Hi everyone!

Se você achava que “What a steal!” tem o significado do nosso “Que roubo!”, ouça esse podcast. A maneira de dizer “Que roubo” é outra, e você também vai saber o que quer dizer “What a steal”. Clique nos links na transcrição para ir para posts relacionados às expressões linkadas.

Transcrição

Hey, everyone! This is the new episode of Inglesonline Podcast. To see the transcript and every episode of this podcast, go to inglesonline.com.br and click ‘Podcast Inglesonline’.

So, let’s say you’re interested in buying a new notebook computer. A simple one. But you don’t know anything about computers, so you visit an online shop and you type in a few keywords like “notebook” and “Windows”, for example. Then, you look at the search results, and you’re astounded. You’re in shock. A simple notebook computer, running on Windows, with not too much memory, costs… let’s say, five thousand reais.

If you were thinking in Portuguese, what thought would you have? Maybe “Que roubo!” Well, be careful! One way to translate “Que roubo” into English is “What a steal!” But “What a steal” means the opposite. It means that you found something that is worth way more than what the seller is asking for. To steal means roubar, but in this case it’s as though you, the buyer, were stealing something because it is so cheap.

Examples: you go shopping for… shirts, and you find these Italian shirts that look amazing, and they’re very high quality, and each one is eight reais. Ok, eight. And they’re not defective or anything, they’re just unbelievably cheap. You could say “They’re a steal!”. Or let’s say you want a new TV and your neighbor is selling his, which originally cost two thousand, for five hundred because he’s… moving to the Himalayas. What a steal! Or you went to an outlet last weekend and bought a brand-name shirt… not a knockoff, but a real, genuine brand-name shirt for twenty reais. You show it to your friend and you say “It was a steal. It was so cheap, it was a real steal”. A weekend on the beach at a very nice hotel for 80 reais? That’s a steal. A great show by an unknown band for fifteen reais? Another steal.

So you can usually find some real steals at outlets. An outlet is a store that sells things from past seasons at discounted prices, or slightly defective items, so… in general, they’re cheaper. Sometimes, if you’re in luck, you can find some real steals when you go to an outlet.

And what about that notebook computer for 5,000 reais? That’s not a steal. You think this little computer isn’t worth 5,000 reais… it’s not even worth 2,000 reais! So your opinion is, this is a rip-off. This store is trying to rip people off… to rip people off. That means that the store is asking for way more than the computer is worth. You could say “What a rip-off! I’m not gonna buy this computer because I don’t wanna be ripped off”.

“Rip off” is kind of a strong expression, OK? I mean, if you say that someone is trying to rip you off, you’re not just saying that what they wanna sell you is simply expensive. It’s almost like you’re saying that they’re intentionally charging way more than that thing is worth. Now, when something is just expensive, but you think it’s worth it, then you are not being ripped off. It’s not a rip-off, you’re just spending a lot of money on something that is ...