Hi, everyone. How’s it going?

Nesse episódio do podcast Inglês Online eu continuo falando sobre expressões que usam partes do corpo. Hoje, uma delas é sobre “agir pelas costas”, e a outra é sobre fazer valer a sua vontade.

Transcrição

Hello, everyone. How’s it going? Today we have a new episode of the inglesonline podcast. To download or just listen to other episodes and download transcripts, go to inglesonline.com.br and click Podcast Inglesonline.

Like I said in the previous podcast, there are tons of expressions in English involving a body part, and today we talk about another two terms, or expressions, with the words back and foot. Now, let me start off with an example for the first term. Let’s say you tell a friend that you visited your favorite store today and you found a beautiful dress that you wanted to buy. However, you realized you’d left your wallet at home, so… no way to pay for the dress on the spot. But since this is your favorite store, the manager knows you personally because you’ve been shopping there for years, and she tells you that since you like this dress so much, and since it is the last one they have, she’s going to save it for you for the next 24 hours. Or, she’s gonna hold it for you.

This is perfect, you think. Tomorrow after work I’ll swing by the store and pick up the dress! And, of course, I’ll be really careful not to leave my wallet at home once again. You’re so happy that the next day you tell your coworker, Jane, about the dress. You tell her that the store manager is holding the dress for you and you couldn’t be happier. Jane is impressed and she wants to know where the store is. You, of course, tell her. And here’s what happens next: when you get to the store, the manager is very surprised to see you. She asks “Is everything alright?” and you say “I’m here for my dress!” The manager looks even more surprised and she tells you that your friend Virginia came by around lunch time to pick up the dress. Virginia said that you wouldn’t be able to leave work early, so she was doing you a favor.

You can’t believe what you’re hearing. There’s only one person who could have done that, and her name isn’t Virginia: it’s Jane! You ask the store manager what this Virginia person looked like, and voilá: it’s Jane. You told Jane about the dress and she went behind your back and bought it to herself! Alright, so that’s the first expression: she went behind your back. Easy, huh? We have a similar expression in Portuguese that involves the same part of the body. What does ‘going behind someone’s back’ mean? Well, every time someone uses, let’s say, information about you to their advantage… especially if it’s something that will put you in a position of disadvantage in some way… We can say that person went behind your back and did something that feels like that person betrayed you.

It could be something you told that person in confidence; it could be something that someone found out about you and then they did something with that information to get something out of it, maybe… It could be that they told someone something that you wanted to keep from that person. For example, you didn’t want your friend Mark to know about your new boyfriend. You told your other friend Daniel about your new boyfriend and you asked him no to mention it to Mark. Well, Daniel went behind your back and told Mark everything about your new boyfriend. And now Mark is mad at you and he won’t even pick up the phone when he knows it’s you calling!

So, let’s recap: you told Jane about the dress,