stuff

Okay, number 4. This is ‘and all that kind of stuff’. It’s a phrase, ‘and all that kind of stuff’. Actually, I’m talking and I say to Dan, “That kind of age discrimination goes on constantly in society,” and Dan says, “Yeah, I think especially in Hollywood, that’s why a lot of actresses, they try to pretend to be younger that they are.” And I say, “Yeah, and sometimes that involves plastic surgery and all that kind of stuff.”

Basically, what that phrase means is ‘et cetera’, ‘and so on’. Those are common ways of saying the very same thing. So I’m saying it involves plastic surgery, et cetera. And things that are related to plastic surgery. Things that are somewhat extreme. Along the lines of plastic surgery, and all that kind of stuff.

You might imagine going to a really nice buffet restaurant, and I’ve been there but you haven’t been there. So you ask me, “Aaron, is that a good buffet restaurant?” And I said, “Oh yeah, man. They have lots of things there. They have all kinds of salads. They have breads. They have many different kinds of meats and they have desserts and just all that kind of stuff.” And it just means et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so on, and so on and so on.

So that’s just a common way, a very common, casual, colloquial way of saying ‘et cetera’, ‘and so on’.

1. waiver

Okay, ‘waiver’, number 5. Dan is talking and he says, “I think you could be 17 if your parents signed some kind of paper,” and I say, “Yeah, some kind of waiver.” And what we’re talking about is the ability to join the army, to go to war at the age of 17. So Dan’s saying, “You could go to war, you could sign up for the army if you are 17 and your parents signed some kind of paper,” and I say, “Yeah, some kind of waiver.”

What is a waiver? A waiver is a form of consent. You sign a waiver so that the company or the group or the organization that is providing you with an opportunity, covers their legal responsibilities.

For example, let’s say you’re going to go bungee jumping, and the company that is providing you with the experience, they want you to sign a waiver before they allow you to bungee jump. And it’s basically a piece of paper that says, “Hey, this is a dangerous activity and if I get injured or die, I accept responsibility for it. I will sign for it.” And that relieves the responsibility from the organization in case of some kind of accident.

So in the case of a child, an almost adult but still a child legally, going to war, the army might want the parent to sign a waiver that says, “Yes, I agree that my child is going to war and if he dies or gets injured, we accept that. We will not hold you responsible.” That’s what a waiver is. You do that when children do things, go on field trips or do something risky, the parent must sign a waiver.

1. tell-tale sign

Okay, let’s move on to number 6. A ‘tell-tale sign’. So Dan’s talking about the same child that’s joining the army at the age of 12 years old, which is really young to be joining the army. And Dan says, “Yeah, and a dentist looked at his teeth and the dentist was going to see that these were the teeth of a 12-year-old.” And I say, “Yeah, that’s a tell-tale sign.”

A ‘tell-tale sign’, it means obvious sign. It’s very, very clear what it’s pointing to. If someone ever… Actually, if you want to know the age of someone, look at their hands. Their hands are a tell-tale sign. Very often, especially women, can look much younger than they are because they use lots of make-up, maybe they’ve had plastic surgery on their face, so if you want to guess the age of a woman, you probably shouldn’t look at her face but rather her hands. Her hands will not lie. Her hands are a tell-tale sign of how old she actually is. So if you want to know the age of someone, look at their hands.

Another example might be a wrestler. The tell-tale sign of a wrestler is ‘cauliflower ears’, and these are ears that are kind of, they look swollen and kind of crunchy and they’ve lost their shape and you can tell a wrestler if they have cauliflower ears.

Or maybe someone who wears a Rolex watch. Rolexes, as you know, are very, very expensive.

That’s a tell-tale sign that someone is rich, that someone has money, that someone is maybe successful in a material sense. They have a Rolex watch. That’s a tell-tale sign of someone who has money.

1. raised a ruckus

2. blow the whistle

Let’s move on. We’re on to a couple of more. One of them is ‘raised a ruckus’ and the other is ‘blow the whistle’. They’re very closely connected, so they’re quite similar. Basically, this happens at the same time. I say, “Yeah, the teeth are a tell-tale sign of a young person.” So Dan says, “Yeah, the dentist did know that, and the boy raised a ruckus and he said that, ‘I know for a fact that some of the other kids that you passed into the army are not 18 and I’m going to blow the whistle on this whole thing if you don’t pass me.’”

Basically, the child was threatening the dentist to expose his previous signing off on younger people to enter the army even though the dentist knew those children were younger than 18 by their teeth.

So this is the 12-year-old’s attempt at scaring the dentist by threatening to blow the whistle, to expose this dentist for allowing teenagers to enter the war.

To ‘raise a ruckus’ basically means to cause trouble over something, and to ‘blow the whistle’ is very similar but a little bit different. To ‘blow the whistle’ means to expose something to the public that is currently private and potentially wrong, ethically wrong, morally wrong, something that the perpetrator of this crime or undesirable situation does not want the public to know. So when you blow the whistle, that’s a nice metaphor for making a really loud sound, for creating a ruckus in relation to some sort of wrong situation or wrong action that the organization has taken.

Some famous people who are whistle blowers - and a person who blows the whistle, who raises a public ruckus about a situation is called a ‘whistleblower’. Some famous whistleblowers are Erin Brockovich, a woman who became famous especially due to a movie that was made about her, starring Julia Roberts, the Academy Award winning actress, about her fight against a gas and electric company who was poisoning local members of a community due to their business practices, their unsafe business practices.

Another famous whistleblower in the recent past is Edward Snowden, an American who, I think he was a computer guy. He was some kind of programmer and he had access to a lot of very secretive information through the National Security Agency and he released (to the public) a lot of that. And his purpose was to expose the kind of eavesdropping that the American government was doing to private citizens and he felt that that was wrong. So he was a whistleblower. He released a lot of their documents in order to raise public awareness of what was going on.

So ‘whistleblowers’, ‘blow the whistle’, ‘raised a ruckus’.

1. desperate for

Now we’re on to ‘desperate for’. So Dan is saying that probably people, his officers and his fellow soldiers, they could look at him and probably tell that he was a young boy. And I say, “Yeah, they were probably desperate for soldiers. They probably didn’t care.” And to be ‘desperate for’ something means to yearn for something, to desire something very strongly, very badly. When you’re desperate, that’s all you can think about.

For example, if you’re lost in the desert for several days, you are desperate for water. You need water so badly. That’s all you can think about.

If you’re starving, if you have no food to eat, you are desperate for food. You’ll do anything to eat food. You’ll eat cockroaches. You’ll do whatever you can to get food. You’re desperate.

If you’re alone, some people are alone in the world. They don’t have friends. They don’t have family.

They’re desperate for companionship. They really need to connect with other people.

What are you desperate for? Are you desperate for anything? I hope not. It’s not a good situation to be in. But maybe in the past, you have been desperate for something at some point in your life.

Most of us have.

1. huh?

Okay, let’s move on to number 10. ‘Huh?’ That’s the sound. And this is when Dan was talking about, again this 12-year-old boy who went to war, and then he says, “He didn’t get any medical benefits until he was in his 50s. This is like 40 years later. And then he died. And at that time, the president reinstated his medals like after he died.” And I said, “Huh. Took a while, huh?” And that means it took a long time, didn’t it?

Basically, ‘huh?’ is another way of saying ‘didn’t it?’ “Did it not?” “Isn’t that right?” It’s basically a tag question. You say this when you want people to agree with your opinion or when you’re almost positive that they will agree with your opinion on the subject.

So if it’s 35 degrees Celsius or 40 degrees Celsius outside, I could say, “Hey, whew! It’s a hot day, huh?” And that means it is a hot day, isn’t it? And the person around me might say, “Yes, it is. You’re right.” Or in a more colloquial way, they might say, “Ha, you got that right. Sure is. It’s a hot day.” Or maybe we go to see a movie and it was an awesome movie and I say, “That was a great movie, huh?” And what that means is, “That was a great movie, wasn’t it? Don’t you agree with me?” So you can use that sound ‘huh’ at the end of a statement of an opinion, usually, to get people to agree with you. Just be careful. Keep in mind that this is a very colloquial way of speaking. So if you say, “Huh?” you’ll sound not very educated or not very proper, not very formal. You’ll sound very, very casual. So just understand that.

1. magnetic

The next one is ‘magnetic’. Dan said, “Yeah, this guy, he had so much confidence. And even to this day, people who meet him just feel that he is magnetic.” Basically, this comes from the noun ‘magnet’. And as you know, magnets attract each other so strongly that they stick together with a very powerful force.

So something that is magnetic is very attractive. It’s very charismatic. People who are magnetic have a very attractive, charismatic personality. They’re the kind of people that you are drawn to, that you want to look at, that you want to talk with, that you want to listen to. Some people are very magnetic. They have magnetic personalities. Some people have magnetic looks. Do you know someone who has a magnetic personality? I know a few people with magnetic personalities. It’s a very strong power that they have. Magnets attract. So Dan’s saying that this man was magnetic.

1. air of

He also says that he puts out this ‘air of’ warmth and confidence. That’s our next one, number 12, ‘air of’. An ‘air of’ warmth and confidence. It just basically means ‘a feeling of’. If you imagine being around someone and the air around them is affected, it’s influenced, it’s tainted by their personality or their feeling. So some people have an air of happiness. That means they have a feeling of happiness surrounding them. And when you come into contact with that person, you can feel their happiness.

Some people have an air of kindness around them. My mother has an air of kindness about her.

When you’re around her, you just feel that she’s kind.

Some people have an air of wealth about them. The way they talk, their body language, the clothes they wear, you can tell they’re from a wealthy background, a wealthy family, a family that has lots and lots of money, a family that has many generations of money. Those people have an air of wealth about them.

On the other hand, some people have an air of poverty about them. They’re poor. They’ve never had any money. They haven’t had many opportunities. They were born in a much, much different situation than many people in the developed world were, and they just have an air of poverty about them. Not that one is better than the other, but an air of something means a feeling of something that other people can detect non-verbally.

1. go a long way

Let’s move on to the next one. ‘Go a long way’. I’m talking about the same thing, warmth, confidence. That will go a long way if you’re trying to manipulate people, I would imagine. To ‘go a long way’ means that it helps you achieve your goal. It assists you in accomplishing your aim. So in this case I’m saying if you’re warm, if you’re confident, maybe if you have a magnetic personality, that will go a long way if you’re trying to manipulate people for selfish purposes. Same as if you have a lot of charisma, it will go a long way if you’re aim is to control people and manipulate people for your own personal gain.

Of course, charisma can also go a long way to helping people. If people are attracted to you, if you have a magnetic personality, you can use that power for something good, not for something selfish and something for just your own personal gain. So that is ‘go a long way’.

Here are a few other examples. If you want to work for an international company, if you have previously lived abroad, that goes a long way towards getting a job with an international company.

Or if you want to teach English, being a native speaker goes a long way for helping you get a good job. Or if you get into any kind of trouble with the police or with the law, having money or having connections with people who have power, will go a long way in helping you out. So these are examples of how to use ‘go a long way’.

1. pass a bar

We’re moving right along to the next one. Number 14, ‘pass a bar’. We’re talking about this one man who kept deceiving people as to his age and his profession. And even though he was a teenager, he was posing as people who were older than him, as professionals who were older than him. And I say to Dan, “If you impersonate a taxi driver or a janitor, that’s quite easy. But to impersonate a doctor or a lawyer, people who need years of education, how do you do that especially at such a young age?” And Dan says, “Well apparently, he did pass a bar. I forget what state it was.”

To ‘pass a bar’ means to pass an exam that is specific for people wanting to become lawyers. So if you want to become a registered, licensed lawyer in any state in the United States, you must pass an exam which is a very difficult exam, called the ‘bar’. It’s called the ‘bar exam’. So to ‘pass a bar’ means to become an official lawyer by passing a test that is specific to the state in which you want to practice.

To ‘pass the bar’ is something that many people desire to do who study law. It allows them to practice law legally. The bar exam. Have you ever passed the bar? I’ve never even taken the bar. In fact, I know very little about law.

1. weaseled his way

We’re moving along still. Number 15 is ‘weaseled his way’. We’re still talking about the same teenager who posed as doctors and lawyers and I say, “Hey, he didn’t last too long as a doctor, either, did he?” And Dan said, “No, I think for just a few months and again he weaseled his way into a position where he didn’t have to do much.”

To ‘weasel you way’ into something means to manipulate a situation for a selfish aim in a very sneaky, sly, clever, slippery, untrustworthy, devious kind of way. We think of a weasel as something very long and thin that can get its way through any kind of situation and does so without making people notice. They’re very sly, those weasels.

So to ‘be a weasel’, we could call another person a ‘weasel’, it means they’re doing something deceptive, something untrustworthy. So it has a very negative connotation. Usually, we say ‘weasel your way out of something’. In this case, Dan is flipping it; he’s saying ‘weaseled his way into a position’ meaning like he did not deserve that position at all. The only way he got that position was through deception, by being very clever, very sneaky, very slippery like a weasel. To ‘weasel your way in’ or ‘weasel your way out’ of something means to do so in a deceptive way.

So do you know anyone who has weaseled his way into your life? Do you know anyone who has weaseled their way into your relationship with another person? Those are ways that you can use that phrase.

1. conning

All right, number 16, ‘conning’. This comes from the verb ‘con’ or ‘conmen’. I actually used this word.

I said, “What I don’t understand about this story is I’ve been wondering, what was his motivation?

This guy who tried to be a doctor or a lawyer at such a young age.” And I said, “If he was making a lot of money, I could understand, by conning someone, but he wasn’t really in a position to make lots of money, right? What do you think his motivation was?” To ‘con’ someone means to trick or deceive them. A ‘conman’ is a person who tricks or deceives for their own gain.

You can con the money out of someone. That’s actually a common way to get money out of elderly people here in Japan. Someone will call them on the phone and say, “Hey, I’m your nephew. This is your nephew. I need money. I’m in trouble. Can you send me money?” And many of the elderly people in Japan are kind of lonely and they’re out of contact with their families and it’s kind of a sad situation. There are many, many elderly people in Japan and not so many young people, comparatively. So this is one of the cons in Japan, one of the tricks that some people are playing on elderly people. They call them and disguise themselves. They deceive the elderly person by making them believe that they’re a family member and then they ask, they say that, “I’m in a lot of trouble. I really need your help. Please send me your money.” And unfortunately, the elderly people do it.

They’re being conned into sending money to a complete stranger.

Conning other people is a deplorable - it’s a terrible way - to make a living. You’re lying to people and you’re stealing from them. And to do that, you’re creating a world that is undesirable to live in.

So please, don’t con people. We should never con other people. We should be honest and we should treat other people with respect.

1. whatever happened to

Let’s move on. Number 17, ‘whatever happened to’. This is a really useful phrase. You should start using this. So Dan’s talking about, again, this teenager who pretended to be older and I said, “Whatever happened to him?” And what I mean is, after all these years, what is he doing now? I haven’t kept in touch. I haven’t followed. I wonder, what is he doing now? It’d be very interesting. Is he in jail? Is he dead? Or has he completely transformed into a different human being. So Dan answers the questions.

You can use this phrase, for example, think about some of your friends in high school. Where are they now? If you have kept in touch with them, you know exactly what they’re doing and where they’re living and whether they have children or grandchildren or whatever. But some people we lose contact with. So if we think about them in the presence of other people that we know in common, we can say, “Hey, whatever happened to that guy, Jason? Remember him? He was a really funny guy. Whatever happened to him?” “I don’t know. I haven’t contacted him in 20 years. I have no idea what happened to him. Yeah, I wonder whatever happened to him?” Use that phrase when you want to refer to someone you haven’t talked to or spoken to in a very, very long time.

1. the 5 o’clock shadow

Next, ‘the 5 o’clock shadow’. We’re still talking about this very young… Actually, no we’ve moved on.

We’re talking about the older guy in his 20s who was still pretending to be a high school student after all these years, strangely. And Dan says, “Yeah, he was like 27 or 28 years old and still posing as a 17-year-old boy.” And he talks about how he would have to shave multiple times in the day. And I said, “Yeah, to avoid the 5 o’clock shadow.”

‘The 5 o’clock shadow’ is a phrase that refers to the growth of hair that occurs between the morning when a man shaves his face and the afternoon. So between that time, maybe 7 or 8 in the morning, until around 4 or 5 in the afternoon, there’s quite a few hours there. You’ve got 10 hours or so and the hair starts to grow especially on dark-haired people, more so than lighter-haired people like myself. So people who have dark hair, dark brown hair, black hair, a lot of men by 4 or 5 in the afternoon, you can visibly see the facial hair coming out. It’s grown since the morning and it’s called a ‘5 o’clock shadow’. So it’s when their face starts to turn black at the end of the day. What some guys do is they bring an electric shaver to work and in the afternoon or after lunch, they shave again in order to avoid the 5 o’clock shadow.

Most high school kids don’t have a ‘5 o’clock shadow’ because they’re too young. So this was the case with the man in his late 20s. He was very capable of growing a 5 o’clock shadow unlike a high school boy, so he had to be very careful about that in order to maintain the deception that he was attempting by going to back to high school as a much older person.

1. a do-over

The next is ‘a do-over’. This is number 19. ‘A do-over’. And Dan said, “Yeah, in the mornings it was much easier for him to appear young because he felt like gravity was on his side. As the day wore on, he felt like his face would start to droop and that other people could see that he was older.” And then Dan said, “The reason he was there is he just wanted a do-over.” I think that’s something a lot of people can relate to, maybe not just in high school but some period in your life you wish you could do-over again.

So ‘a do-over’, that’s a noun. ‘A do-over’ is another attempt at something again. If you’re playing around of golf and you hit a really bad shot, you could say, “Ah, I need a do-over. I’m going to take a do-over.” And ‘a do-over’ means ‘I’m going to do it again’. It’s ‘a do-over’.

Let’s say you get married for the first time and it turned out to be a disaster. Maybe you married the woman you loved or you married the man that you loved and after just a couple of months, you start fighting and you have a terrible relationship and eventually you get divorced. You need a do-over. You need to start over. You need to meet someone new and you got to make another attempt and just go into it with a much different attitude, as a wiser person. Just do it over. Have a do-over. Make a do-over. So ‘a do-over’. Anytime you get a negative result, you can talk about having a do-over. So that’s something to know.

1. a jock

We are almost done. We’re getting close to the end here. We have a few more. Number 20 is ‘a jock’. We’re talking now about, I asked Dan what did he do in high school, and he said, “Nothing.” And he said, “What about you? What were you into” So to ‘be into’ something means to be interested in it, to do it, to spend time doing it. And I said, “I was an athlete,” and he said, “You were a jock.” And I was like, “Yeah, but I also focused on my studies. I played tennis and soccer. It was fun.”

So you got to be careful with this word ‘jock’. Generally, it means ‘athlete’ but it kind of has a negative connotation in the context of an academic environment. So if you call someone ‘a jock’ in a school, it means that you’re only good or that person is only good at sports, and that’s it. They’re not good at school. They don’t have the brains to get good grades and be creative intellectually. So ‘a jock’.

We often use this term with the adjective ‘dumb’. ‘A dumb jock’. “Oh yeah, he’s just a dumb jock. All he does is play football.” So it’s kind of a negative, it has a negative connotation. Most people are not proud of being jocks, although I suppose some people are.

Another way of saying someone who goes to school and is also an athlete is a ‘student athlete’. So that’s kind of the opposite of a ‘jock’. It has the same meaning. It’s someone who does sports, but has a positive connotation. “She’s a student athlete.” Okay, that’s a nice way of saying that she plays sports. ‘Jock’ is not so nice. I suppose some people might take pride in being a jock, but in general it has a slightly negative connotation, so please be careful using it.

1. pedophile

Speaking of negative connotations, we come to probably the word with the most negative connotation, and that is ‘pedophile’. So Dan is talking about the guy who goes back to high school, and I ask, “Well, why did he do that?” And Dan says, “Well, he gives mixed reasons. He said in the beginning, he wanted to get a girlfriend. But that was just the first time. He was only 8 years old. It’s not like 18 years old. It’s not like he was some creepy pedophile.”

So what does this word mean? Well, first of all, you should understand that ‘phile’, p-h-i-l-e, anytime you hear that word at the end of… It’s actually a suffix, at the end of a word, it means someone who loves. So whatever comes before that, the prefix, like ‘audiophile’, someone who loves audio, someone who is a fan and aficionado of audio. So if you love music, if you love audio, you’re an ‘audiophile’. If you’re a ‘technophile’, you love technology. You can’t stop thinking about technology, You’re obsessed with technology. A ‘glossophile’ loves languages and a ‘bibliophile’ loves books.

‘Pedophile’, ‘pedo’ means child. So someone who loves children, but in a sexual way, not in a normal adult-child way. So if you use that term ‘pedophile’ or if you hear that term ‘pedophile’, it has sexual connotations and very negative connotations, obviously. So Dan’s saying, “He’s not like some creepy pedophile because he’s only 18 and the other students are 17.” So the difference between one year is not a big deal. But if this person were in his 30s or 40s, we could say that he’s a pedophile because he’s only interested in high school girls rather than someone his own age or another adult, perhaps.

So that’s what pedophile means. And also what ‘phile’ means. You’ll hear that at the end of lots of different words. So know that it means ‘love of’.

1. makes no bones about it

All right. 22, ‘make no bones about it’. Here’s a useful phrase. We’re talking here about this IQ test and how this guy took it over and over and over again and eventually got some of the highest scores in the world. And I said, “Well, yeah, I guess anybody who took it over and over again could maybe do the same thing because those questions are very similar.” And Dan says, “Yeah, this guy, he makes no bones about it, that these are not accurate measures of your intelligence.” To ‘make no bones about’ something means that you don’t try to hide it. You’re very upfront. You’re not ashamed of it. You speak directly about it without any hesitation or avoidance or evasion. You’re very candid. You’re very forthright, forthcoming. You speak clearly about it. Even though you might offend someone, you still say the truth so you make no bones about it. That’s the connotation it has.

We could say that, “John doesn’t like Frank. Frank doesn’t like John. And both of them make no bones about it.” That means they don’t try to hide the fact that they dislike each other. If you talk to John, John will say, “Yeah, that guy, Frank, I don’t like him at all.” And then Frank might say, “Yeah, that John, he’s just a terrible guy. I hate him. I really don’t like him.” So both of these guys are making no bones about it.

Now, if they were very political and very polite, John might say, “Oh Frank, well, you know, he has his good points,” and then Frank might say about John, “Yeah, that John, well, you know, he’s okay.” That’s not making no bones about it. That’s being evasive. That’s being very polite. And so some people are very direct and other people are very vague and polite about things.

So to ‘make no bones about it’ means to be direct.

1. shady

Number 23, ‘shady’. Dan’s talking about Rosner, Rick Ross taking profits from cocaine sales to secretly funnel money back to Nicaragua, and I say, “Wow, that’s pretty shady. That’s a pretty shady business.” So something that is ‘shady’, a person that is shady or a business that is shady, an organization can be shady, a neighborhood can be shady. And what it means is very sketchy, very undesirable, and in many cases, illegal and illegitimate.

To sell cocaine and traffic it across borders of countries, that’s a shady business. That’s probably illegal. It’s probably not legitimate. There’s probably a lot of danger associated with it. It’s quite shady. You wouldn’t want to get involved in a shady business if you valued your life and your freedom and the life and freedom of your loved ones around you. So don’t get involved in shady businesses.

1. okidoki

All right. We have now come to the end of our vocabulary commentary. The very last one is number 24, ‘okidoki’. Actually, this sounds like a Japanese word but it’s not. It just means ‘OK. So in place of saying ‘OK’, you can say ‘okidoki’. So I said, “Okay, well that’s the end,” and Dan says, “Okidoki, talk to you later,” and that just means ‘okay, talk to you later’. But here’s the point, don’t use ‘okidoki’ all the time. Just use it sparingly. Use it some of the times. Because if you use it all the time, it sounds strange, so don’t use it all the time, just sometimes.

Actually, it’s very funny because I teach a lot of Japanese students English, and I tell them this. I say, “Don’t use okidoki all the time.” Actually, the Japanese word for ‘sometimes’ is ‘tokidoki’. So I tell my Japanese students, “Don’t use ‘okidoki’ all the time. Just use it some of the times. Okidoki, Tokidoki.” And everyone laughs. It’s kind of funny.

All right, wow. That was the longest vocab I have ever given on any of our conversations. But the reason is because we said so many interesting and useful things this time.

OK, I hope that you have found some benefit from this. Of course, you’re only going to see the benefits if you use what you’ve learned here. So make a vocab list. Keep it in front of you as you’re having conversations. See if you can find opportunities to use what we’re teaching you rather than lose what you’re learning. Enjoy!