Hi, everyone. Nesse episódio do podcast Inglês Online eu falo sobre as palavras plenty e room.

Transcrição

Hi, 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.

Are you familiar with the word ‘plenty’? That’s p-l-e-n-t-y, plenty. Plenty means a good amount; actually, a large amount of something. Usually when you say that there’s plenty of something, you mean that there’s enough of it or even more than enough.

To exemplify how you can use ‘plenty’ in conversation, let me start with a popular saying: There’s plenty of fish in the sea. What does that mean? That’s usually said in the context of telling someone who just got out of a relationship that this person will definitely find someone new… Why? Because there is plenty of fish in the sea. There’s no shortage of available people to be in a relationship with – or, at least, that’s what the saying means. Don’t worry, you’ll find someone… there’s plenty of fish in the sea.

Now, I’ve said “there IS plenty of fish” because the plural form of ‘fish’ is… fish. Some people say “There are plenty of fish” but “There’s plenty of fish” is what I hear and see most often. When we’re talking about uncountable things, such as food, information, time, room, we say “there’s plenty of food”, “there’s plenty of time”, “there’s plenty of room”, and “there’s plenty of information”. What does that mean again? That means there’s a very good amount of food, of time, of information and of room. There’s probably more than enough food, time, information and room.

And by the way, that’s right: I mentioned “room” as an example of something uncountable. I’m not talking about the rooms in a house, of course! We can count those, right? How many rooms are there in your house or apartment? Maybe two: one living room and one bedroom. Or perhaps you live in a studio with only one room. So that’s not the kind of room I’m talking about here. Room also means space – let me give you a few examples to illustrate this meaning of the word room. Let’s say you’re a teacher at a language school and you’re planning a class for 80 students. It’s a lot of students, right? Usually the classes in this school are attended by 20, 30 students at most. So you call the school coordinator and you let her know that you need a classroom with enough room for 80 students.

What does that mean? That means you need a classroom with enough space to accomodate 80 people, plus one – you. You need a classroom that’s big enough for 80 students and one teacher. You need a classroom with enough room, with enough space to accomodate 81 people. So when you tell the school coordinator about your plans, she says “Our classrooms are definitely not large enough to accomodate 80 students… none of them. I think our convention center is the only closed space with enough room for that.” That means the school’s convention center is the only closed space large enough to accomodate 80 students. There isn’t enough room in the classrooms for 80 students. In the convention center, on the other hand, there’s plenty of room for eighty students.

Here’s a very common expression: make room for something or someone. Imagine that you work for a small company with three other people, including your boss. Now your boss has decided to hire