Podcast Inglês Online

Hi, everybody.  Hoje eu falo sobre idioms super comuns do inglês com a palavra way.

Hi, everybody. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast, please do so. The more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

So, you know when you ask for someone’s help and you can tell that person went beyond the basics and actually put in some effort in order to help you? We say that this person went out of his or her way to help you. Let’s say you talk to Shelly, who works in your office. You need her help to find a document, but deep down you don’t really believe she’ll be able to find it.

A couple of days later Shelly gets back to you and says she’s found it. She made a few phone calls, tracked down someone who had kept an old copy with them, and when she finally got her hands on it, she scanned it and emailed it to you. This is way beyond Shelly’s job description. She didn’t really need to go through all that trouble.

Shelly went out of her way to get that document for you. She went out of her way. You had initially asked her whether she had a copy and she said no… And you thought that was the end of it. But she spent time making phone calls and tracking people down in order to get it for you. I think most people who work for a company know someone like that. There’s always that person who will go out of their way to help others.

Imagine that you’re driving one day and, all of a sudden, your car just stops and simply won’t start again. You call your good friend Mark, who lives in that neighbourhood, and he comes to pick you up. He calls a tow truck for you. He then takes you home and you have dinner with his family. He offers to drive you back home after dinner. The next day he texts you, just to check on you and ask if you need anything. Mark is going out of his way to be helpful and to be there for you as a friend.

Now here’s another popular expression with way. It’s very simple, and very common. Let’s say you’re telling someone about how you and your brothers were raised by your aunt Maria after your parents passed away when you were kids. So you say “In a way, aunt Maria was a mother to us.” She is not literally your mother, but she filled the role of mother for many years. She did most of the things a mother would do, so, in a way, she’s like a mother to you and your brothers.

Your friend John is now telling you about this manager at the company he works for. The manager is a very authoritarian person who likes to boss people around and he’ll even throw a tantrum if someone challenges him. John says “In a way, he’s like a dictator who thinks our company is his country to run.”

Yesterday I was late to catch a train and ended up missing it. As I waited for the next train, I had time to make a phone call and catch the person just when they were about to leave. So, in a way, it was a good thing I missed the train.

Now, I’m sure you know someone who goes out of their way to help others. Who is it? Let me know in the comments, and talk to you next time!

Key terms

Vocabulário

deep down = lá no fundo

track someone/something down = conseguir encontrar ou fazer contato com alguém/algo

a tow truck = um caminhão-guincho

be there for someone = dar apoio a alguém

boss someone around = mandar e desmandar em alguém

throw a tantrum = dar chilique

to challenge someone = desafiar alguém

Hello, all.  Hoje falamos sobre dois idioms muito comuns no inglês com a palavra horse.

Hello, all. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast please do so: the more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

So here’s an idiom I’ve been hearing quite a bit lately: I don’t have a horse in this race. What does that mean? Basically it means that you’re talking about something whose outcome doesn’t affect you. People usually say that to mean, you know, that they can be impartial or unbiased regarding the topic they’re talking about, as in “I don’t have a horse in this race – whatever the outcome, it doesn’t matter to me but here’s my opinion…”

For example, let’s say your friend is telling you about a new Italian restaurant that opened in his neighbourhood, and how it is much better than the old Italian restaurant near his flat. Your friend says that the new place is part of a chain and, no matter what you order, they’ll get the food to your table in less than fifteen minutes. Your friend is raving about it and saying he will never go back to the old restaurant.

And then you say “Look, I don’t even like Italian food so I don’t have a horse in this race. I have to say, though, anything you order ready in under fifteen minutes… That doesn’t sound very appetising to me. If I were you I wouldn’t ditch the old place just yet.”

Or let’s say your friend is doing some course homework. You glance at one of the answers and you can tell he misused a word, which changes the meaning of the answer. You let him know but he insists you’re wrong. You say “Look, I don’t have a horse in this race; I’m just trying to help.” It doesn’t really affect you whether your friend misuses the word or not: you have no horse in this race.

So let’s move on to our second idiom of today: straight from the horse’s mouth. This is a very, very common one and if you regularly watch TV shows you’ve probably heard it before. Let’s say your friend Jennifer has just told you she’s moving to Poland. So later today you bump into your other friend Leslie, who’s also friends with Jennifer, and you give her the news: Jennifer is moving to Poland.

Leslie is very surprised, and says “Where did you hear that?” and you say “Straight from the horse’s mouth.” The horse in this case is Jennifer, figuratively speaking, of course. Jennifer gave you the news herself. You heard it straight from the horse’s mouth.

Your friend Kimmy missed class yesterday, so you phone her up to let her know you’re all taking a test tomorrow. Kimmy says “Who told you that?” and you say “I was in class! Heard it straight from the horse’s mouth.” The horse, in this case, would be the teacher.

That’s a very common situation, isn’t it? You’re telling someone a secret, a bit of gossip, news, and they say “Are you sure? Who told you that? Where did you hear that?” Well, now you know: every time you get your information from the source – the person who’s moving to another country, who’s been in an accident, or the decision-maker in the situation… You can say “I heard it straight from the horse’s mouth.”

Can you think of anything going on in your own life right now where you would say that? Let me know in the comments, and talk to you next time!

Key terms

Vocabulário

ditch the old place = abandonar o lugar antigo

Hi, everyone.  Hoje falamos sobre idioms e provérbios em inglês com a palavrinha news.

Hi, everyone. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast please do so: the more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

Let’s get started today with the phrase That’s news to me. Yep: that is news to me. I love talking about the word news, because the way it agrees with the verb is counterintuitive to us Portuguese speakers, so the more we hear it used the correct way, the more familiar with it we’ll get. In other words, news ends with an S and we Brazilians have this almost uncontrollable impulse to say “the news are…“. Oh- that’s a mistake.

We say ‘the news is’, ‘the news was’, ‘What’s the news?’ and so on. News is singular. So our first term of today is “That’s news to me”. Very common to say that when someone tells you something and you’re at least mildly surprised. Or maybe the other person thought you already knew and they expected you to have done something about it.

For example, you’re at the office and your assistant says “The new sales manager just called and said you were supposed to meet with him a half hour ago.” You say “That’s news to me. Who scheduled this meeting? ” So the sales manager thinks the two of you were supposed to meet..? That’s news to you.

The office party has been canceled? That’s news to me. Matt has a broken arm? That’s news to me. Show da Xuxa is no longer on TV? That’s news to me.

And here’s a very common proverb with the word news – notice the verb: Bad news travels fast. Travels; bad news travels. Isn’t that true, though? I guess it’s the same everywhere. When something bad happens, it spreads like wildfire. Yeah, bad news usually spreads like wildfire anywhere.

So when you see someone who’s been fired, for example, and you say “Sorry to hear you’ve been fired” and they express surprise and say “Wow, you’ve heard!”, you can say “Yeah, bad news travels fast.” Or when someone comes to you with bad news that you’ve already heard, you can say “Yeah, I know. Bad news travels fast.”

What is your personal opinion about this one? Would you agree that bad news travels fast, especially when compared to good news?

So here’s a saying with good news to wrap up the episode. No news is good news. Again, pay attention to the verb: is. No news is good news. That means that if you haven’t had any news about something or someone, everything is fine. No news is good news. Obviously, this isn’t always true. I think you’ll agree with me.

However, I think most of the time it is true that no news is good news. If people you know go away on holiday and you don’t hear from them, that’s probably because they’re busy having a good time. If your brother moves to another city to go to college and you don’t hear from him for a while, he’s probably getting on with his new life.

So give me your example. Tell me your most recent story where someone told you something and your reaction was “That’s news to me”. Let me know in the comments, and talk to you next time!

Key terms

Vocabulário

spreads like wildfire = espalha que nem fogo em palha

Hi, everyone.  Hoje falamos sobre idioms super comuns no inglês com as palavras funny e comedy.

Hi, everyone. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast please do so: the more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

So let’s just say you’re on your way to see a play at the theatre with your friends Jay and Trey, and then Jay says “I’ve got a funny feeling about tonight.” Now, what does Jay mean by “a funny feeling”? Let’s hear it: Jay goes on to say that he thinks something’s gonna go wrong tonight. There may be an accident with one of the actors; you may never get to the theatre because you’ll get lost; maybe someone very tall will sit right in front of you and you won’t be able to see a thing; maybe the snack bar will be out of your favourite snack and it just will not be the same without it.

Whatever it is, Jay can’t say. He’s just got a funny feeling about tonight. So a funny feeling is kind of an intuition. It’s not a feeling about something being really funny in a comedic sense; it’s more of a premonition. You have known Jay for years and you know that he’s a little psychic, and… he’s usually spot on. It turns out Jay was right once again. The theatre had to be evacuated halfway through the play due to a bomb threat!

So that’s what it means when somebody says they’ve got a funny feeling about something. They don’t mean funny ha-ha, they mean a weird feeling. An intuition. A comedy is funny… Right? What kind of funny? Funny ha-ha (hopefully). A circus clown is usually funny ha-ha. When your friend Jay says he’s got a funny feeling, though, he doesn’t mean funny ha-ha, he means the other kind of funny: funny peculiar; a weird feeling.

Here’s something you will often hear from characters in movies or TV shows: “This feels funny.” When a character says that, they usually don’t mean that it feels funny, as in funny ha-ha. They mean that it feels funny as in, funny peculiar. In other words, whatever situation they’re in, it feels a bit weird.

And here’s another one before we wrap up: cut the comedy. You say this to someone when you want them to stop acting silly, horsing around and so on. Let’s say you’re having a meeting with your teammates. You’re thirty minutes into the meeting and everyone is still babbling about the weekend, laughing and teasing each other. You, on the other hand, have to be somewhere after the meeting so you finally say “Ok everyone, let’s cut the comedy and get to work, shall we?”

I wanna hear your example. Can you remember the last time you had a funny feeling about something? Let me know in the comments, and talk to you next time!

Key terms

Vocabulário

you have known Jay for years = você conhece o Jay há anos

to be spot on = acertar na mosca

to horse around = ficar brincando, falando bobeira

you’re (x) minutes into the meeting = já faz (x) minutos que começou a sua reunião

Shall we? = Vamos? (pode ser usada também ao final de uma sugestão, instrução, etc)

How’s it going?  Hoje falamos sobre fazer cópias da chave e se trancar pra fora de casa em inglês!

a locksmith

How’s it going? This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast please do so: the more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

So let’s say you just moved into a new house and you would like a couple of people in your life to have the keys to your house. Yeah, they’ll be able to come and go as they wish. Let’s say it’s your brother and your best pal John. He’s like a brother to you, so basically you want your brothers – your bros – to have a copy of your house keys.

So what do you do? You go to a locksmith to have extra keys made for your bros. Well, not just for them. You know it’s prudent to leave an extra key to the front door with your next-door neighbour, so you’re going to the key shop to have three sets of keys made: one for your brother, one for John, and the third set for the neighbour.

So that’s the first term I wanted to talk about today – have keys made. Or, if you’re in the UK, the more common “have keys cut“. For example – I’ve lost my house key so I’ll pop by the locksmith’s tomorrow and have a new one cut. I just read somewhere on Twitter that someone just had a key cut at their local shop here in the UK, and they paid £2.69 for a key to be cut. He was outraged. By the way, “p” is short for pence.

If you went to your local locksmith or key-cutting shop, how much would you pay to have a key cut? I remember once when I lived in São Paulo I got home and found out I had been locked out of my house. That means I didn’t have my keys on me. When I left home earlier that day, my cleaning lady was there, and I thought she would still be there by the time I returned and she’d open the door for me. So I didn’t take my keys with me when I left…

So when I came back she’d already left and I found myself locked out. It was around 6PM so I had to call a locksmith after regular business hours.. It took him a while to get to my place but eventually he got there and then he told me how much it was going to cost. It was ridiculously expensive. He took one look at the lock and said “Oh, this is going to be a lot of work – this lock can be particularly fiddly to open without a key.” I thought “Good, at least you’re gonna have to work hard to earn the fortune I’m about to pay you.”

To my disappointment, it took him less than ten seconds to open the door. I think he was trying to justify his ridiculous price when he said that. Anyway… lesson learned. Never again did I leave my house without my keys.

Now, I’m sure many of you have stories about being locked out of the house. Have you ever locked yourself out because you left the house keys, I don’t know, on your nightstand and then you left the house through the front door, the door locked behind you, and you had no way to get back in?

What’s your emergency plan for when you lose your keys or get locked out – does your neighbour have a copy of your keys? Let me know in the comments, and talk to you next time!

Key terms

Vocabulário

didn’t have my keys on me = minhas chaves não estavam comigo

fiddly = complicado, chato de mexer, etc

Hey, all.  Hoje falamos sobre dois idioms super comuns do inglês com a palavra rule.

Hey, all. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast please do so: the more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

Let’s get started with our first term of today: rule something out. To rule something out means to stop considering something as a possibility. Example: when I was looking for a place to live, I visited several houses. One of them was too far away from the city centre. It was a nice house, but it would take me one hour and a half to get to the city centre if I started living there, so I ruled it out immediately. I didn’t even consider that house a possibility after I visited it. I quickly ruled it out and kept searching.

I’m ruling HER out!

Imagine you’re the boss at work and you’re looking for a new assistant, so you start interviewing people from different areas since you’d like to hire someone who already works for the company. You need someone who’s very patient – your assistant will need to deal with clients all day long and they need to be able to remain calm under pressure.

So you’ve just finished interviewing someone. She left your office a couple of minutes ago. You decide to get some coffee and as you open the door you see your last interviewee screaming into the phone. She’s angrily reprimanding someone for forgetting to take a message for her. The moment you see that, you think “Well, that just rules her out”. This woman is not an option anymore. You just simply cannot hire anyone for this position who would not remain calm when things go wrong. You’re ruling her out.

Now, moving on to the next idiom… Have you ever heard the idiom ground rules? Ground rules are basic guidelines, basic procedures for… a project, a meeting, or any kind of endeavour or situation where people are gonna work together, or play a game and so on.

Let’s say you’re a celebrity and you’re such a high-profile celebrity that you feel OK establishing a few ground rules at a press conference. In other words, there are some topics about your personal life that you’d rather not talk about and that’s what your agent tells the reporters: “Here are the ground rules: no questions about the divorce, her plastic surgery and her dog Bernie.” These are the ground rules for this press conference.

Ok, now imagine that you’re at the beach with a group of people. It’s a rainy day so everyone’s staying in. Your friend Melissa suggests playing hide-and-seek so you guys can kill some time. Melissa then says “So these are the ground rules: everyone has ten seconds to hide and we all have to hide inside the house.” So these are the rules everyone has to play by – the ground rules.

What’s your example? When was the last time you were informed of the ground rules of a situation? Let me know in the comments, and talk to you next time!

Key terms

Vocabulário

press conference = coletiva de imprensa

hide and seek = esconde-esconde

everyone is staying in = todo mundo vai ficar em casa

Hi, everybody.  Hoje falamos sobre o idiom not see the forest for the trees e o que ele significa em inglês.

Hi, everybody. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast please do so: the more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

Today we’ll tackle an idiom whose meaning wasn’t obvious to me for a while until I looked for some clarification and then I finally got it. So picture this: you’re in school and somehow you and your friend Ken have been chosen to organise the graduation party.

So Ken thinks the party should be at Grand Party Salon. Yeah, that’s what it’s called: Grand Party Salon, and your friend Ken has his heart set on the Salon. He thinks it’s the perfect place: it’s spacious, centrally located, nicely decorated and affordable.

So the two of you go ahead and try to book the Grand Party Salon for graduation night. Things start to get a bit complicated when the staff person says that there are a few restrictions for graduation parties, such as no one individual can have more than four drinks and also, there has to be an equal number of men and women sitting at every table.

Ken cannot believe it. He and you both know it would be impossible to control everyone’s individual alcohol consumption or guarantee an equal number of men and women at every table. You start saying “Well, guess we’ll just have to look for another place…” but Ken wants to fight for the Salon. He won’t even consider other options; it’s the Salon or nothing.

But the Salon people will just not budge; you feel Ken’s wasting precious time as the graduation date approaches and you still have not locked down a location for the party. So one day you tell Ken it’s time to drop the Salon and move on. You tell him that the Salon would be a great option but they’re making unreasonable demands and there are other very nice options out there.

You tell Ken “You have to let the Grand Party Salon go. You’ve become so attached to the idea of having the party there, that you can’t see the forest for the trees anymore. We’re not gonna have a party if we don’t secure a venue fast! It’s less than two months away and all our planning depends on where the party is going to be!”

And then, somehow, Ken gets it. He says “Thank you, buddy! Thanks for opening my eyes. You’re right – I lost sight of the forest.” Ken got so involved with trying to negotiate the Salon that getting it became his major concern, and he totally lost sight of the fact that location, while important, is just one element of planning a party. There’s a whole lot more involved and it was all being put on hold because he was so dead set on the Grand Salon.

So that’s what “not being able to see the forest for the trees” means: you’re so focused on details that you fail to understand, or lose sight of the larger situation. I can remember doing this in my own life a couple of times – for example, when I was starting out with Inglês Online and spent way too much time thinking about the appearance of my website, when, instead, and all things considered, I should have focused on writing more useful content for my audience. For a while, I couldn’t see the forest for the trees and misplaced my efforts – but thankfully, in the end, everything turned out fine.

So give me your example of not seeing the forest for the trees. Let me know in the comments, and talk to you next time!

Key terms

Vocabulário

have your heart set on = querer muito (algo, fazer algo)

lock down a location = arrumar, arranjar um local garantido

will not budge = (neste caso) não se mexe, no sentido de não mudar de posição

he was dead set on = ele estava fixado, decidido em

Hello, all.  Hoje falamos sobre um tipo muito comum de compound adjectives, ou adjetivos compostos em inglês – o tipo que termina com -ing.

Hello, all. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast please do so: the more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

So today let me give you some examples of one type of compound adjectives. Don’t mind the name compound adjective, it’s not that important. Hear this: I live in an English-speaking country. The adjective here is “English-speaking”. A country that speaks English, or a country whose people speak English, is an English-speaking country.

Now this one: I live in a block that is full of gym-going people. What does “gym-going people” mean? It means “people that go to the gym”. They frequent the gym; they are gym-going people. Now, my favourite actor gives award-winning performances. Award-winning performances. That means that his performances will win this actor some awards. His talent will win him a few awards. He gives award-winning performances.

Look at the image on this post: there are several examples of the type of adjective I’m talking about here. Jaw-dropping, barn-storming, heart-breaking, show-stopping and award-winning – they’re all used to describe an actress’ performance in a musical.

So let’s take a closer look at a few of them. Sometimes you see something that makes your jaw drop in amazement, or in shock. Something that makes your jaw drop is jaw-dropping. That actress’ performance is jaw-dropping. A jaw-dropping performance.

If you’re watching a movie and it moves you deeply to the point of tears, you could say the story is heartbreaking. It’s a heartbreaking movie. Or it’s a movie that tells a heartbreaking story. It just breaks your heart when you watch it. It’s a heartbreaking story. So that actress’ performance is also heartbreaking, according to the poster.

Here are other common examples: I saw some mouth-watering strawberries at the market this morning. They looked so ripe and tasty, they made my mouth water. Those strawberries were mouth-watering. In my personal opinion, there is a lot of mouth-watering food everywhere you look. Whenever I go to the market, my mouth waters. Seriously. Bread, cheese, some fruit, pizza and so on. All mouth-watering food.

Now think of a couple that has been in a long-lasting relationship. Their relationship has lasted for a long time. This is an extremely common adjective to describe not only relationships, but also partnerships or any other kind of agreement that started years ago and is still going. Are you in a long-lasting relationship?

So give me your example. What’s the last film you watched that made your jaw drop? Let me know in the comments, and talk to you next time!

Key terms

compound adjetives: jaw-dropping, long-lasting, heartbreaking, etc

Vocabulário

don’t mind the name = não ligue para o nome

something that makes your jaw drop = algo que faz seu queixo cair

it moves you deeply = ele te emociona profundamente

breaks your heart = te emociona muito, te faz até chorar (geralmente de tristeza, etc)

made my mouth water = me fizeram saliva

Hey, everyone.  Hoje eu falo sobre vocabulário relacionado a um acidente de carro que aconteceu nos Estados Unidos um tempo atrás. Vamos ouvir maneiras de se dizer “o carro foi capotando montanha abaixo” e “a porta ficou balançando.”

Hey, everyone. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.

Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app.

Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast please do so: the more comments for the Inglês Online podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes.

Thank you for telling your friends, your neighbours, your family and keep listening.

So all of you listening to this podcast have probably got an intermediate or advanced level of English – have you ever had the experience of trying to describe an everyday situation in English and struggling to find the right words to do it?

Well, I was listening to a podcast the other day from the Adam Carolla show, and as I heard a bit where he described a car accident, I thought it contained some pretty interesting vocabulary for our episode. Adam speculates, about how a car accident went down. And this is an accident that happened to someone else, not Adam – a man was driving a car and lost control of the vehicle. So let’s go ahead and listen to Adam as he makes his comments:

a barrel

I will speculate that he was not wearing a seat belt; I will speculate that the car started to barrel roll and as it rolled, perfectly, the door, from centrifugal force, flew open. And as it was going, as the door was flinging, as it was spinning, he was launched. And if he’d had a seat belt on he wouldn’t have been launched from the car that barrel rolled as the door flung open as it went…

So Adam starts off by saying he thinks the man wasn’t wearing a seat belt. So far, so good. His next guess is that the car started to barrel roll – so what does that mean? Well, picture a barrel and imagine the barrel rolling down a mountain.

That’s what Carolla thinks happened with the car: it barrel rolled, or rolled like a barrel down a hill or a mountain. So I hope you remember this from school – when there’s something rolling like that, or spinning on it axis, centrifugal force is generated. You know that machine that dries clothes that have just been washed – a clothes or tumble drier? It’s able to dry clothes because of centrifugal force.

So Adam says that, because of centrifugal force generated as the car barrel rolled, the door flew open – a bit later on he uses the expression flung open, which basically means the same thing. Flung is the past tense of fling. So centrifugal force pushed the door open, or flung that door open; the door flew open or flung open because there was something forcing it to open.

So with the car barrel rolling down a hill, I guess, and the door flinging – or moving from one side to the other – the driver was launched from the car. The driver was launched, or ejected from the car. Then Adam finishes by saying that if the driver had had a seat belt on, he wouldn’t have been launched from the car that barrel rolled as the door flung open.

Listen to his commentary once again: I will speculate that he was not wearing a seat belt; I will speculate that the car started to barrel roll and as it rolled, perfectly, the door, from centrifugal force, flew open. And as it was going, as the door was flinging, as it was spinning, he was launched. And if he’d had a seat belt on he wouldn’t have been launched from the car that barrel rolled as the door flung open as it went…

So there you go – good vocabulary to describe a very specific situation. Awful accident, by the way! Have you ever been on a car that came barrel rolling down a hill? Let us know in the comments, and talk to you next time.

Key terms

Vocabulário

how the accident went down = como o acidente aconteceu

lost control of the vehicle = perdeu a direção (do veículo)

so far, so good = até aqui tudo bem

spinning on its axis = girando em torno de seu eixo

clothes or tumble drier = máquina de secar roupa

Hey, everyone.  Neste episódio do podcast eu falo sobre duas expressões super comuns do inglês com a palavra boat.

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So let’s get started with a great idiom: rock the boat. Here’s how you’ll usually hear people say it: I don’t wanna rock the boat. Be careful when you give your opinion; you don’t wanna rock the boat. Don’t cause any trouble, don’t mess with a good situation or even an OK situation, let’s not ruffle any feathers, don’t rock the boat.

So what exactly does rock mean here? Rock is a verb and it means moving something back and forth. Think of a rocking chair: you sit in it and you start rocking it back and forth. Sort of the same with a boat: you can get on it and start rocking it from side to side. So that is a metaphor that English people use, usually to express that they don’t want to change things. They’re not going to complain, they’re not going to criticise anyone, they’re just going to keep their heads down and do their job. They don’t wanna rock the boat.

Someone told me recently that the company they work for does not have a culture of learning and exploring new ideas. They don’t really appreciate suggestions or criticism coming from staff. As a result, employees have learned to, you know, bite their lip and keep their thoughts to themselves. They’re actually afraid of losing their job if they say something that displeases management. The employees at this company just don’t wanna rock the boat.

Another example: my friend went on a trip with a group of people and she noticed some strange behaviour by one of her travel companions. She decided not to say anything, especially given that she didn’t know the person very well. Since this was a trip situation and she was going to be with this group twenty four hours a day for some time, she thought it would be better not to rock the boat.

Now here’s another popular idiom, one that the students of my basic English course know well: we’re in the same boat. If someone tells me they’re in some kind of trouble, I will tell them “We’re in the same boat” if I happen to be going through the same kind of situation. I know what you’re going through, I feel you, I hear you… We’re in the same boat, I know exactly what you’re going through.

Now, the reason my students know this idiom isn’t because they’re having a hard time with the course – the reason is, I teach this idiom in the course, and by the end of it they know how to use it. Let’s say your classmate Mary rings you up and tells you she’s having a hard time with the Physics assignment. She’s looking at question number one and she has no idea where to start. She feels lost and needs your help. You tell her “Bad luck… Can’t help you. I’m just as lost as you are. We’re in the same boat, Mary…”

Now, have you ever been in a situation where you didn’t want to rock the boat? Let me know in the comments, and talk to you next time!

Key terms

Vocabulário

ruffle (someone’s) feathers = provocar uma pessoa

bite your lip = fique quieto ao invés de reagir e dizer algo ou rir

given that = considerando que