O que significa a flash in the pan?

There's a new kind of music that's become very popular over the last years and I really love it. It's called bedroom pop and as its name suggests the music is recorded at home, rather than at traditional recording spaces. 

The popularity of a musical genre like that became possible today because of how democratic virtual spaces usually are. A band posts a video on YouTube and suddenly draws a lot of attention at once. But can they keep it?

What happens is that most of these bands that become successful overnight always run the risk of losing their popularity just as quickly. Just think of how many bands and singers had only one hit song! To describe those bands, we have an expression: a flash in the pan.

Someone or something is a flash in the pan when their success or popularity is short-lived. And that's also applied to anything else other than bands. A startup can be a flash in the pan, a movie star, a book, a trend, etc.

"This metaphoric term alludes to the 17th-century flintlock musket, which could be fired only when the flash of the priming powder in the lockpan ignited the charge in the bore. When it failed to ignite, there was only a flash in the pan and the gun did not shoot."

That's all for now guys. Talk to you the next time!!!!!

O que significa a expressão a quantum leap?

I've been a teacher for some years now and what I've noticed is that students' performance in my classes can be very unpredictable sometimes. Some have sudden and dramatic improvement over the course of an year, but some start off very well but soon fall behind the class. As far as the students who tend to improve their English language proficiency, sometimes their improvement is so dramatic and sudden I describe it as a quantum leap.

"A quantum leap is a dramatic advance, especially in knowledge or method. This term originated as quantum jump in the mid-1900s in physics, where it denotes a sudden change from one energy state to another within an atom. Within a decade it was transferred to other advances, not necessarily sudden but very important ones."

That's all for now. Talk to you next time!!!

O que significa pale in comparison?

The first time I came across the expression we are learning today I was listening to Amy Winehouse's You should be stronger than me. In the song Amy complains about a boyfriend who doesn't seem to act his age or live up to gender roles she expected him to adopt. She says "don't you know you're supposed to be the man? Not pale in comparison to who you think I am".

When something or someone pales in comparison to something/someone else, it means they seem less important, impressive, or otherwise deficient when compared. A second time I came across the same expression I was watching workin' moms, a Netflix original series. A mother is back at work after spending 9 months away on maternity leave and is now competing against her co-worker for a chance to go on a very important business trip. The one with the best numbers at the company will get the trip but she's afraid her career break might give her disadvantage with her recent numbers. She says to her boss something like: don't you think my recent numbers will pale in comparison to his?

Ok guys that's it. Talk to you next time!!!

O que significa a drop in the ocean?

I have a friend who's been searching for a house these days. She considers renting one but everyone around her says the wise decision would be to buy it; paying for something that's going to be eventually hers. She doesn't know yet and is still figuring things out.

The thing is, when she talked to a real estate agent about the amount of money she'd need to make a down payment on the specific house she's interested in she realized she hasn't saved enough money to buy it just yet; that the money she's saved so far is just a drop in the ocean. Wait what?

"If something, especially an amount of money, is a drop in the ocean, it is very small in comparison with the amount which is needed or expected. This expression may come from a line in the Bible: `Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance.' (Isaiah 40:15)"

That's all for now guys. Take care. 

O que significa to set one's sights on?

If you've been studying English for a long while I can say that you had to get over many things to still be engaged and interested in learning a second language. Things like lack of motivation, time, self-esteem play a big role in whether or not you will persevere.

If you're reading this post that says a lot about you. So I guess I can suppose that one day you set your sights on speaking English and there you are, having that idea as an ambition and focusing on it as your goal. And that's what we are dealing with today.

If you set your sights on someone or sometjing, you have them as your goal and hope strongly to reach it. That's all for now guys. Take care!

O que significa the ball is in your court?

There's a very famous american daily weekday radio program called Elvis Duran and the morning show and I've been listening to it for some years. Since I'm in Brazil I have to listen to it on demand on one of these audio streaming services like Spotify (in case you're interested). 

It's very common for these radio shows to read daily horoscopes of all zodiac signs. My sign is cancer and I remember my horoscope for yesterday, July 26, started like "the ball is in your court. It's time to take action." Do you know what that means?

My horoscope was encouraging me to take responsibility for further action, especially after someone else previously held it for me. It becomes intuitive to think that in tennis if the ball is in your court it is your turn to hit it. That's all for now. Bye bye 

O que significa a expressão lay down the law?

I have a 4-year-old nephew and everybody knows that's the phase they tend to misbehave the most. They're exploring the world around them and most of all exploring people's reaction around them.

My brother is a first-time dad and what usually happens to first-time parents is that they are constantly bombarded with advice regarding how they should educate their kids. "Let your child know you", "don't let guilt rule you", "ask for help", so on and so forth. But the one piece of advice that can be reoccurring is the expression we are learning today: "lay down the law".

When you lay down the law in your house to your kids or whoever may be, you're giving them a directive or order, scolding them, dictating how to bebave, making something very clear, often sternly or forcefully. 

Do you think that's good advice? Did you respect your parents when you were a child because they would lay down the law otherwise? Leave your answers down in the comment section. Talk later!!!!

O que significa e como usar a palavra outing? Ela é uma palavra antiquada?

The title of an article on Twitter went like "Angelina Jolie enjoys going on regular outings with her children". I can't deny I was surprised to see the word outing (which seems to be so intuitive and familiar) being used for the first time. Yes, that was the first time I saw the word outing in context. Am I one of the only people?

I guess not. I immediately googled it and found native speakers discussing whether or not the word was dead or at least old-fashioned. What I noticed was that they couldn't find a compromise. Some claimed to both hear and use the word very often while others insisted on not hearing the word for a long time. What they seemed to have agreed on was that the word is more frequently written than spoken. Besides, an outing seems to be used more often as an organized event, such as church outing, school outing, group outing, etc.

I don't know if I'll incorporate the word in my active vocabulary, but I'll keep my ears open for the word (since I haven't heard people say it before other than this only time). That's it for now guys. Talk to you next time!!!!!!

O que significa Kiss up and kiss down?

I came across a random article on how to spot psychopaths around us especially in the work environment. As intriguing as that article sounds, what I'm interested in touching on this time is an expression that came up during my reading.

So imagine you are an employee in an organization and you obviously have to deal with different kinds of people. You see that depending on how much power or the position someone has in the company, their behavior might change. So suppose we are talking about a middle level employee that naturally deals with superiors and subordinates. You notice that this specific person at work praises or flatters his superiors so excessively it becomes embarrassing (in English we say they kiss up to their superiors), while treats his subordinates very poorly and with absolutely no respect. 

I didn't know that until I read the article, but there's a term, or more specifically a neologism, to describe that kind of situation: kiss up and kiss down. According to the article, "psychopaths and narcissists are extremely status conscious with a strong tendency to “kiss up and kick down.”

Hope you like today's expression. And always remember: stay away from people who kiss up and kiss down at work. I'll talk to you next time!

O que significa war of words?

When I was still in college, my teachers would split the class into two big groups and have us debate over a certain topic. They said we'd have to defend the group's point of view regardless of our own opinions just to assure the debate would happen between the two opposing groups. 

I don't even have to say the debate would go on for a long time and sometimes not only would people defend their ideas but also be aggressive, defensive, angry. The debate would often turn into a war of words.

A war of words is an argument in which people or groups criticize and disagree with each other publicly and repeatedly for usually a long time. The thing is, I don't remember a single time the groups finally reached a middle ground. It was more about the war of words than a position of compromise at the end. That's all for now. Take care!

O que significa to put one's foot in one's mouth?

Here I come again with another post inspired by all the screw-ups committed in Bolsonaro's Brazil misgovernment. It's so many fails I can barely keep up with. The thing is, every time any of the Bolsonaros decide to open their mouth on any controversial topics (which are usually their favorite ones), they end up putting their foot in their mouth.

Wait, what?

As much as I love to think of this particular idiom in a literal way, when Bolsonaro and his troop put their foot in their mouth that means they say something inappropriate or embarrassing. Sometimes by mistake, bust most likely by ignorance.

The last time I heard them put their foot in their mouth was when Bolsonaro's third son tried to justify his dad considering appointing him US ambassador in Washington by stressing how prepared for the endeavor he is: "I did an exchange, I fried hamburgers In the United States", he said.

Isn't that hilarious? Who would have thought that in order to claim the principal diplomatic post in Brazil you would have to excel at hamburger flipping skills? There's not a better example for the idiom. 

Talk to you next time!!!!!

O que significa o idiom talk through hat?

I don't know about the rest of the world, but in Brazil fishermen are famous for exaggering stories or even making up entire events purely based on lies. The stories usually revolve around things like the size of the fish, unexpected occurrences, quantity, etc. 

The last time I heard a fish story was when my uncle went to the lake with his friends and came back telling us about all the fish he caught, including the massive human-sized one that got away. 

Nobody believed him. They said he was just talking through his hat like he'd always do after coming back from the lake. If the fish was that big, why nobody else but him saw the fish escape?

When you talk through your hat, you exaggerate your achievements or knowledge, bluff, boast or simply talk of nonsense, say foolish things.

O que significa e expressão rude shit hit the fan?

I guess this is one of the first times I am going to bring a rude expression. And the reason why I'm doing this is because, well, shit has been constantly hitting the fan here in Brazil. Yes I'm talking about politics and yes the rude expression mentioned before has just been used: shit hit the fan. What does that mean?

Before I get into the expression, let me fill you in on what inspired me to create this post: a very famous american journalist and his colleagues published leaked chats from government officials that show the justice minister was involved in a plot to keep a brazilian politician from entering the country's 2018 presidential race. 

That's the shortest way someone could've possibly found to explain all the complexity happening in Brazil, but you get the main point I hope. The thing is, every time I hear the journalist promising to leak one more chat or audio, here's what I actually think: shit is going to hit the fan. AGAIN!!!

When you think or say something like that, what you mean is that things will or have already become suddenly chaotic, disastrous, difficult or controversial. It's usually something problematic you had expected before troubles materialized. Since the leaks are promises made by the journalist, we know there is still a lot of shit to hit the fan in the near future.

I refuse to explain the literal idea behind the expression because it's pretty graphic and self-explanatory. I'm sure you get it. That's all for now guys. Talk later!!!!!

O que significa eke out?

I saw an article somewhere on the internet about some habits acquired by the poor to make supplies last longer. And of course I could relate to some of them, especially the habit of adding water to shampoo or conditioner in order to preserve it. 

There are actually many reasons to use something sparingly. Lack of money is just one of them. But maybe you're shipwrecked in the middle of nowhere and need to eke out supplies until you're found. Who knows?

But wait, eke out? If you eke out water, food, cleaning products or any other supplies, you use it in small amounts or develop methods to preserve it to make it last longer. A noun or pronoun can be used between eke and out.

O que significa o phrasal verb roll up?

Most of my readers are Brazilians, but in case you're a part of the exception there's something you need to know about most of us in Brazil: we are not very punctual. Last time I met up with a friend he decided to show up at the spot one hour late and still called me dramatic for complaining about the wait.

You see that I used the phrasal verb show up to refer to the act of arriving for an appointment or gathering. But there's a more specific phrasal verb in case you arrive LATE at a particular place or event: to roll up. So I could say after repeated calls to my friend, he finally rolled up.

I hope you start using that phrasal verb from now on, especially if you live in Brazil. I'm sure you will have many opportunities to put it in practice. That's all for now. Take care!

O que significa borderline? (Inspirado pela música borderline, de tame Impala)

One of the first times I heard the word borderline was on the song borderline by tame Impala. The lyrics doesn't make the word self-explanatory, so that's why I felt triggered to look it up and eventually blog about it.

What I found out was that borderline is a very versatile piece of vocabulary that can be used as noun, adjective and adverb. Let me walk you through all of its facets.

As an adjective, it refers to things or people that aren't clearly on one side or the other of a border, ambiguous, uncertain, indeterminate. So imagine you have a friend who's been drinking too much but not enough to be considered an alcoholic. You say he's not an alcoholic, but a borderline case. Not yet an alcoholic, but maybe almost there. Imagine now a professional who can't justify his qualifications on a resume. It says he can speak English, but in person he can barely put two or three words together without messing them all up. So you say he's a professional with borderline qualifications. They're uncertain, debatable, etc.

As a noun, borderline is a boundary or accepted division, a border. So in order to make it easier to understand, I'm going to mention my mom as an example. Before she retired she was the principal at a public school and every time I would go see her at her job she was just mad with so much responsibility on her shoulders. It was only when she returned home by late evenings that she could bring herself back to reality. So I could say my mom lived on the borderline of reality and madness. It was just too much.

Borderline as an adverb means nearly, almost. Take a look at this example: I expected him to be super boring but he was actually borderline funny!

That's all for now guys. Take care!

O que significa a expressão off the grid?

Here's an expression you might've never heard of: off the grid. The first time I came across it was when I was scrolling through Netflix and read a certain movie synopsis which by the way is the one right above in the screenshot.

You can see it mentions a father who raises his children off the grid followed by terms like anti-establishment or utopian views. These terms are directly associated with the expression because off the grid refers to a lifestyle that consists of not depending on public utilities, especially the supply of electricity. 

So if you have a system in your house that helps you function without the support of remote infrastructure and stand in opposition to the conventional social principles of society, maybe you are anti-establishment like the character in the movie mentioned before.

That's all for now. Take care!!!!

O que significa o phrasal verb wean someone off something?

I've been on a diet for a week. It might sound like little time to some but it feels like an eternity to me. If you've been through a very restricted diet like mine and you're just a regular person who likes to pig out on junk food, you know what I mean. And that's my exact situation. Since I discovered some Nutella milkshake at a certain brazilian fast food restaurant I've been down on a slippery slope (or maybe until a week ago).

One of my friends was the reason why it finally hit me I should do something about my diet. He suggested that I go to the gym and go for evening walks with him. He also said he was going to try to wean me off junk food.

If you wean someone off an addiction or bad habbit just like my friend did to me, you make them gradually stop depending on it. 

I don't know if that'll work, but it's always positive to try to engage into healthier habits. But what about you? Have you tried to wean a friend off a bad habit? Maybe you were the one who had your habits changed? Let me know in the comment section. Talk later.

O que significa o idiom blessing in disguise?

Imagine you're a parent telling your kids about the time you met your wife. The story goes like: one day you got to the subway station a little late and you ended up missing your train. Still disturbed and stressed you turned to the nearest person around you to ask the time and that person happened to be your future wife. Both of you were waiting for the next subway train and that gave you time to get to know each other and exchange phone numbers. The rest is history.

So before you finish your story and kiss your kids good night you say that the apparent misfortune of missing the subway that night was actually a blessing in disguise, because you wouldn't have met your wife otherwise.

So every time you go through something that at first seems to be bad and unlucky but soon brings good results, you can call it a blessing in disguise. That's all for now. Talk to you next time!!!!!!!

O que significam os phrasal verbs to put off, call off e wash out?

You need to call a meeting with your employees to sort some things out but there are many things that can happen along the way that might make the meeting a little harder or impossible to happen. 

For example, something unexpected at your kids' school comes up and you have to put off the meeting to sort it out. If you put something off like that you delay it until a later date or time. In this case, until you have finally solved all the problems with your kids at school.

If for a real lack of luck the worst-case scenario happens and the meeting becomes impossible to happen at any date and time, maybe you're forced to call it off. If you call something off, you cancel it. It can be an event, an activity, anything.

But imagine something even more unexpected happens: you and your employees decide to hold the meeting outside the office at a nice outdoor restaurant and it starts to rain. The meeting is completely washed out. You can imagine what that means right? It means it was ruined by the rain.

That's all for now. Talk to you next time.

O que significa e como usar o phrasal verb to work off?

What do you do when you want to get rid of frustration, stress, anger or sadness? I know many people who sometimes choose to engage into something that requires any kind of physical effort, including myself. I feel like a nice consistent walk every or almost every evening works off a lot of stress.

Yesterday for example I heard something that made me really uncomfortable and worried so by the end of the afternoon I thought I'd be good if I went to the gym to work some of that worry off. If you are like me and try to put physical effort into pushing stress away, you can also say you're working stress off.

What are your favorite physical activities when you want to work off stress or any kind of bad energy? Let me know in the comment section down below. Bye bye

O que significa street smart?

I was listening to a podcast called Conan O'Brien needs a friend earlier tonight and as a way to introduce the episode, the host (or maybe I could call him the podcaster) came up with a few descriptions and adjectives to describe the new guest. Among the many things he mentioned, a certain term caught my ear: street smart. What does that mean?

The thing is, before I get into the term let me point out that the guest for that episode is a very famous rich celebrity from show business who is pretty much expected to have everything handed to on a silver platter. But she doesn't. Why?

She doesn't forget where she comes from: a very poor family of immigrants coming to the United States for a better living. The fact she suddenly found herself in the middle of many dangers in urban life forced her to find a way to develop knowledge and experience to handle things well. So that's why she was called street smart. 

If you handle urban life just as easily and know when to ask questions, who to trust, which way to take, be polite and defend yourself, you are also street smart. That's a kind of knowledge you don't learn from the books or in a classroom. Only out in the streets.

The many ways of protesting

In Brazil we are going through a historical and political phase where protests have been taking place in many parts of the country. For that reason I've been reading many articles in English touching on the same topic, which has given me the chance to come across many terms related to it.

It's easy to understand what a protest is, even though there's a common confusion between protests and riots (more about that later on the post). But how many kinds of protests do you know? Let's see about that now.

The first kind that comes to mind is called sit-in or sit-down. As the name itself suggests, it's basically a kind of strike where people simply sit or stay in a place and refuse to leave until they're given what they demand. 

The second kind and maybe most common here in Brazil is the march. It basically consists of a group of people walking from a point to a certain destination while they claim for the same political interests.

But then there's rally, which seems to be pretty similar to the previous definitions except that: a rally can simply be a demonstration for or against a certain cause, which doesn't necessarily have to be political.

A boycott happens when people engage in a common refusal to consume, participate or use the goods or services of a company, country, etc until changes are made. During pride month for example it's very easy to see companies joining the march as a way to position themselves in favor of LGBT community. But that might've been the result of many previous boycotts imposed against their prejudice or segregation in the past.

And finally to finish this topic up we have the strikes, which are also common ways to demand something from employers. This time by engaging employees into simply crossing their arms and stopping work.

As mentioned before, I need to clarify the difference between a protest and a rally. I'm going to make things really easy and straightforward just by saying the main difference is that a rally is violent and a protest is not. In a way that you can hear people call a rally criminal and violent while the protests, staged as the many kinds I listed earlier, are always pacific.

here's a picture of me marching for education in Brazil (June 14, 2019)

O que significa e como usar os phrasal verbs see to e take care of?

When you take care of something, you're making sure nothing wrong happens to it, or maybe something needs to be done and you're taking care of it. When you take care of someone like a child or an elderly person, you're keeping them safe or making sure they are supplied with everything they need.

If you're familiar with the phrasal verb take care of, you are pretty much done with the phrasal verb see to. But try to consider this: If you're throwing a party and you don't want to worry about the details of its planning you might want to consider hiring a planner to see to it. So the planner is going to see to the music, place, food, people, invitations, etc.

What is the difference between turn out and pan out?

The inspiration for today's post comes from an article I read online this morning on the first semester of Jair Bolsonaro's brazilian misgovernment. It mentioned the fact that most of his election proposals haven't really panned out and all his focus has been centered around much less crucial matters.

What I want you to give your attention to now is the phrasal verb I just mentioned: pan out. Have you ever heard of it or even used it? If something panned out it means it happened in a successful way. So the article was just pointing out the fact most of brazilian president's proposals haven't turned out well.

But wait, "turned out"?, you might be wondering. If something turns out a certain way, it proves to be that certain way. So imagine you're a Bolsonaro supporter being proven wrong now that his government has turned out to be pretty bad, has proven to be pretty bad.

So notice another difference here between pan out and turn out. While the first prasal verb doesn't need a complement, the second one does: his plans didn't pan out; his plans didn't turn out well, successful, efficient, worthy, good at all.

So that's all for today guys. Talk to you next time!!!!!

O que significam as expressões knock-out e cop-out? (Expressões tiradas da música you need to calm down, de taylor swift)

For those who read my blog, you may have noticed that I tend to get a lot of inspiration from the songs I listen to. Some of them reflect my own taste in music, but some are just trendy music that very easily catches my attention.

Somewhere around June Taylor swift released her single called you need to calm down. Right in the beginning of the song I heard something like: "you say it in the street that's a knock-out but you say it in a tweet that's a cop-out". I thought it'd be a good topic to touch on this time. So let's dive right into it.

A knock-out is a very popular term in boxing referring to the act of hitting the other fighter to the ground in such a way they can't get back up again. If you hit someone with an argument in such a way they can't come up with a comeback that's also like a knock-out, which is more like what the singer meant in the song.

A cop-out on the other hand is way less honorable than a knock-out. It's when you create an excuse to take the way way out of a tricky situation. In the song's context, saying something controversial to someone in a tweet, where you have the comfort of anonymity or the security of being home behind a screen, is not really a knock-out. It's just a cop-out.

That way of interpreting the song is the closest to what the singer might've meant because she's been through a lot of hate on the internet before. So that's all for now guys. Talk to you next time!!!!