English Learning Conversation

A:  Get up!  It’s beautiful outside and you’re still in here sawing wood. B:  What time is it? A:  It’s already after noon.  B:  Give me ten minutes.  I didn’t get to sleep until 5 am. A:  What were you doing up at such a ridiculous hour? B:  I’ve been on this schedule for the past 3 weeks.  I can’t seem to snap out of it. A:  Well, you’ve gotta change something.  How else will you get out of a rut?  Maybe your after dinner coffees aren’t such a great idea.  B:  Look who’s talking.  If my memory serves me correctly, You’ve been in a bit of a rut yourself that I haven’t been bothering you about. A:  And that would be….? B:  I’m sure your gym shoes have an inch of dust on them.  I haven’t seen you do any physical activity in months.  Ordering pizza everyday doesn’t seem to be helping your spare tire either.  A:  Point taken.  How about you get up now and we hit the tennis courts.  B:  Ok fatty.

---

Sawing wood:  This is a phrase that means, “sleeping”.  The original meaning of it was that when people snore (the noise that some people make while sleeping) sounds the same as sawing (or cutting) wood.

 
Snap out of it:  This phrase means to get over something bad quickly.  “Lately I’ve been thinking too much about my ex-girlfriend and I can’t seem to snap out of it”. 
“He says he’s been in a bad mood for the past month and doesn’t know how to snap out of it”.

Get out of a rut:  If you are “in a rut” it means that some bad part of your life keeps being the same.  This is some consistent negative pattern that you would like to change.  For example, if you haven’t studied English for the past month, you could say that you are “in a rut”.  If you are “in a rut” you must change your behavior to get out of it.

Look who’s talking:  If someone tries to criticize you for some problem that the person criticizing also has, then you can say to them, “look who’s talking”.  This basically means, “You have the same problem as me, so how can you criticize me?”

If my memory serves me correctly…:  This is a kind of formal phrase that we use for fun in conversational English sometimes.  For example you could tell someone, “If my memory serves me correctly, you still owe me 50 dollars”.  This is a kind of fun and polite way to remind someone that they owe you money. When you say this, you are quite certain that you do remember correctly. 

I’m sure your gym shoes have an inch of dust on them:  If something hasn’t been used for a long time, it will start to get dusty (dirty from the air).  If you want to tell someone that they haven’t used something in a long time, you can tell them that you bet that this thing has an inch of dust on it. 

Physical activity:  “Physical activity” basically means any form of exercise.  Walking, working out, playing basketball, and working in the garden, are all forms of physical activity.

Spare tire:  This is a slang term for a fat stomach.  The reason is it looks like you put a tire (a wheel of a car or bicycle) around your waist.

Point taken:  If someone criticizes you about something and you agree with them, you could say, “point taken”.  It basically means, “I agree with what you just said”. 

Fatty:  This is a word that you can use to make fun of someone who is fat.  We often use it as a joke to tease close friends who are a little bit fat.  Even if you see your friend (who isn’t fat) eating a Macdonald’s hamburger, you could say, “how is the hamburger fatty?”  This is just a joke.  It is extremely rude to call a very large person “fatty”. 

 

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 21st, 2007 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Fun English Lessons, fun-english-vip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.