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Conversational Vocabulary

Hello Fast Fluency Formula members. This is Aaron and I’m now going to talk about some of the words and phrases that Dan and I used in our conversation about individuals that kind of go against the flow. So here we go.

1. hanging in there; going with the flow; doing my thing; keeping your head down; nose to the grindstone

Actually, at the very beginning of the conversation, Dan and I mention about six different idioms, all in a row. And the reason we do that is because we’re playing a little bit with the language, and all of these idioms are related.

Dan starts the conversation by saying, “A.C. You feeling rebellious today?” And basically A.C. means Aaron Campbell. That’s a nickname, A.C. And he says, “Are you feeling rebellious today?” That’s his way of saying, “Hello.”

I took that to mean, “Hello. How are you?” And I said, “I’m okay.” And I said, “Not particularly rebellious. I’m just sort of hanging in there.” And then Dan says, “Just hanging in there, going with the flow?” And I said, “Yes, going with the flow, doing my thing.” Dan says, “Keeping your head down.” And I said, “Yes, pretty much. Keeping my nose to the grindstone.” And then Dan says, “Living the life.”

So this is full of all kinds of idioms and phrases here, and they all are very similar in this context, in the sense that they are all answering the question, “How are you?” And the answer is, “I’m okay, but I’m not great. I’m not bad, I’m not great, but I’m okay.”

So when you’re hanging in there, I’m hanging in there, she’s hanging in there, it just means that life is full of struggles and we’re doing our best to keep everything together and stay in the flow of life. We’re hanging in there. Another way to say that is, “To go with the flow.”

“Go with the flow” has a little bit more of a positive meaning. It just means I’m not worrying about anything, I’m going with the flow. Whatever happens I’m gonna take the path of least resistance, I’m gonna flow with the stream of life.

And I said, “Yes, just doing my thing.” “How are you?” “I’m doing my thing.” I’m just doing my thing, I’m living my life, nothing special, I’m doing things that I want to be doing, I need to be doing, nothing special to talk about, I’m just doing my thing.

“Keeping your head down.” “Keeping your head down” kind of has a little bit more of a neutral to slightly negative meaning. When you keep your head down, it’s because you don’t want people to see you. So when you keep your head down, you’re not attracting attention to yourself, you’re focused maybe on your own issues and your own problems, and you don’t really want to talk about it with anyone. You’re keeping your head down.

“How are you?” “Well, I’m just keeping my head down.” I’m keeping a low profile, I’m staying out of the limelight, I’m not attracting attention to myself. I’m just doing my thing, going with the flow, hanging in there.

And “I’m keeping my nose to the grindstone.” Now, a grindstone is a stone that spins and it’s very circular and you can use it to sharpen knives, sharpen very hard things like metal. In order to sharpen a knife to a grindstone, you need to hold it at just the right angle and if you do, the stone will wear down the metal in a way that makes the blade very, very sharp. So it takes concentration, you can not have your attention distracted. You have to keep your nose right on that grindstone, pointed right at it, watching carefully what you’re doing.

When you use this idiom, “I have my nose to the grindstone,” it means I’m concentrated on my life, on doing the things that I need to do, I’m not being distracted by anything. “I’ve got my nose to the grindstone” has a connotation of working really hard and being really focused and not being distracted.

These are all idioms that you can use to respond to the question, “How are you?” And they have kind of a very colloquial, sometimes playful feel, especially the way that Dan and I use them. And you can use these anytime you want. It just means, “I’m okay. I’m not great, but I’m not bad. I’m okay.”

1. up to you

All right. Moving on, we’re talking about ankle bracelets. And I ask Dan, “Have you ever worn an ankle bracelet?” And he says, “You mean, like a decorative ankle bracelet?” And of course, we’re talking about the ankle bracelets that criminals wear, when they’ve been convicted of a crime, for the purpose of house arrest. So Dan’s kind of making a joke here, because there are other types of ankle bracelets, the kind that a woman or man might wear, that are for decorative purposes, for fashion.

And I answer, “I’ll leave that up to you to interpret.” Up to you. I’ll leave it up to you. So, “Up to you” or, “Up to him” or, “Up to me” or, “Up to us” it just means it’s our choice, it’s his choice, it’s my choice. So I’m telling Dan, “It’s your choice. If you want to interpret it that way, go ahead. If you want to interpret it another way, that’s up to you, that’s your choice.”

“What do you want for dinner?” “I don’t know, I have no desires. I’ll leave it up to you. It’s up to you, what do you want? What’s your choice? You just do whatever you want, it’s up to you.”

“Where do you want to go this weekend?” “I don’t know. I’ve been many places recently. I’ll leave it up to you. You choose,” like this, okay? “It’s up to you.” All right.

And also, you can use this in a negative way. You can say it’s not up to me. Maybe there’s a guy named Bob, who’s applying for a job at my company and he has an interview and someone asks me, “Hey Aaron, do you think Bob will pass the interview?” And it’s like, “Well, he might pass it, he might not. I don’t know, it’s not up to me. That’s up so someone else. That’s up to a committee of people who hire. I’m not involved in that. It’s not up to me. If I were on that committee I would hire him, he’s a great guy, but it’s not up to me.”

1. goes against the grain

All right. The next one is, “Goes against the grain.” “Goes against the grain.” We’re talking about this asteroid named BZ, which flies in the opposite direction of all the other asteroids. And I say, “Yes, there’s always going to be something that goes against the grain in nature,” that doesn’t follow the normal protocol of what we would expect. So, “Goes against the grain.”

The reason I point this out is, it’s just yet another idiom that means the same as, “Goes against the tide,” or, “Goes against the flow.” It’s something that is acting in a way that is opposite from everything else around it. It goes against the grain.

And in this particular idiom, grain is referring to the grain of wood. If you cut a piece of wood, it has a certain grain to it. Kind of a direction that things flow. If you move your hand across the grain, in the direction that is smooth, then you’re going with the grain. But if you move it in the opposite direction, you’re going against the grain and you can get a splinter, a very thin piece of wood that sticks into your skin like a needle.

This is very also similar to another idiomatic expression, “To rub someone the wrong way.” If you imagine patting a cat and you start from the back of the neck and you move to the base of the tail, it’s very smooth and the cat feels very comfortable. But if you move your hand in the opposite direction, from the base of the tail towards the back of the neck, the cat gets very uncomfortable and can even bite or scratch you, okay? You’re rubbing that cat the wrong way.

You can rub people the wrong way by saying things that they don’t like, or acting in ways that cause them to become upset. Anyway, going against the grain, going against the tide, going against the flow.

1. falling apart (at the seams)

The next one is, “Falling apart.” I ask Dan, “How about you? What are you doing? Are you focused on your body, or are you focused on your mind these days?” And Dan’s answer is, “I’m just falling apart.” And I complete this little idiom by saying, “At the seams?” Because often we do say, “Falling apart at the seams.”

Of course, seams is the location where two pieces of material, usually a cloth, comes together and it’s sewn together. That’s the seam. So if you’re wearing a shirt, the shirt has seams, where different pieces of it are sewn together. And you can see those. So sometimes when a shirt comes apart, due to damage or if it’s very old, the seams will start to give away and they’ll crack and you’ll see cracks in the seams.

Basically, you can probably figure out the meaning of this. It just means I’m not doing that well. Life is difficult, I’m finding it a struggle to keep things together. I’m just falling apart, I’m having a difficult time. I’m falling apart at the seams, like this.

You could answer the question, “How are you?” by saying, “I’m falling apart” and it just means I’m really struggling, I’m having a hard time.

Someone who loses their mental composure could fall apart. Maybe, again, we could go back to a situation where a person is having an interview at job and they’re doing very well, but then suddenly they make a mistake and then they fall apart. They start saying crazy things, or they get upset and that’s not good.

Or maybe a relationship, like a friendship, or a marriage, can fall apart at the seams. Maybe it’s good for a while, but then after some time certain problems take place and emotions run high and the relationship sours, it turns bad and it falls apart at the seams, like this.

Have you ever had a relationship that fell apart? Do you sometimes feel like you’re falling apart? Sometimes I feel that way. Life is difficult, it’s not easy for everyone. We sometimes just fall apart at the seams.

1. scraping by

All right. The next one is, “Scraping by.” If you’re falling apart at the seams in your life, maybe you’re just scraping by. And if you imagine, of course the verb, “Scrape” means to rub against in a painful, or damaging way. If you are running on the sidewalk, or on the street and you fall and your elbow rubs against the concrete or the asphalt, you’ll get a scrape, or maybe your knee will get a scrape and it will be a little bit bloody and painful. That’s a scrape.

So if you’re scraping by in life, it kind of means you’re really struggling. Maybe you’re falling apart, you’re scraping by, you’re doing your best but you’re just dragging yourself along the ground and wounding yourself in the process. It’s not a very positive image. You’re just scraping by, you’re doing the best you can but it’s not going very well.

And then Dan uses, “Hanging in there” again. He says, “Yes, you know, I’m hanging in there, but it’s hard. It’s not easy,” like this.

1. be more dumber

A little bit later, we use a different phrase here and this is actually humor and I pointed out, because I’m not sure if people understand this is humor or not. This is when we’re talking about how being ignorant is actually maybe a sign of wisdom. The more you become aware in life, the more you realize how much you don’t know and therefore, maybe that’s a sign of wisdom. So we’re kind of joking about how ignorant we are. And then I say, “Yes, we need to be more dumber. Be more dumber.”

And of course, to everyone that is a grammatically incorrect statement, but the reason I speak it in a grammatically incorrect way is because I’m trying to do that for a comedic effect, like a comedy. Because, if I’m saying that we should be more ignorant and ignorance is associated with being dumb, then we should be dumber. Not more dumber, that’s grammatically incorrect, but I’m using a grammatically incorrect phrase to kind of illustrate the fact that we need to be dumber, because dumber people, or dumb people would make many grammatical mistakes. So that’s is a grammatical mistake made completely on purpose, for effect of meaning. Okay. Whether it’s funny or not, I don’t know.

1. do yourself in

A couple more here. “Do yourself in.” We’re talking about Socrates and Dan says, “Would you have taken the hemlock?” And a few lines later I say, “I wouldn’t want to just do myself in. I would want to fight and stay alive.” So to do yourself in, as you may very well guessed, means to kill yourself. To do yourself in.

Do you know anyone who’s ever done themselves in? I knew a guy named George. He got really depressed because he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, cancer. His wife died and one of his children had an accident and things were not going well for him. He had an alcohol problem and eventually he did himself in. He killed himself. There’s not much we could do to help him.

1. to each his own

And finally, I kind of like this phrase. “To each, his own.” Again, we’re talking about doing themselves in and Dan says, “Why do you think Socrates did that?” And I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know why he would do such a thing. But hey, to each his own, I suppose.” This is a phrase that you can use, it’s an idiom you can use when you disagree with someone’s opinion, or action, or their lifestyle perhaps. You respect their freedom to have their own opinions, their freedom to have their own values and beliefs, even though you don’t necessarily agree with them.

Let me give you a few examples. I know a guy who, for some reason, he loves watching bowling on TV. Anytime there’s a bowling tournament on TV, he turns it on and he watches the whole thing. That’s not for me. It’s kind of fun to bowl, but to watch it? For me, that’s just boring. But hey, to each his own. To each his own. He’s perfectly fine doing that, he’s not hurting anybody, that’s what he loves to do, it gives him some kind of satisfaction, or pleasure. Great. That’s wonderful. It’s not for me, but to each his own. He’s welcomed to do that.

When it comes to beliefs. Some people believe in God and other people don’t believe in God. And I say, “Hey, to each his own.” As long as we’re not hurting each other, as long as we’re treating each other with respect, who cares what we believe in? That’s your choice to believe in whatever you want to believe in, to each his own, like this.

Okay. That brings us to the end of this commentary. I hope you found some of these explanations and examples useful. And please do ask questions if you have them. The forum is a great place to do it. Of course, you can also email us at members@deepenglish.com