O que significa TO CREEP UP ON (baseado na música As the world caves in, de Matt Maltese)

You put your final suit on

I paint my fingernails

Oh, we're going out in style, babe

And everything's on sale

We creep up on extinction

I pull your arms right in

I weep and say goodnight, love

While my organs pack it in

Acima você vê um trecho da música As the world Caves in, de Matt Maltese, e em negrito, você vê a expressão de hoje: creep up on. 

A música fala sobre a última noite dum casal prestes a experienciar a extinção humana. Enquanto aguardam o fim do mundo, tudo que eles se importam é estar na companhia do outro e assistir televisão. No verso destacado, we creep up on extinction, o phrasal verb se refere ao ato de se aproximar lentamente de algo intimidador de maneira gradual ou discreta. O narrador fez uso dessa expressão talvez pra demonstrar que, apesar do contexto trágico, o casal continuava suas atividades rotineiras de maneira despretensiosa, como se nada estivesse prestes a acontecer. 

O phrasal verb tô creep up on, num contexto mais corriqueiro, significa se aproximar de alguém lentamente e discretamente de forma que não se faça percebido. Geralmente essa ação é seguida dum susto, já que a aproximação foi sorrateira. Veja alguns exemplos:

You scared me. Why do you always have to creep up on me like that? You’re going to give me a heart attack anytime soon. 

I was talking to my friends and then he creeped up on us and jumped into our conversation and if he’d been invited. 

You should knock on the door before coming in instead of creeping up on us like that. 

Existe um outro possível contexto para se usar essa expressão. Dessa vez se referindo a alguma coisa, como um evento, geralmente gerador de apreensão, que se aproxima sorrateiramente. Veja:

Budget time is creeping up on us and if we don't put in a proposal we're not going to get the money that we want next year.

O que significam as expressões sweet talk, trash talk, small talk e straight talk (post inspirado na música can we talk, de Tevin Campbell)

I started

To write you letters

But I wanted

To be more clever

I wanted to get down and sweet talk you

(Can we talk, Tevin Campbell)

Essa música é o desabafo de alguém tímido demais pra abordar uma garota. Ele fantasia o dia em que finalmente conseguirá se aproximar dela e conversar de maneira cortejadora. Esse último ato poderia ser traduzido para inglês através da expressão destacada em negrito: tô sweet talk someone. É válido notar que nem sempre essa expressão é usada de maneira sexualizada. Você também pode querer persuadir alguém com uma conversa doce. Veja alguns exemplos da expressão contextualizada:

He came on to me at the party and started sweet talking me.

Don’t let them sweet talk you into doing what they want. 

I don’t like it when strangers start sweet talking me at parties. 

My son is always sweet talking me into letting him do whatever he wants. I am not falling for it this time. 

If you approach a pretty girl and sweet talk her in the most flattering way, it’s still not a guarantee she’ll want you. 

Aproveitando a expressão com a palavra talk, eu acabei procurando outras possibilidades. Então eu achei straight talk, small talk e trash talk. 

Se você precisa ter uma conversa franca e direta com alguém, em inglês você usa a expressão straight talk. Dessa vez, a expressão fica mais natural se usada como substantivo e não verbo. Veja alguns exemplos:

It’s about time you started having straight talks with your children about your financial problems. They can’t stay in that expensive private school anymore. 

It’s always a good idea to have that kind of friend who’s willing to give you the straight talk about your bad decisions in life. 

Small talk é uma expressão bem conhecida, inclusive por aqueles que sequer se interessam em aprender a língua inglesa. Ela se refere aquele tipo de conversa que você geralmente tem por educação com desconhecidos ou pessoas pouco próximas. É muito comum isso acontecer em elevadores, por exemplo, quando o silêncio acaba constrangendo. Veja essa expressão em sentenças:

I hate having small talks in the elevator. I never know what to say. 

Why did you leave me alone with all those strangers? I had to keep making small talks for hours. 

Finalmente temos a expressão to trash talk someone. Trash, como você deve ter imaginado, traz um sentido negativo para a ação de conversar. Refere-se aquele tipo de conversa onde alguém ou alguma coisa está sendo criticada, mal falada, agredida. Veja exemplos:

They  didn’t notice me in the room, so I heard them trash talk me for a long time. I don’t know what I did to deserve this. 

He always trash talks his ex girlfriends. It’s weird that they’re always the responsible for everything that went wrong in the relationships. 

I don’t like it when a friend trash talks a mutual friend to me. It feels like they would do the same thing to me. 

TO TEAR SOMEONE APART, TO CUT SOMEONE DOWN: O que significam? (Post inspirado na música Happier, de Olivia Rodrigo)

And now I'm pickin' her apart

Like cuttin' her down will make you miss my wretched heart

But she's beautiful, she looks kind

She probably gives you butterflies

Phrasal verbs estão em todas as partes na língua inglesa. As vezes, o contexto pressupõe o sentido, as vezes não. Na música Happier, de Olivia Rodrigo, nós temos dois phrasal verbs que estão muito bem contextualizados. Para entendê-los, vamos à historia da música.

Depois do término dum relacionamento, Olívia sente ciúmes da nova namorada de seu ex. Por mais que tente controlar o sentimento, a nova garota desperta muitas inseguranças e ela acaba fazendo coisas como: to cut her down, to tear her apart. O que isso significa?

Ambas as expressões se referem ao ato de criticar alguém, de maneira pública ou não. To tear someone apart ainda pode passar o sentido de falar mal de alguém em pequenos detalhes, algo que é feito quando existe muito ressentimento envolvido. Vamos ver alguns exemplos:

1. I can’t believe how much she hates me. She was capable of cutting me down in front of everybody. It was so embarrassing and I felt very humiliated.

2. I heard you tearing me apart last night. You were really determined to find every single flaw I have and that makes me sad.

3. Don’t you dare to cut me down like that. You owe me respect!

4. I feel sorry for tearing her apart before I got to know her. It turns out she’s a really nice girl.

5. As much as you hate me, you don’t have the right to cut me down in front of the whole company.

6. Why are you tearing your friend apart? She wouldn’t like it if she were here.

waste one’s breath (inspirado na música happier than ever, da Billie Eilish)

You call me again, drunk in your Benz

Driving home under the influence

You scared me to death but I'm wasting my breath

'Cause you only listen to your fucking friends

Antes de dizer o significado da expressão em negrito, eu gostaria de introduzir contexto pra música: Billie parece desabafar sobre alguém que a proporcionou uma experiência tóxica de relacionamento. Dentre as muitas queixas que ela inclui nos versos, um deles é não ser ouvida. Mesmo assim, ela responde uma ligação dele e acaba “gastando saliva”, “desperdiçando oxigênio”, etc. 

Eu utilizei essas expressões em aspas porque seriam algumas possíveis correspondentes no português para a expressão inglesa to waste one’s breath. Refere-se ao ato de dizer coisas durante uma discussão que muito provavelmente serão ignoradas pela outra pessoa. Veja mais exemplos dessa expressão em inglês:

Don’t waste your breath with him, he’ll never change.

I was in the middle of the argument when I realized I was just wasting my breath.

If you won’t listen to what I have to say to you, that means I am just wasting my breath.

Don’t try to talk some sense into her. You will just waste your breath.

-What if I just talked to her and tried to make her reflect about her actions?

-don’t bother. You will just waste your breath

Bad blood: o que significa?

You know we've been quarantined these past days because of coronavirus and like many people I've been taking the time to stay home and catch up on the many series and movies I used to ignore. It was during one of these movies I heard someone using the expression bad blood. Let me tell you what was happening when it came up.

There's this couple that's recently got into a relationship and there's this girl who used to be very close friends with the guy from the couple. There wasn't really a problem until the girlfriend found out about her boyfriend almost dating her before she became his girlfriend. It was a situation where basically he would've dated this other girl if it wasn't for a coincidence. So obviously the girlfriend got really insecure thinking about the possibility of being a second choice.

When he hears of her insecurity he approaches her in a somewhat surprised way to show how nonsense those thoughts of hers were: 'oh that's why there was all that bad blood between you two before I met you'.

Bad blood is nothing but tension and disdain between two or more people due to past disagreement or transgressions. What he meant to say to her is that he noticed some kind of animosity between them two but didn't supposedly understand why.

That expression also instantly reminds me of Taylor Swift's song entitled bad blood. Right in the beginning of the song she starts off by saying "cause baby now we've got bad blood". There was a lot of fuss over this song because soon she revealed the song was about another female artist, who according to her attempted to sabotage one of her concert tour ls by hiring the people who worked for her. So there was a lot of bad blood between them two from that point on. That's all for now guys. Take care!

body shaming

Let's just stop for a moment to appreciate that quote by Billie Eilish. If it's too small for you to understand I recommend that you click on the picture to the left to maximize. That quote has been taken from part of a live show where she strips her clothes down to bra to make a statement against body shamers.

Billie Eilish is known for her oversized outfits. During one of her interviews she confessed purposefully hiding her body to avoid criticism and judgement, or simply trying to make her job more about her art and work and less about her physical appearance. So it was unexpected for most people to see her strip down in her show.

When you body shame someone, you criticize, ridicule, or otherwise make someone feel ashamed about (some aspect of) their physical appearance, especially their weight. 

in one's sweet time: o que significa?

If you're not living under a rock or maybe isolated from the rest of the world you must've noticed the terror of a new virus outbreak. It's hard to escape from the news about coronavirus because it's everywhere on TV, radio and social media. And speaking of social media, I just saw a recent post by dua lipa urging fans to take care of themselves.

She also takes the chance to criticize the government because according to her they have taken their own sweet time to tell people what they should be doing to protect each other. And if you scam through the expression one's own sweet time for the first time  you might easily misunderstand it. That's why I decided to bring the expression to my blog.

If you do something in your own sweet time you do it in your own preferred pace, without consideration for how it will affect others. So getting back to dua lipa's post, what she is worried about is that if the government doesn't take matters seriously on time, the virus will spread more.

o que significa o phrasal verbo to tell someone off

While I was watching TV the other day I saw an interratial couple discussing possible situations they might have to confront from that point on now that they're together. The black woman said it's the first time she's been in a relationship like that but the white man claims to have dated black girls in the past and brings up an experience he had with an ex while holding hands on the streets.

He didn't give details but basically a random guy shouted insults to them out of nowhere and for no reason other than prejudice. He said his girlfriend got really mad and went up to him to tell him off. When you tell someone off, you "castigate, rebuke, or reprimand one in a severe or merciless manner". A noun or pronoun can be used between "tell" and "off." Parents tell off their children very often for their bad behavior for example.

Saint Patrick's Day: maneiras diferentes de usar a palavra Green em Inglês

Tomorrow's saint Patrick's day and I was wondering what I could bring to my blog other than everything else that you can easily find out there on the internet. So I remembered that I'll be giving classes tomorrow about the holiday itself but also be touching on a few other usages for the word green.

If you don't know why green has to do with saint Patrick's day, the only thing I assure you is that there are quite a few possible explanations for that. But I'll leave you with the simplest one: the green stripe on the Irish flag. So now that we've set this aside, let's get down to business:

As a noun, green can also refer to paper money, especially in large amounts. So imagine you just got a new car which by the way is kind of expensive. You show up at your work in it and all your curious friends come up to you to ask how much you paid for it. So they can approach you with a question that will sound something like: "I bet you had to lay down some serious feen for that car, huh? How much was it?" It's not hard to notice that's a very informal way of referring to money.

Still using green as a noun, we have got a second meaning for the word, but this time a little bit less politically correct: marijuana. That's a very common slang by the way, both in Portuguese and English. So if you hear someone saying they got some green, depending on the context they are probably talking about weed. 

So finally talking about green as an adjective, we have got a few things to consider: green can mean immature or inexperienced. One of the first times I heard someone making usage of green to mean inexperienced I was listening to hand in my pocket by Alanis Morissette. She claims to be green in the song but also wise. 

But if you see people defining things and not people by calling them green, we've got a totally new situation. It's just that green can also mean environmentally conscious or designed not to have an adverse impact on the environment, like in building principles, departments, companies, student centers, etc.

o que significa to have a soft spot?

There's this documentary on Netflix called 100 humans which can be very self explanatory once you find out it's literally about 100 humans on many kinds of social experiments. If you watch the first episode you'll see they are discussing sexual attraction. And among the many tests the humans are put under one of them is about whether or not people in uniforms become more appealing.

What they do to discover that is they slipt the 100 humans into two groups of 50 and have them talk to the same people expect in one of the groups these people wear uniforms. So there's a fast food waiter, a surgeon, a soldier and then a police officer. When that police officer introduces himself to the humans on the social experiments there's something he says that caught my ear: people think I'm tough because of my job but they don't know I have a soft spot for animals.

When you have a soft spot for someone or something, you feel a great deal of affection for them or like them a lot. You can use that expression especially when you fit a stereotype of people who wouldn't normally have an affection for certain things or people. So in the police officer's opinion maybe people wouldn't expect him to have a soft spot for cute animals but he does. Do you have a soft spot for someone or something that people wouldn't expect you to? Let me know in the comment section down below!!!!

o que significa a expressão to do 180 (one-eighty)?

Sometimes you see and hear the same expression coming up in songs, TV shows, books and movies so many times but you never really stop to fully understand it. That's what happened to me with the expression to do 180. The first time I heard it was in the song wake up alone by Amy winehouse, a very saddened song that expresses the voice of a woman who's been trying to forget about a man and move on, but not so successfully. The second time I heard the expression happened recently in the song Don't start now by dua lipa, which unlike Amy's song portrays a woman who's already moved on and is absolutely fine now. 

When you do a 180, you make a big change in your opinions, lifestyle, perspective, decisions, etc. Literally, if you stop to think about it, when you do a 180, you turn 180 degrees so that you will then be facing the opposite direction. And actually you can also use the expression in that literal way as in "I was going to school but because of those dark clouds in the sky I did a 180 and headed back home". But still talking about both dua lipa's and Amy's songs, let's see how they put it into their verses:

It's okay in the day
I'm staying busy
Tied up enough so I don't have to wonder where is he
Got so sick of crying
So just lately
When I catch myself, I do a one-eighty

(Wake up alone, Amy winehouse)

If you don't wanna see me

Did a full 180, crazy

Thinking 'bout the way I was

Did the heartbreak change me? Maybe…

(Don't start now, dua lipa)

Both these women were trying to do a one-eighty on their romantic relationships because they were probably unhappy about the way it went. Maybe their boyfriends weren't respecting them, or maybe they didn't love them back, treat them right, I don't know. The thing is, something made them want to change their perspective and do a 180. 

That's all for now guys. Let me know in the comment section down below if sometime in the past you had to do a 180 on anything or anyone. Talk to you next time!

O que significa a expressão to put through the wringer?

Not very proud to say this, but I'm on the third or fourth episode of Love is blind, a reality show about men and women seeking romance and marriage. And during one of the proposals a newly-engaged woman said something about her fiance that caught my ear: "He really put me through the wringer". What does she mean by that?

The thing is, before I tell you about the expression, I need to clarify the context of the show. It's just a bunch of singles trying to match and get engaged to each other without ever seeing each other face-to-face. They're separated by a thin wall and are only allowed to meet when they finally make a final match. One of the men were having a hard time deciding which woman to pick, and ended up putting three women through the wringer. So by now you have probably realized the meaning of the expression is not positive. 

If you put someone through the wringer, you subject them to some ordeal, trial, or punishment, or you make them undergo an unpleasant experience.