Hi, everyone!

O podcast de hoje fala sobre algumas expressões super comuns do inglês que expressam Como você percebeu? ou Como você sabe?

Transcrição

Hey, this is Ana Luiza with a new episode of Inglesonline podcast. To see the transcript and download the audio for this and other episodes, go to ingles online.com.br and click on “Podcasts”.

The word tip, t-i-p, can mean lots of different things. A common meaning is the amount of money that you give someone as a gratuity. So when you go to a restaurant you usually tip the waiter, when you leave your hotel room you may tip the cleaning staff, you may tip the person that filled your tank with gas at the gas station and so on.

And, if you have been reading Inglês Online for a while, that means you’ve been reading lots of English tips. A tip is a useful piece of information, that will help you better understand something or help you figure something out that you weren’t able to figure out before. So Inglês Online is a blog with English tips.

And on that note, since we’re talking about tips as useful pieces of information… Here’s a very cool expression with tip: tip someone off.

Let me give you an example: let’s say there’s someone in your neighborhood who has been stealing cars. And up to this moment, no one has been able to catch this person in the act. And, what’s more, no one has any information on the thief whatsoever, no one knows who he or she is.

So what happens is, a woman calls the local police station and she tells the police she knows who the thief is. She tells them where he is going to be this afternoon around two o’clock. And then, it’s over, and the cops arrest him as a suspect, and then it’s just a matter of time until they’re able to find evidence that this guys is, in fact, responsible for stealing the cars.

So what happened in this story is that the woman tipped off the police. She tipped off the police about where the thief was going to be later that day. In other words, she tipped off the police on the thief’s whereabouts. So, who tipped off the police? A woman. A woman called them and tipped them off. A police officer could say, A woman called the station and tipped us off.

Here’s another example: my friend tipped me off to a great little restaurant in my neighborhood. It has great food, it’s not expensive but not many people know about it. Here, I could have said My friend told me about this restaurant. But I’m using She tipped me off to this restaurant to communicate that this is kind of, you know, a valuable piece of information, something not many people know about, not everyone has access to this information, it’s like, a special tip. So my friend tipped me off about this place or she tipped me off to this place.

Tip someone off can also be used when a thing… not necessarily a person, but a thing, something lets you know that something else is going on. You could ask a pregnant woman What tipped you off that you were

pregnant? What made you realize that you were pregnant? What tipped you off?

For example, let’s say I run into a friend and see that he has a new haircut, and I tell him, I see you have already started your new job! And he says, Yes, I have. What tipped you off? And I say, Well, your new haircut! You told me you were going to get a haircut right before you started. So my friend hasn’t told me anything about starting his new job, but he did tell me that he was going to get a new haircut right before he started, so… his  new haircut tipped me off.

And for this particular use of tipped me off, or tipped someone off… There’s another expression that can be used with the same meaning: His new haircut gave it away, which is the same as his new haircut tipped me off.