Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 48, Day 3 of Your English Five a Day. This series is dedicated to expanding your active vocabulary and improving your English listening. So stick with me as we dive into today's target vocabulary. The first item on the list is the collocation to slam on the brakes. To slam on the brakes. Now to slam on the brakes, when we're talking about driving, is to stop your vehicle suddenly and with great force. Slam, we spell S L A M. You slam on the brakes, B R A K E S. Slam on the brakes. So you might be driving along, minding your own business, thinking about what you're going to have for dinner that evening, what you're going to wear when you go out, and then suddenly you see something in front of you, an obstruction in the road, and you have to quickly press hard on the brake pedal to stop the vehicle as quickly as possible to prevent a collision. So you slam on the brakes. Here's an example sentence,"I had to slam on the brakes when a deer suddenly jumped onto the road in front of me." Now I'm going to tell you a true story. I slammed on the brakes once when I was driving along and then I was suddenly distracted by something. When you're driving in London, there's so much to distract you as a driver. I really don't understand why it's okay for advertisers to have lots of flashing lights and billboards and things on the side of the road for the drivers to look at when the drivers should be focused on the road ahead. And in London there are so many things to pay attention to. You've got lots of road signs, confusing layouts, roundabouts that are crazy, traffic lights, zebra crossings everywhere. And there are pedestrians and cyclists. Cyclists in their cycle lanes. There are bus lanes. It is really hard driving in London. And then you have all these additional advertisements and flashing lights and all sorts going on. It's a nightmare. And so one day I'm driving along, I've just come off a fast A-road. I'm distracted by something to the side of the road. And as I look back to the road ahead of me, the person in front of me had suddenly, they suddenly stopped and I couldn't see anything ahead of them that would make them need to stop, but they did. So it was unexpected for me. I was luckily only going about 15 miles an hour because I'd come off a busy road onto a side road and I had to slam on the brakes. Unfortunately, the time it took my car to stop, it was too long, and I ended up slamming into the back of the car in front of me. I wrote my car off. My car was a mess, and I was very shook up. I was very upset about the whole thing. I was more concerned with the fact that I'd actually hit someone, and it could have been someone running out onto the road. Although, I think I would have noticed if there were a pedestrian about to step out onto the road. The problem here was the car stopped unexpectedly and I still don't know to this day why they had actually just stopped. Anyway, in that story I had to slam on the brakes. Have you ever had to do that? Did it result in a collision or were you able to stop in time? Let's move on to the next item. Now we have an idiom and it is a hair's breadth, a hair's breadth. This is a tricky word, breadth. Now there are two ways to pronounce the word breadth. You can either do it with a T sound, which is kind of how I say it, breadth, or with a D sound breadth, breadth. Both ways are acceptable but let me spell this out for you. So you have hairs, H A I R apostrophe S. Breadth, B R E A D T H. So it's like the word bread and then a TH on the end breadth, breadth. So a hair's breadth means a very, very small distance or a very, very small amount. A teeny tiny amount. Here's an example sentence,"Oh, they missed the train by a hair's breadth, leading to a long wait for the next one." So you could quite easily replace this idiom with a split second in, if we're talking about time. So if it's a tiny, tiny amount of time, then you can say a hair's breadth, or you could say a split second,"They missed the train by a split second." Or you could say,"The long jumper beat his opponent by a hair's breadth." Maybe the long jumper who won, won literally by a millimetre. That's such a small amount, but he won by a hair's breadth. Next on the list is a noun and it is stag, stag. We spell this S T A G, stag. A stag is an adult male deer. Now when I think of deer, I always think very sadly but fondly on the Disney film Bambi. It does bring a tear to the eye. It is a little bit sad. I'm reminded of it because Bambi is a deer, and his father is a stag. And as Bambi grows up, gets his antlers and matures, then he becomes a stag himself. And here's an example sentence,"When I was at the park today, I saw two stags fighting. It was spectacular and terrifying to watch." Next on the list is the idiom in tow, in tow. We spell this in, I N. Tow, T O W. If someone is in tow, then it means that person is with you when you go somewhere. For example, if yesterday I went to the supermarket and it took me a very long time to buy a few groceries, and my partner questions me and says,"Why did it take you so long to buy those few groceries at the supermarket yesterday?" I would reply with,"Well, I had to go during rush hour, and I had the two children in tow and you know that always makes shopping a little bit more difficult because they run off or pick items up that I don't want to buy and try to persuade me to buy them and then we have this big debate about why we shouldn't buy things we don't need. That's why it took me so long I had the children in tow." Here's another example,"Melanie walked into the meeting with her assistant in tow, ready to tackle the agenda." And last on the list, we have the phrase to have a lucky escape, or you may hear to have a narrow escape. So to have a lucky, L U C K Y. Or narrow, N A R R O W. Escape, E S C A P E. So, this is a phrase that we use to describe a situation in which you avoid danger, although you were very close to it. You nearly didn't avoid it. It was very, very lucky that you were managed to avoid it, or it was very close to being danger that you are unable to avoid. For example, if I were to step into a boxing ring to try and stop a fight and I'm not really looking at what's going on, I just wander into the ring and the boxers are throwing punches at each other and they haven't noticed me jump into the ring. And one of the boxers, a really big, heavy boxer, throws a really powerful punch that brushes past my nose. It doesn't land on me, but I can feel the air being displaced because the fist is so close to my face. You'd say,"Well, you had a narrow escape there, Anna. You were so close to getting the full force of that professional boxer's fist in your face. You should have been more careful. You had a very narrow escape." I was very close to danger. Silly me. Here's another example,"Our coach driver fell asleep at the wheel and drove the coach off the road and into a tree. No one was injured, but the coach set on fire. Thankfully, we managed to get everyone out before it exploded. We had a very lucky escape." OK, so that's our five for today. Let's do a quick recap. We started with the collocation to slam on the brakes. To slam on the brakes, and this means to stop a vehicle suddenly and with force. We had the idiom a hair's breadth, a hair's breadth, which means a very small distance or a very small amount. We had the noun, stag, describing an adult male deer. We had the idiom in tow, which describes having a person with you when you go somewhere. Then we had the phrase to have a lucky or narrow escape, which describes a situation where you avoid danger, but only just. Okay, let's do this for pronunciation purposes. Please repeat after me. Slam on the brakes. Slam on the brakes. A hair's breadth. A hair's breadth. Stag. Stag. In tow. In tow. To have a lucky escape. To have a narrow escape. Very good. What's the idiom that you would use to say that someone went with you when you went somewhere? You had that person... in tow. And what do we call an adult male deer? A stag, that's right. And if I need to stop my vehicle very suddenly and with force, what collocation would I use? Slam on the brakes. Yes, I need to slam on the brakes. If, when I slam on the brakes, I only just miss hitting the car in front by a tiny, tiny amount. We're like millimetres away from touching. What idiom would you use to describe how close we are? I was a hair's breadth away from hitting that car. And this was a situation in which I very narrowly avoided danger. I nearly, nearly had a collision. So what phrase would you use? I had a lucky escape or a narrow escape. Yes, very good. Okay, listen out for today's target vocabulary once again during today's storytime. Did I ever tell you about the time I almost crashed the car? Well, not just me. I had a good friend and my partner in tow too. We all could have been injured. But fortunately, we had a lucky escape. Let me tell you about it. We'd been up the mountains to go for a hike in snowshoes. In the end, we didn't even need the snowshoes as there wasn't enough snow. So we went for a hike in normal hiking boots in snow that wasn't too deep. It was a lovely sunny day blue skies overhead, sun sparkling on the snow. On the way back, we were driving through the forest. I knew there were a lot of deer so I drove carefully, not too fast or anything like that. Also, the sun doesn't always reach that part of the road, so it can be icy in winter. Anyway, I was driving along as carefully as I could, when I saw two stags fighting each other at the edge of the forest. The problem is, they're on a patch of ice by the side of the road. They were slipping on the ice, and all of a sudden, they were on the road! As soon as I realised what was happening, I slammed on the brakes as hard as I could. Fortunately, the actual road wasn't icy, so the brakes worked. I missed both the stags by a hair's breadth. I looked up to see them both staring at the car, eyes wide, a hair's breadth away. If I had been driving faster, or if I didn't know the road, it could have been a complete disaster, not a lucky escape. The stags walked away as if nothing had happened, to continue fighting in the forest, I imagine. My partner drove us home because oh, I was in too much shock. The good news is, we're all still here to tell the story! And that brings us to the end of today's episode. I do hope that you found today useful. If you want to take your learning further, don't forget there are resources and classes and support over at englishlikeanative.co.uk. Until tomorrow, take very good care. And goodbye.