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quinta-feira, 11 de julho de 2019

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!

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