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Conversational Vocabulary

Hi, everyone. Aaron here. I’m going to talk now about some of the words and phrases that Dan and I used in our conversation about inter-species relationships.

1. in your dreams

The first is, in your dreams.. This is something I say to Dan when he is telling me about his fantasy of him being some sort of athlete football player and me being a tap dancer, and somehow we have an unlikely friendship.

Of course, Dan is joking around, but I am too, and I say to him, “In your dreams, buddy,” meaning, “I know that that’s just a fantasy. There’s no way that was ever true. There’s no way that existed in reality. You’re just sharing your fantasy with me. In your dreams, that never happened, or that never would happen.”

Any time someone shares with you an idea that is very far removed from reality, and it could be a wish or a hope or a desire, you can just say, “In your dreams, buddy. That’ll never happen.” You might have some friend come to you and tell you about his new business idea and how he’s going to make millions and millions and become rich and wealthy. You could say, “Yeah, in your dreams, buddy. That’ll never happen.” So that’s how you use that term.

1. jock

The next is jock. Dan says, “You were kind of a jock, actually,” referring to me in my younger days. A jock is basically a stereotype of a young athlete who is not very good at school, doesn’t get good grades, maybe not even very smart at all, and is only good at playing sports.

It also carries a slightly negative connotation of being potentially a bully towards people who are not athletically strong, or maybe being a little bit overly aggressive in their relations with women, especially in a sexual sense.

That’s kind of the meaning of jock. It’s not the most positive term to call someone, so you have to be careful using that. A jock… Maybe you know some jocks or maybe you knew some jocks when you were in high school. All right, moving on.

1. get your story straight

Get your story straight. This is what Dan tells me when we’re talking about me being some sort of big golfer when I was younger, and I didn’t even play much golf when I was younger. My father played a little bit but I didn’t, so again, Dan’s still joking around with me and he says, “Hey, get your story straight.”

We say this to someone who may not be telling the truth. It’s like saying, “You’re not telling me the truth or you’re not telling me the whole truth. I notice inconsistencies in what you are saying to me. Get your story straight. Tell us the truth. Get your story straight.” Like this.

1. pal around

Okay, the next one is palling around. What does this mean? Dan says that everyone loves watching deer and hedgehogs pal around. They love watching them pal around. What does that mean, pal around?

A pal is a friend. That’s another way of saying friend. “He’s my pal, she’s my pal. We’re good pals. We’re good buddies. We’re good friends.” To pal around means to be friends with, to spend time with a friend, to hang out with a friend.

I like to pal around with my buddies on Saturday nights at the club or at the bar, or we like to pal around on Sunday afternoons on the soccer field, playing soccer. We like to pal around. That’s what it means, pal around. To be friends with, to hang out with, to have a good time with.

1. blood bath

Okay. Next is blood bath. Dan’s talking about the encounter between… Actually, it was the reunion between this wild lion and that lion’s previous owners, when the lion was a cub, and how it looked like a house cat playing with Dan’s arm, but it’s a giant lion.

It could have ended up in a blood bath, he says, meaning that if that lion had decided to bite or scratch his former owner, it could have been very bloody. It could have been very violent. We can use this to describe any event that is bloody or violent.

For example, I turned on the television last night and there was a UFC, an Ultimate Fighting Competition match on, and it was a blood bath. The guys were punching each other in the face and it opened up cuts and blood was coming out of one guy’s nose. It was a blood bath.

You can use this to describe some kind of terrorist attack or something horrible that happens where people die, people get injured, on a large scale. You can call that a blood bath. “It was a blood bath. That guy, he went crazy and he took a gun and he killed his whole family and it was a blood bath. The police arrived on the scene and it was just a total blood bath.” Like that.

1. flip side

Okay. Let’s move on to the next one which is the flip side. The flip side just means the other side of, the opposite side of. Dan’s talking about how these videos are so interesting of inter-species relationships, everyone loves to watch them. They get lots of views. They amuse us, they entertain us.

But the flip side to these videos is that there’s this feeling that it shouldn’t be. It’s not natural. The nature of these animals is to be wild and free, but not to live in confined spaces or be treated like a human, that kind of thing, so there’s a flip side to it. There’s another side to the issue.

If you talk about pros and cons, the pros are the good points but the flip side are the negative aspects.

For example, I own a house. I’ve always wanted to raise my family in a house and it’s great having your own house. You’ve got lots of space. You own it as opposed to renting it, so you can do whatever you want with it, but the flip side is it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of upkeep. It’s not like owning an apartment that you rent. If something goes wrong, you have to fix it, if you own a house. That’s the flip side of it.

Some people love to travel and maybe they find a job with an airline company or with a company as a salesperson and they get to travel all over and wow, that’s wonderful.

They get to go to many places, stay in nice hotels, eat at different restaurants, experience different cultures, but the flip side is they don’t get to see their friends and family very often and maybe they get lonely sometimes and they get really tired and they don’t have normal sleeping patterns. That’s the flip side of it.

1. stare it dead in the eyes

All right, moving on. Dan says, “Stare it dead in the eyes.” When you stare something dead in the eyes, and right before he says, “Stare it down.” We’re talking about this weird, strange animal that I saw in the sewer or in the gutter, and of course, Dan is playing around once again. He’s joking around and he says, “Did you stare it dead in the eyes?”

To stare something or to stare someone dead in the eyes means to really give them a very strong stare, where you look them in the eyes in a very, sort of, intense, almost aggressive way, to stare someone down, to stare them dead in the eyes.

It’s kind of an aggressive, scary thing to do to someone, and you do that when you’re challenging or appearing threatening to someone.

That’s what that means, and I said, “Well, it looked at me,” and then Dan says, “You said, ‘Make my day.’” Like this. That’s something that Clint Eastwood said. It’s a famous line from a movie, “Make my day. Go ahead. Make my day.” That’s what that means. Have you ever stared someone dead in the eyes, or maybe someone has stared you dead in the eyes.

1. to be honest with you

Moving on, there’s something that I say. I said, “No, actually, this animal I saw was kind of creepy, to be honest with you.” To be honest with you means in fact, actually. It’s just another way of saying actually, in fact. To be honest with you, it was kind of creepy. In fact, that’s all it means, to be honest with you.

I don’t actually like that term. I try to avoid using it. I think it comes out when I speak, just because it’s a natural pattern that I was conditioned to use as a child, but I don’t actually like the meaning of it because, it implies that I’m not being all the time honest, and I do want to be honest.

But the fact is, it means in fact. It doesn’t actually mean, “I’m lying to you most of the time, and now I’m going to be honest with you,” so don’t get confused. It just means actually or in fact, to be honest with you.

1. mow down

Okay, moving on, the next one is mowed down. We’re talking about this protest in Virginia where some crazy white supremacist got into a car and he mowed down a group of protesters.

To mow means to cut. Usually, not just cut anything. It means to cut by moving over something, with a lawnmower. You mow your lawn, so you move over it and there are spinning blades and it cuts it to make it short, cuts the grass to make it short. You mow.

So to mow down someone with a large object means to run over them. If you’re going to mow down protesters with a car, you run over them with the car. You mow them down, just like you would mow long grass down to make it short.

That’s a terrible idea, but yeah, that’s a form of terrorism is to take a large vehicle and mow down a group of people. That’s what that means.

Then, a little bit later, I say, “They put him in the slammer, didn’t they? They better have.” To put someone in the slammer means to put them in jail. Why is it called a slammer?

Well, when you put someone in the cage for the very first time, you slam the door. Boom, or you slam the gate shut and lock it. That’s a slammer. That’s a prison cell, so to be put in the slammer means to be put in prison.

1. come clean

All right. A little bit later we’re talking about this other kind of crazy guy named Bill Wilkinson. I use the phrase come clean, because this guy, he’s a giant, living irony.

I say, “I think it would be different, it would be a different situation if he had completely come clean, and he had a realization and he realized his past views were not correct and he wanted to become a better man. He wanted to come clean.”

To come clean basically means to confess, to be totally honest and open, you come clean. You bare all. You don’t hide anything. You come clean. You admit that you were wrong and you admit that you didn’t do something the right way and you tell everyone openly about it. You come clean. You tell the whole truth about what you’ve done.

That’s important for change. If you want to change and become a better person, you got to first come clean. You got to be honest with yourself and other people, to come clean.

1. on the run

Okay. The next is on the run. We’re talking about the same guy, Bill Wilkinson, and how he lived in Belize for such a long time. We’re wondering why that is, and Dan says, “Maybe he’s on the run, from the KKK, the Ku Klux Klan.”

To be on the run means to be avoiding capture or in this case, perhaps being attacked by the KKK. He’s on the run from the KKK.

Usually, we use this when referring to police. “He’s on the run from the police,” meaning, the police started looking for him and he’s trying to avoid being caught or captured by the police. He’s on the run.

Another way of saying this is on the lamb. You’ll hear that sometimes, on the lamb, but in this case, Dan’s saying on the run. He’s on the run from the KKK.

1. to have a falling out with

I say, “Yeah, maybe he had a falling out with the Klan members.” To have a falling out with someone or with a group means that you have serious disagreement that leads to a separation.

A husband might have a falling out with his wife, and she kicks him out of the house and he lives on his friend’s couch for three days before he makes up with his wife. They had a falling out.

If you have a falling out with someone it leads to a separation in your relationship, and usually it’s not pleasant when you have a falling out with someone. It involves a lot of negative emotions like frustration, anger, distrust.

People have fights. They yell and scream at each other. They cry. They get very angry. That’s a falling out, have a falling out with someone. “They used to be best of friends until they had a falling out over money, and that was it. They never spoke to each other again. They had a falling out over money.”

1. a bit sketchy

Okay. Moving along is… We’re still talking about Belize and I’m talking about how beautiful the country is, but then I say something like, “Belize City is a little sketchy at times, especially after dark.”

So, something’s sketchy is something that’s, in this case, a little bit dangerous, maybe a little bit uncertain. It’s a little bit sketchy. It’s not something you can trust. Of course, there are lots of cities all over the world that are a little sketchy at times and a little sketchy in places, especially American cities.

It’s not really indicative of Belize City being any more sketchy than other places, but that’s what it means. It means just a little sketchy. You wouldn’t want to go out after dark unless you knew what you were doing, or unless you were with someone that knew what they were doing.

I was just a young tourist, traveler, and for me it was just a little sketchy. I didn’t feel comfortable going out at night, sketchy.

People can be sketchy. If you refer to someone as a sketchy person, it means you have to be careful around that person. He’s a little sketchy. He might not tell you the truth. He might lie to you. He might attack you. He might steal something from you. He’s a little bit sketchy, like that.

1. a whole nother

Okay, moving on, this is a really interesting, useful one. Dan say, “That’s a whole nother story. That’s a whole nother story.” We’re talking about the story of John McAfee, a man who was on the run from the authorities, and Dan says, “That’s a whole nother story.”

And whole nother means totally different. That’s all it means, totally different. That’s a totally different story. That’s a whole nother story, like that. Any time you want to use the term totally different, you can use this whole nother.

“Oh, no, no that’s a totally different person. I’m talking about someone else. That’s a totally different person. That’s a whole nother person. That’s a whole nother idea. That’s a whole nother ball game. That’s a whole nother ball game. That’s a totally different situation, that’s a whole nother ball game.”

1. off the rails

All right, we are moving right along here. Last one, off the rails. We’re talking about John McAfee and he went on the run and then I said, “Yeah, and then off the rails.”

If you go off the rails, it means that you… Actually, it has many different meanings. One could mean that you go crazy, if you go off the rails. If you imagine a train moving down the train track, it rides along rails. There are two rails and that’s how trains operate, so the train moves down the rails but what happens if the train goes off the rails?

That’s a terrible thing. The train would crash, and if there are people on board, they might die, and that’s actually called a derail. For a train to derail means it goes off the rails and it leads to disaster.

To go off the rails in an idiomatic sense could mean go crazy. You go crazy, go off the rails, or it means you do something that’s totally unexpected and not normal and a little bit crazy or risky. You go off the rails. You do things that people do not expect that could lead to disaster.

Without knowing the story of John McAfee, you might not understand what off the rails means, but yeah, he went off the rails. He did some crazy things, allegedly and actually, and he said some crazy stuff, so he went off the rails. Don’t go off the rails. Stay on the track. Stay on the track.

Okay, that brings me to the end of this commentary. I hope you found some of these words and phrases useful, and most importantly, if you don’t use them, at least maybe you’ll recognize the meaning the next time you hear someone say these things. Okay?

If you have questions, please post them in the forum and we’ll do our best to respond with some further examples or clarification. Bye now.