لغات

CONVERSATIONAL VOCABULARY

Tall, Dark and Handsome

Hi. Aaron here of Deep English. I’m now going to discuss some of the vocabulary and phrases that arose in the conversation that Dan and I had about hidden bias.

1. at the crux

The first is ‘at the crux’. I asked Dan, “Dan, are you full of bias?” And Dan says, “I think we all are. I think that’s at the crux of all these stories in the Core Audio.”

‘Crux’ is a word that comes from Latin and it means cross. So if you imagine a cross, there’s a central point in the cross where the two pieces of wood or metal cross each other. That’s what this little phrase means. ‘ At the crux’ means at the very central point, at the heart of, and it refers to the most important point or the most important issue in what’s being talked about or in a situation.

For example, Dan thinks that hidden bias is at the crux of all of these stories and basically at the crux of our conversation, and I agree with him. It is at the crux.

Immigration is another issue in the world today that is controversial in many countries. It’s a problematic issue. Some people think that the economy is at the crux of the problem of immigration, where other people disagree. They say no, human rights is at the crux of the matter, while others say no, it’s actually war that’s at the crux of the matter. People disagree what is at the crux, what is the central point, the heart of this issue.

1. give ___ a run for his money

The next is ‘give (someone) a run for his money’. We’re talking about Warren Harding being the worst president that the United States has ever had and Dan says, “Well, I don’t know. Maybe George Bush was the worst president,” and I respond to Dan’s assertion by saying, “Yeah, George Bush would definitely give Warren Harding a run for his money.”

‘To give (someone) a run for his money’ means to compete closely with. That means that George Bush, yeah, he might actually beat Warren Harding in a competition for the worst president ever in the United States.

Another example might be the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt, really fast guy. In fact, he’s so fast, I don’t know if anyone can give him a run for his money. Is it possible? Actually, there is someone.

His name is Justin Gatlin. He’s almost as fast as Usain Bolt, and since Usain Bolt is getting a little bit older year by year and Justin is training very hard, he’s getting faster and faster, in the next race he might just give Usain Bolt a run for his money. That’s what it means, to really compete against someone and actually have a chance of winning.

In the upcoming presidential election on the democratic side, Hillary Clinton is the frontrunner.

Many people think she’s going to be the Democratic nomination and be the Democratic nominee for president. Others are saying, no, this guy Bernie Sanders can really give Hillary a run for her money, meaning he can actually beat her to achieve and win the Democratic nomination for president.

1. goes a long way

Let’s move on to the next one, ‘goes a long way’. Dan’s talking about Warren Harding and says, “He was tall. He was good looking. He was tall, dark and handsome,” and I say, “Yeah, that goes a long way, apparently.” When something goes a long way, it means it can be very useful and productive and profitable over a span of time. In this case, we’re saying good looks can go a long way even if he’s not very talented or intellectual or if he’s not very shrewd, it doesn’t matter. His good looks can carry him through and actually allow him to become president. So good looks can go a long way in life. Being tall can go a long way.

We can also talk about it in different context. For example, if you are travelling in Tokyo and you have $100. Well, $100 doesn’t go a very long way in Tokyo. In fact, you probably will struggle to survive for one day in Tokyo with $100. A tiny hotel room itself will cost $100. $100 doesn’t go a long way in Tokyo, but if you take that $100 to a place like India, wow, it really goes a long way. You can survive days upon days depending on where you are in India for $100. It goes a long way in India.

Daily speaking practice goes a long way towards becoming fluent. It really goes a long way. So it means over a certain span of time, it’s profitable, it’s useful, it’s productive, it’s effective. So, ‘goes a long way’.

1. literally

The next one is ‘literally’. Dan’s talking about how tall people have lots of advantages. From the time even when they’re little kids, people look up to them, other kids look up to them. And then I respond by saying, “Literally.”

This word ‘literally’, actually it has several meanings. What Dan means when he says ‘other kids look up to them’, actually ‘look up to’ has two meanings. The first is to admire someone. People look up to the president, people look up to a doctor, people look up to their parents. They admire them.

They think highly of them. But ‘look up to’ in a literal meaning means to look, that is to see upwards, in an upwards direction. So I’m pointing to the literal meaning of look up to as opposed to the figurative meaning, which Dan is actually using. So in this case, when kids look up to tall people, they’re doing it both literally and figuratively. There’s an opportunity for a pun there. We talked about ‘puns’ recently in one of our free lessons.

So ‘literal’ actually it comes from ‘literate’ and ‘literary’. It refers to text, words, word for word as opposed to actual and in reality. So the word ‘literal’ for a long time only meant word for word. So when we talked about ‘literal’, we talking about words themselves, but nowadays, people use this to mean actual, literally, or they use it for emphasis, to emphasize something. That’s where you’ll hear it more frequently nowadays, not referring necessary to words, but referring to emphasis, to emphasize something.

“He is literally a great guy,” And we’re not talking about words, we’re talking about he’s actually…we’re emphasizing the fact that he is a great guy.

1. bonked

Let’s move on to the next one, it’s ‘bonked’. This is a verb. Dan says that he bonked his head pretty good last week and almost knocked himself out, which was embarrassing because other people were around.

‘To bonk’ means to knock, to bump. If you bonked your head, you hit it against a wall or you hit it against something. Or maybe you’re watching a baseball game and the ball flies off the field and it bonks you in the head, it hits you in the head, it bumps you in the head.

So ‘to bonk’ means to bump, and you’ll hear this word occasionally in the English language. Just so you know, it also has a sexual meaning. You might hear it in that context, and it means to have sexual intercourse. To bonk, to bonk someone.

1. a monster

The next one is ‘a monster’. We’re talking about my friend and Dan says, “How tall is he?” And I say, “Well, he’s about 6’10” or something like that,” and Dan says, “Oh, wow, he’s a monster.” Dan’s not using the literal meaning of monster. It doesn’t really mean that my friend is an actual monster like a werewolf or Godzilla or something like that. In this case, it means extreme. So when he says ‘he’s a monster’ he is referring to his height. He is extremely tall. He’s a monster.

We can use this word ‘monster’ to refer to physical characteristics. That’s one way we can use it. So he’s talking about my friend’s height, he’s saying wow, he’s a monster. Or maybe a sumo wrestler, we might say, “Wow, that guy, he’s so huge. He’s big. He’s a monster.” So we’re talking about his size.

Or it could be strength. I saw a man; he lifted an entire tree trunk off the ground from a fallen tree to save a baby deer or something like that. He’s a monster. He’s so strong.

Athletic prowess. Michael Jordan, when he played basketball on the court, he was a monster. He was highly competitive. He was super athletic. He was very intelligent. He’s a monster. It means he was extremely good at what he did.

It also can have another meaning. It can mean basically evil. Someone who’s a monster might be… Sometimes you’ll hear people who do terrible things being referred to as monsters. Some people might say Hitler was a monster, or Pol Pot, the leader of Cambodia years ago was a monster. He was responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands, if not more than a million people.

In contemporary times, we might hear of war criminals as being monsters or child molesters, people who do terrible things to children as being monsters. So you’ll hear it in that context, as well.

If I were you, I would be very careful about using this word. I wouldn’t use it so easily because you could offend people. They might take it the wrong way. It’s better to just recognize the meaning of this word. Be very careful using it even when referring to physical characteristics. It could rob someone the wrong way, which means upset them. All right, don’t be a monster.

1. skyrocketed

The next one is ‘skyrocketed’. We’re talking about this woman, Abbie who won a blind audition but as soon as they found out she was a woman, she was discriminated against. But since blind auditions became common, I said that the percentage of women in these orchestras has skyrocketed.

So ‘to skyrocket’. What does that mean? It means what it sounds like, a rocket moving towards the sky. We all know how rockets go. They go up and they go really, really fast. So ‘to skyrocket’ means to go up very, very quickly, to increase dramatically in a big way. The percentage of women in orchestras 30 or 40 years ago was really tiny, and now it’s huge. Now it’s way bigger. It has skyrocketed.

Apple, the company that makes computers and iPhones. Actually when they debuted the iPhone, I don’t know when it was, maybe 10 years ago, Apple’s stock skyrocketed. That’s an example.

A city that has a big police force was having budget problems so they cut the budget of their police force and they had to fire half of their police force. Since then, the crime rate has skyrocketed. So it just increased dramatically.

The opposite of ‘skyrocket’ is actually the opposite of what happens when a rocket runs out of fuel before it leaves the atmosphere. Gravity pulls it down and so it plummets to the earth. So that is actually the opposite of skyrocket, is ‘to plummet’.

We might think of in the United States, maybe there’s a state that implements some very strict gun-control laws. Then as soon as those laws go into effect, the death rates from guns will plummet. It will fall quickly, dramatically fall, to plummet. So ‘to plummet’ is the opposite of ‘to skyrocket’. I hope your fluency skyrockets after using Deep English lessons.

1. flat-out

The next one is flat-out. We’re talking about how blacks are being beaten by police and very unfairly treated by police in the United States. Dan interjects and says, “Or they’re just murdered,” and I say, “Yeah, flat out murdered.” In this case, ‘flat-out’ means completely, directly, bluntly, without any doubt, without any hesitation, 100% just flat-out, without any argument at all. So this is how we use it.

Actually, maybe originally came from moving objects, moving vehicles, because we often hear this about driving flat-out on the highway. It means at top speed. That was maybe the original usage of the term. So originally it meant ‘at top speed’ but as the language evolved, people started using it to mean completely. It had a wider meaning, directly, completely.

I saw a movie a few weeks ago, Mission Impossible with Tom Cruise, and that was just a flat-out entertaining movie. It was flat-out entertaining. Didn’t have any deep themes or any meaningful themes, but it was just pure entertainment. It was flat-out entertainment.

I also recently listened to a lecture by a professor and it was really long and really boring. It was just flat-out sleep-inducing. It was flat-out boring, 100%.

I know a guy. He’s the funniest guy I know. He’s flat-out the funniest guy. So you can use this to mean completely.

1. mean-mugging

The next one is ‘mean-mugging’. We’re talking about the white officers who shot to death this immigrant from Africa who was sitting in his door stoop or his stoop outside his apartment or his house. And they started by mean-mugging him. What that means is they were staring at him in an unfriendly way, and that made him nervous. So he tried to go inside his house and in doing so, they shot him.

Actually, ‘mug’ means a face. A mug is a face. For example, maybe you’ve heard of a mugshot. This is a photo of your head and shoulders. If you ever get arrested, and I hope you don’t, but the police will take a mugshot of you. It’s a photo of your face and they keep that in their database.

Usually, the verb ‘to mug’ has a different meaning. It means to attack and to rob someone. So you have to be careful when travelling in unknown places especially big cities, you might get mugged by a criminal, someone who steals your money and points a gun at you or something like that.

But in this case, this is a less-common usage of the verb ‘to mug’, and it means to stare at someone or maybe even make faces at them. In this case, these white undercover police officers were mean-mugging this black man. They were looking at him with faces that were very unfriendly, possibly angry or very serious-looking. Maybe they suspected him of being a criminal so they were not looking at him in a friendly way and they were doing it in a mean way, an unfriendly way. They were mean-mugging him.

This is not a very common phrase or verb. It’s not common at all. You’ll hear it mostly in slang, inner city slang. I wouldn’t recommend using it necessarily because people might not understand what you mean.

1. a shame

We’re getting close to the end here. ‘A shame’. Dan’s talking about that black lives matter and he’s expressing his disappointment with people who say all lives matter, because it annoys him, that response, and it shows the people are completely missing the point. Then I respond and I say, “Yeah, it’s really a shame and it kind of raises the question, what do we need to do about it? How can we change bias?” It’s a real shame that this is happening.

So ‘a shame’ is a real negative thing and it’s really too bad. Here’s the interesting point. It’s a negative thing that really doesn’t have to be that way. It doesn’t have to be. It just is. It implies that something can be done about it. It’s a shame that racism exists. It doesn’t have to exist. It doesn’t have to. We can change that through awareness. It’s a real shame that this is happening.

It’s a shame that we’re destroying the environment in pursuit of economic growth. Countries and companies are always talking about growth, growth, growth. What about sustainability? It’s a real shame that we’re doing this to ourselves.

Sometimes you’ll hear the phrase ‘it’s a crying shame’ and that ‘crying’ is for emphasis. It’s a crying shame. War is a crying shame. Starvation is a crying shame. All these things. Poverty is a crying shame. They’re really negative things, extremely negative things.

1. big chain

A ‘big chain’. Dan says, “One of my first jobs was at Subway Sandwiches,” and I say, “Big chain, right?” And he says, “Yeah, a big chain.” What I’m talking about here is a chain store, a chain restaurant. If you’ve never heard this before, it just means it’s part of a larger company.

The best example is probably McDonald’s. McDonald’s is in every country in the world. Starbucks is another example. Actually, that is one corporation and it has hundreds of thousands, if not millions of outlets, millions of individual restaurants that are all exactly the same. That’s a chain just like the links in a chain are all the same, but they’re connected and they form one chain. So these big companies are a chain. They have many restaurants and they’re all linked together under one brand, and that’s a chain. There are lots of chain stores out there.

1. that whole thing about

The very last one, and this is one that, I don’t know, I’ve never really noticed before that I say and that a lot of people say and it’s only through examining the transcript that I actually noticed it. It’s when we’re talking about Dan and his experience being half-Asian in the United States growing up as a child. He is talking about the discrimination that occurs. People have a stereotype that Asians have a stronger work ethic than other races do. Then it reminds me, that conversation reminds me of a different issue, a different conversation, and I use a phrase called ‘that whole thing about’.

What I’m doing is I’m drawing attention to an issue or a situation that I want to talk about that I want to bring the listeners’ attention to and it’s not just a simple issue. It’s a complicated issue. It’s an in-depth or problematic issue. So I say, “Yeah, that whole thing about identifying people’s racial background, I think that’s really well-illustrated in that story about Jose who changed his name to ‘Joe’.”

So that whole thing about identifying people’s racial background, that’s the issue I want to point Dan, who is my listener, I want to point him to that issue, and I’m saying that, remember that complicated issue? Remember that problematic issue? Let’s talk about that. So you use this ‘that whole thing about’ when you want to refer to a situation or issue to be discussed that is not a simple issue. It’s more of a complicated issue.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say that you took your child to Disneyland or Disneyworld and you took off work to do it. And you had a great day, it was fun. And when you get back the next week, you’re telling your friends about your trip to Disneyland and you say, “Yeah, I went to Disneyland last week with my child. We had a great time.” Then the conversation changes and then you want to bring the attention of your listeners back to that trip to Disneyland, and you say, “Yeah and you know that whole thing about my trip to Disneyland.” No, that is an incorrect usage of your trip to Disneyland, because your trip to Disneyland was not a complicated or problematic issue. It’s very simple. You went to Disneyland with your child. You had a good time. So you don’t use ‘that whole thing about’ when referring to your trip to Disneyland.

If, however, you got back from your trip to Disneyland and your boss found out that you went to Disneyland because you had called in sick on that Friday, and they needed you at work and you were not at work, you went to Disneyland, and now you’re in a lot of trouble. You were told by some of your co-workers that it was okay to do, that it was okay to call in sick to go to Disneyland but your boss doesn’t think it’s okay at all and he’s very upset or she is very upset at you. There’s the possibility you might be put on probation or you might be fired and it’s causing problems at work with different employees, and now it’s a big thing. Now, you can refer to that whole thing about Disneyland if you want to refer to all those problems that arose because of that trip, those work-related problems. So now it’s a big problem in your life and it’s an issue to talk about. Now you can say, “Yeah, that whole thing about Disneyland, I’m in a lot of trouble now.” Anyway, this is a hard one for me to explain but you’ll hear people say ‘that whole thing about’ and it means here’s that problematic issue again. And they assume that you know what the problems are. You don’t use this when the listener doesn’t know that this is a problematic issue. It’s when there’s a problematic or complicated issue and both you and the listeners know what those problems are, then you can use that whole thing about.

Okay, phew! That was a hard one. I hope that you guys find these useful and put them to use in your conversations or at the very least recognize them when other people use them in their conversations with you. Okay, that’s all. Hope you guys have a nice day. See you!