Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello plus member, let's deep dive into some of the vocabulary discovered in episode 59. I'm going to start by doing a reading of the list, and this is so that you can simply listen and repeat, mainly for pronunciation purposes. Later we will then go through the list and discuss the usage and meaning of each phrase or word. Here we go To prance around, to strike a pose, to be comfortable in your own skin, to have a whale of a time. Stark, naked, prying eyes, sweatering heat, whip off your clothes. The body is a temple To strut around To gaze upon, to peacock, to be comfortable in your own skin, to moon, as is the fashion. A hendu, a stag, do Onlookers. To be barred. The tables turn A cubicle, a communal area. Your bits Past their best, get on with it. Back to front, plonker, to come to your senses, to bat an eyelid, to touch on, to touch on Everything on show Frugal. To chip in, to be comfortable in your own skin. To plant around, to move or walk, to be comfortable in your own skin. No, cheating, a few artifits. F, mungkin emanes m1, someday I'll be talking to you from the kitchen and they might have a wooden spoon in their hand that they are pretending is a sword and they're a knight and they're moving around in such a way saying, look at me mummy, look at me daddy. They're prancing around.

Speaker 1: 4:35

Now in the podcast episode I talked about people prancing around in front of a mirror, so they might be exaggerating movements, dancing, walking, pretending they are on a catwalk or something. Oh, I'm a model. Look at my body. And that brings me on to the next phrase, which was to strike a pose. This is a collocation to strike a pose. We strike a pose Often. To strike means to hit something. If you are talking about military and ammunition, or perhaps a bow and arrow, if you release your arrow and you strike the middle of the target, it simply means that you hit the target dead center, right in the middle. If you strike a person in the face pow, then you just hit them in the face, but if you strike a pose, then you are hitting a pose. So to pose is to stand in a certain position so that people can look at you. A model will pose. A life model will pose for artists to draw them. If you aren't familiar with the phrase life model, a life model is someone who goes to like an art school where people are training to be artists, and they remove all their clothes and they sit there in the room completely naked. They strike a pose and they hold the pose for an hour perhaps, so that the artist can draw the naked form. So that's to pose.

Speaker 1: 6:23

Now, to strike a pose is to hit a pose, or get into a pose with purpose. So think about a catwalk model at London Fashion Week or in a fashion show in Paris or something, and they are strutting down the catwalk. To strut is to walk with purpose. They're strutting, and we're coming to that word a little later. They strut down the catwalk, don't they? And then they stop at the end and they throw themselves into a pose. This is striking a pose. Look at me, and someone might take a photo of them at that point. And then they turn around and they strut back up the catwalk. Okay, so to strike a pose.

Speaker 1: 7:10

Next, I used the phrase to be comfortable in your own skin. We often say that someone isn't very comfortable in their own skin, so we often use this in the negative Not always, but quite often and this just means so. If you are comfortable in your own skin, then you're very relaxed, you're very happy and confident with yourself. But someone who's not very comfortable in their own skin may be quite awkward. They might fidget a lot and be uncomfortable when they're around other people If they think other people are looking at them. They're not very comfortable in their own skin, you know. Imagine that your skin was an item of clothing that you put on, and imagine that item of clothing was maybe a little bit itchy or tight, or maybe it scratches you just in one point. Sometimes that happens with a label. Sometimes a label can irritate you, and if that's the case with an item of clothing like that, you move around quite a lot, don't you? You're like trying to adjust and get away from the discomfort of that item of clothing. So that's what the phrase suggests that you are either comfortable or not very comfortable in your own skin.

Speaker 1: 8:35

Next, I said that when the children were running around, they were having a whale of a time. A whale of a time. You've probably already heard this particular idiom. To have a whale of a time means to have a good time, a very good time. A whale is huge. So if you have a huge good time, then you're having a very good time. Okay, so to have a whale of a time.

Speaker 1: 9:05

Next, I suggested that they were stark naked. To be stark naked means to be completely naked, okay. So obviously, when you're naked, you're naked, but you might not be completely naked. Maybe you are naked but you're wearing a hat, or you're wearing a belt, or there's a little thin piece of material hanging around your neck that may be covering part of your chest. Then you would be naked, but not completely naked. But if you are stark naked, then this really emphasises the fact that you have literally not a stitch on you. You are completely butt-naked. That's another way of describing a naked person he is butt-naked. He is stark naked, okay.

Speaker 1: 10:08

Next on my list is prying eyes. Now, to pry P-R-Y means to try to find out private information. So sometimes I'm sure we've all come across people like this you might see someone who starts asking you very personal questions and they keep asking you questions that you don't really want to answer. In this case you could say they're prying. And sometimes people say I don't mean to pry, I just wanted to know if everything was okay. You seem a bit unhappy and I don't mean to pry. Sorry, ignore me. I'm here if you need me. But often people can be nosy, can't they? People do ask questions just because they want to know private information. We all love a bit of drama. We all love a soap opera, don't we? And in the workplace this can be very true lots of people prying to find out what's going on.

Speaker 1: 11:14

But in this case we're saying prying eyes. So prying eyes are people who are looking to see something that should be a private moment or your private self. So we go to the bathroom and shut the door. Our bathrooms have doors so that we can do our business away from prying eyes, so that people can't look at us. It does also suggest that if there are prying eyes, it suggests that actually the looking of the eyes is a little bit offensive. It's definitely unwelcomed. I imagine that people in the public eye, like royalty or superstars, feel the pressure of prying eyes quite often when they are going through difficult times in their private life. They want to just be left alone and the tabloids will send their paparazzi and their journalists to stay overnight in the car outside their apartment just to try and catch a moment of them having a private interaction or doing their things in their private life. These eyes of these reporters who are offensively looking for details, these would be prying eyes.

Speaker 1: 12:40

Okay, next on the list we have sweltering heat. Sweltering heat to swelter, means to be uncomfortably hot. So if I'm sweltering, then I'm really hot. I'm probably sweating and I can't function in the way that I need to because it's too hot. Oh, I'm sweltering. It's sweltering in here. Open a window, turn on the fan, let's get some fresh air in here. So we can often describe the heat as being sweltering heat or simply sweltering. What's the weather like today? Oh, it's sweltering. We're having another heat wave. It's horrendous, it's sweltering. All right, yeah, sorry.

Speaker 1: 13:30

Next on our list is to whip off, in this case your clothes. So, to whip off your clothes. If I tell you to whip something off, whip it off a whip with a silent W. No, sorry, not a silent W then it'd be it. It's got a silent H. It's spelled W-H-I-P, but the H is silent.

Speaker 1: 13:56

Whip, whip. A whip is like a long. It's a weapon really, isn't it? I guess it's a weapon. That's like a long piece of cord or leather and you crack it. Often you see whips being used in films where there is someone standing over a group of prisoners or slaves or something, and they are keeping control of this group by using a whip, or they might take someone out and whip them when they are disobedient terrible thing. But if you whip, then you do it very quickly. So if you whip off your clothes, then you take off your clothes very quickly. So I'm just going to whip off my dress and put something else on. You can also use the phrase of a verb to whip up, and this is to quickly create something. So I might whip up a cake, and actually I did.

Speaker 1: 15:04

The other day the boys had had their dinner and they said Mummy, what's for pudding? Often pudding is simply fruit or yoghurt. But we'd had fruit and yoghurt for many days and I felt like we should have a treat something different. And I looked in the cupboards and there was nothing. There were no biscuits, there was no rice pudding, there was no cake nothing, because we don't really buy that kind of thing. But I did have like a cupcake mix thing in my baking cupboard and I thought you know what? I could whip up a few cupcakes. We could do that. It will only take 20 minutes. So I very quickly made some cupcakes. I whipped up some cupcakes and when the cupcakes were ready, the boys whipped off the paper cup in which the cakes sit. So they whipped off the paper and they ate the cake. You could say they wolfed down the cake. Wolfed down means to eat very fast. So I whipped up some cakes, they whipped off the paper cups and they wolfed down the cupcakes. There we go, they ate.

Speaker 1: 16:18

Moving swiftly on, I can't believe I'm adding in phrases that aren't even on the list. All right, so moving on to your body is a temple. This is a really common phrase. Your body is a temple, ah, my body is a temple. So you'll hear this a lot Often if someone says hey, carlos, do you want a doughnut? No, I don't want a doughnut, mate, I don't eat doughnuts. My body's a temple. And in this case it's kind of a fun way of saying I respect my body and I don't want to put lots of sugar or fat into my body. My body's a temple and I respect it. So, yeah, you'll hear that phrase often being thrown around and it just means I respect my body, as if it were a temple. It is sacred, it is special. Next on the list I talked about ah, we have strut to strut around. So to strut.

Speaker 1: 17:25

The dictionary will describe strut as walking in a very upright and stiff manner. But really, I mean this is true, but what it really suggests, when you're talking about strutting, is that you're walking with a supreme amount of confidence, so you wouldn't strut if you weren't confident. But it can also be seen as being confident in a maybe arrogant or conceited way. So I mentioned earlier that the models strut down the catwalk, and I've got nothing against models. I'm not saying models are conceited or arrogant, but they are, of course, paid to look incredibly confident as they walk down the catwalk. And on the catwalk, the supermodels. They don't look warm and friendly. They might look a little bit arrogant. They look like they are maybe thinking of themselves as being better than other people. I'm sure that's not the case. They've just been taught how to walk and look this way. But that's how strutting comes across.

Speaker 1: 18:31

So if you strut, it's like you're saying, hey, look at me, I'm amazing and I'm better than all of you. So ha, ha, you know. But actually it doesn't always have to be that way. You might just be feeling good about yourself. You've been to the hairdressers, you've got a new outfit and you're looking fine. And I don't just mean fine, like okay, but fine, like really good. Hey, you're looking fine, because you step out. It's a glorious sunny day, you've just heard some amazing news about a promotion or winning a competition or something, so you're feeling really good about yourself and you're going to walk down the street, standing very tall and proud of yourself, and you're going to have a bounce in your step. You are going to strut down that street. So it's not always a negative thing to strut, it's mostly just about confidence. Okay, so you strut around.

Speaker 1: 19:38

Then I use the phrase to gaze upon. This might be quite self-explanatory, but I just wanted to use it. It basically means to look at. If you gaze upon someone's face, then you are looking at their face and it suggests that you're looking at it not just fleetingly, not quickly, like a passing glance, but you're gazing. To gaze is to look for a long time. She gazed at the sunset. They gazed lovingly into each other's eyes. He gazed into the distance and he seemed a million miles away. Okay, so to gaze upon something is to just look at something for a period of time. Then I use the really fun verb to peacock.

Speaker 1: 20:33

To peacock, if you are familiar with birds, a peacock is the very beautiful and interesting bird that has at least the males have these amazing long tail feathers which most of the time are all down and almost running along the ground behind them, but when they are trying to impress the ladies, these feathers all sit upright and they create this huge fan behind them. And the feathers are long and they have this kind of royal blue, this deep blue colour, and at the end they have these kind of eye patterns there's a pattern that looks like an eye and they're green and blue and black and it's beautiful and they. I actually saw a couple of peacocks last week trying to impress a female and they all had their feathers up. And they don't just show their feathers, they actually do a little dance. They start walking backwards and then they fan their feathers and start shaking their feathers as the lady just walks past, not paying much attention. They're just shaking away, working really hard to get her attention.

Speaker 1: 21:51

So when a man, a human man, peacocks, if someone is peacocking, then it means that a man is trying really hard to get a lady's attention. It might be that he's wearing a crazy bright, colourful outfit and then you know, standing really close to a lady and talking in a really loud way about something that he thinks is really interesting, or it might be that he's wearing a very, very tight pair of speedos and flexing his muscles by the side of the pool, right in front of a lady trying to get her attention, saying, hey, look at me, look at my body, look what I have to offer. What do you think? So that's peacocking.

Speaker 1: 22:43

To moon was the other fun verb that I mentioned, and I did describe this in the podcast episode. But just to quickly remind you, to moon someone is to flash your bottom, to flash your buttocks, either to insult them or to amuse them. Then I use the phrase as is the fashion. As is the fashion Now. This means what is popular right now, so the thing that is popular right now. So I'd say I put on my skirt and my long socks, which I pulled right up to my knees, because that's what everyone is doing at the moment. Everyone's wearing their socks pulled up to their knees. So instead I'd say I put on my skirt and I put on my long socks and pulled them up to my knees, as is the fashion. I popped on my shoes and off we went. Okay. So it just means what everyone else is doing right now. It's fashionable to do this thing.

Speaker 1: 23:55

I then mentioned a stag do. So we have a stag do and a hen do and these do's any kind of do is like a party or a celebration. So if I say I'm having a do this weekend, oh oh, it was a lovely do last time I'd love to come to this do. Do you want to come to my do? I do? I do want to come to your do. It's very odd, but it means party. So a stag do, a stag party and a hen do. A hen party is basically the celebration that the bride and the groom separately have before they get married. So a stag do is the groom and his male friends. They go off and have a good time doing whatever they want to do, and the hen do is the bride and her female friends going off and doing what they want to do in order to celebrate being single but about to become married and shackled for life. I'm only joking. I don't see marriage like that, really Okay.

Speaker 1: 25:06

So I then mentioned onlookers. This might be quite simple to understand, but, in case it's not, an onlooker is a person who is witnessing something, who is seeing something. So if you're having an argument with a friend in the middle of Trafalgar Square in London you're having a really loud argument, then you'll probably have several onlookers, several people standing and watching you have this argument, okay. Next, I mentioned that if you moon in a pub or a bar, you might have to be careful because you might be barred. So to be barred from a bar or a club means that you are not allowed to enter the premises anymore. You've been banned, but we use the phrase barred. You've been barred. I think the bar is down. You're not allowed to enter now.

Speaker 1: 26:12

Next, I used a phrase that I've used recently, which is the tables turned. I was talking about how confident the young, gorgeous women were in the swimming area when they had a swimsuit on, and yet when they were in the changing rooms, how the tables turned and they become quite self-conscious when getting naked. Actually, this is generalised. I'm not saying that every single individual is like this, but the tables turn means that a situation or like status is reversed relative to someone else. So if you and I are in a room together and you are really, really confident for whatever reason, and I'm very, very anxious, but then later something happens which causes the tables to turn, that would mean that I have become really confident and you become anxious. So the tables turn can only be used when we're talking about more than one person. So one person's situation or a group's situation relative to another person or another group Okay.

Speaker 1: 27:33

Next, I mentioned the word cubicle. I said when you're in the changing area you might try to pop into a cubicle. A cubicle is basically just like a little room inside a changing area. Some changing areas are made up entirely of cubicles so that everyone has their own little private space in which to get changed, to whip off their clothes without prying eyes. But in my changing rooms at my gym there is only two cubicles and the rest is our communal area. A communal area is an area that is shared by everyone, or at least everyone that has access to that area. So if you are coming to rent a flat or buy a flat here in the UK, then in some cases, if it's like a block of flats maybe there's two or three or four flats in one building and there's a huge garden at the back that garden will likely be a communal garden. If you're studying in the UK and you stay in halls of residence, which is a term given to the accommodation provided to students, if you're staying in halls of residence. Then there'll often be communal living areas within the halls. So you'll have your own bedroom or you might be sharing a room with other people, but you'll have a wider communal kitchen and communal sitting room, communal bathroom, so more people share those spaces.

Speaker 1: 29:22

Now I talked about covering up your bits, your bits. Your bits is short for your private bits or your private parts, and it just is basically referring to all the parts that you like to cover up, like your genitals, your breasts and your bottom. So your bits is kind of an informal or slang way to refer to those private parts. Next, I said that it's funny how older people are more confident when our bodies, as we get older, are past their best. If something is past its best then it means it's no longer as good as it used to be. So in terms of our bodies, we're probably at our best I don't know in our 20s. So we've developed fully, we've grown and now we are at our peak of physical fitness. Well, maybe not fitness, it depends on your lifestyle, but you've got the most energy, you know everything, you're probably the most healthy, depending on your lifestyle. And then, after you turn 30, things slowly start to decline. So after 30 and certainly after 40 and 50, you could say that you are past your best. I'm in my 40s and I'm certainly past my best. My knees, my back, my energy levels are definitely not what they used to be, not as good as they used to be. I am past my best.

Speaker 1: 31:02

Then I used the phrase to get on with it. I was talking about getting changed, I think, and just getting on with it and getting changed as quickly as possible. To get on with something is just to move ahead and do it. So if you keep talking to me about we need to mop the kitchen floor the kitchen floor is such a mess so we need to mop the floor, we need to get them up and we need to fill the bucket with some water and we need to mop the floor Then I might just look at you and say, well, get on with it. Then Get on with it, go and do it. Stop talking, stop delaying and procrastinating and telling me what we should be doing. Just go and do it. I'll come and help you if you need help, but just do it, get on with it. Okay.

Speaker 1: 31:53

Then I used the phrase back to front. I was telling the story about my shorts and how I'd come out of the changing room into the communal area and my shorts were back to front. If something is on back to front then it means it's backwards. So if you have a big smiley face on the front of your t-shirt but then when you put it on, the smiley face is on your back and not on your front, then your t-shirt is back to front. That's different to inside out. Inside out is when the inside is outside and the outside is inside. Sometimes that happens when you've put your item of clothing through the washing machine and the dryer and now you've picked it up and you throw it on and you realise, oh, the label's on the outside, my t-shirt's inside out. It's not just inside out, it's inside out and it's back to front. Goodness me, I should not get dressed in the dark. It leads to a terrible mess. So inside out and back to front.

Speaker 1: 33:04

I then called myself a plonker A plonker. If you've watched the series Only Fools and Horses, which is hilarious it's quite old now but it's still hilarious, it stands the test of time Then you will have heard the phrase plonker. Because who is it? Delboy always calls Rodney a plonker. Are you plonker, rodney? Such a plonker. Plonker is just like a. It's not offensive, it's used in fun. But it means idiot. But you wouldn't use it to offend someone, you'd use it to playfully tell someone they've done something very silly. So I called myself a plonker. I said what a plonker Meaning? Oh, I'm such an idiot. My shorts are back to front, okay. So it's definitely informal. Don't go and call your colleague a plonker, not unless you're on very friendly terms. I then used the phrase to come to your senses. I like this phrase.

Speaker 1: 34:06

Come to your senses means perhaps, if you are not thinking in a sensible way, and then finally you realise that you weren't being very sensible, ugh, then you've come to your senses. So let's say that you are trying to bake seven cakes all at the same time and you're trying to set up all kinds of different ways to get these cakes into the oven, and you're trying to use the slow cooker as well to cook a cake, and you actually to cook a cake. We don't cook cakes, that's a silly thing to say To bake a cake. And you've also knocked on the neighbour's door and asked if you could use their oven as well, and actually someone says to you do you know? We don't really need seven cakes. There's only five people coming to dinner. I think one big cake would probably do. And then you go oh, of course I don't need seven cakes. That's crazy. Oh, what was I thinking? I was being very, very silly. It wasn't a very sensible thing to do was to try and bake seven cakes for dinner when only five people are coming. One big cake will do. I'm glad I've come to my senses.

Speaker 1: 35:37

I use the phrase to bat an eyelid. To bat an eyelid. So to bat in this case means to close. So it's when you blink. Basically, if you blink you very quickly close your eyelid and open it again, you blink. That's also referred to as batting an eyelid. Bat, bat, blink, blink, bat, bat. To bat an eyelid. We often use this in the negative. We say that someone didn't bat an eyelid, so they didn't even blink. They didn't bat an eyelid, and it means that they didn't pay any attention, they didn't care about it. It didn't seem out of the ordinary to them, so they didn't give it any attention whatsoever. They didn't bat an eyelid. So I went out onto the street dressed in a chicken costume and started clucking at the top of my voice, and my neighbours didn't bat an eyelid. My neighbours paid no attention, they didn't care, they didn't even seem to notice.

Speaker 1: 36:43

I use the phrase of verb touch on. To touch on means to briefly discuss or mention something. So in a meeting we may discuss three main things, three main topics, but I might also touch on an idea that was proposed to me by a colleague. So we have three things on the agenda for our meeting today. We must discuss these, but before we do, I do want to quickly touch on an idea that was brought to me. So I'm not going to spend too much time with this, I'm only going to touch on it briefly. So it's to talk briefly about something to touch on it Now.

Speaker 1: 37:32

I mentioned the phrase to have everything on show. If you have something on show, then it just means you're displaying it. So if I'm talking about a person having everything on show, then I'm probably suggesting that they are stark naked or that they are scantily clad. There's another fun phrase Scantily clad. To be clad is to be covered. To be scantily clad is to not be covered very much. So if someone is walking around scantily clad, then they are not wearing very much at all. They might have everything on show. You might be able to see their buttocks hanging out the back of their shorts because their shorts are very short shorts and you might see a lot of cleavage. If it's a lady, she might have a very, very small, very tight top on and you might be able to see a lot of cleavage. So you could say she basically had everything on show.

Speaker 1: 38:36

I thought I was on a nudist speech, okay, when I told the jokes at the end. If you stayed for the jokes, you might have missed. Sometimes I hide little jokes at the end of my podcast episodes. If you stayed for the jokes then you would have heard the word frugal. Someone is frugal, then they are very careful with money, probably to a point where they're a bit tight with money. They are maybe a bit mean. They're not very generous with their money. So to be frugal and the phrase of verb to chip in if people chip in, then they contribute.

Speaker 1: 39:17

Often this is used to talk about financial contributions. So I could say that you guys, as my plus members, all chip in to help pay for the production of this podcast. We all chip in. Okay, I do hope that you found this one useful. Goodness me, it's a long episode, but hopefully you've got a lot out of it. I'm always open to your feedback, so do feel free to drop me an email and let me know what works for you, what maybe doesn't work so well and what you'd like. I'm here to serve. Until next time, take care and goodbye.