BBC Learnings · Section 2

Confused by modern idioms

Can you wait a second, Rob? I have to spend a penny.

Level: B2 · 101 sentences

Transcript

  1. Can you wait a second, Rob?
  2. I have to spend a penny.
  3. What? You're going shopping now, are you?
  4. We're just about to start the programme.
  5. No, no. I have to, you know, spend a penny.
  6. Haven't you heard that expression before?
  7. Spend a penny means go to the toilet.
  8. It's an old idiom from the days when it cost a penny to unlock the door of a public toilet.
  9. OK, I see.
  10. Well, you're showing your age there, Sam.
  11. Most young people today wouldn't know what that phrase meant and there aren't many public toilets left nowadays anyway.
  12. Language changes fast and new words and phrases are being created all the time.
  13. In this programme,
  14. we'll be learning some modern idioms – new expressions that have been introduced to English through the internet,
  15. TV and social media.
  16. And of course, we'll be learning their meanings as well.
  17. Great. I am raring to go – another idiom there.
  18. But first, as usual, I have a question for you, Sam.
  19. Many well-known idioms come from the world of sport.
  20. For example, throw in the towel, which means give up or surrender.
  21. But which sport does the idiom throw in the towel come from?
  22. Is it A, football, B, tennis or C, boxing?
  23. I think I know this one.
  24. It's C, boxing.
  25. OK, Sam, I'll reveal the answer at the end of the programme,
  26. so just hold your horses for now.
  27. Ah, another idiom there, Rob.
  28. Hold your horses, meaning stop and think for a moment.
  29. That's an idiom that Gareth Carroll might teach his university students.
  30. Dr. Carroll is the author of a new book, Dropping the Mic and Jumping the Shark.
  31. Where do modern idioms come from?
  32. He became interested in idioms when he realised that he didn't know
  33. many of the expressions his students used in their everyday speech.
  34. Modern idioms like jump the shark.
  35. Here is Gareth Carroll telling BBC Radio 4 programme Word of Mouth
  36. about one source of many modern idioms the movies.
  37. So Groundhog Day, I think, more or less has the meaning of déjà vu now,
  38. and it's completely embedded in the language.
  39. Actually, that's probably one of the first phrases
  40. that got me thinking about these modern idioms in the first place
  41. because it is so ubiquitous,
  42. it's used in a huge range of contexts,
  43. and one of the things that kind of made me sit up
  44. and take notice is I've had a number of students
  45. who know the phrase Groundhog Day
  46. but had no idea it was a film.
  47. In the film Groundhog Day,
  48. the main character wakes up to live the same day over and over again.
  49. Gradually, the movie title itself became an idiom, Groundhog Day,
  50. meaning a situation in which events that have happened before happen again in exactly the same way.
  51. It's similar in meaning to another expression, déjà vu.
  52. When phrases the movies use develop into idioms,
  53. it's often because they are ubiquitous – they seem to appear everywhere.
  54. And one of the ways they appear everywhere is, of course, the internet.
  55. Here's Gareth Carroll again, telling more to Michael Rosen,
  56. presenter of BBC Radio 4 programme Word of Mouth.
  57. The vocabulary of the internet, even the word internet, is relatively modern.
  58. The idea of breaking the internet is now a phrase that I think people would use and recognise,
  59. so something that causes such a stir online that metaphorically
  60. so many people rush to a website that it sort of threatens to bring it down,
  61. something like that.
  62. In the early days we had go viral, which has stayed with us, hasn't it?
  63. Yeah, so the idea of something going viral is certainly very much in the vocabulary now.
  64. But things like Twitter have lent sort of phrases,
  65. so the idea of First World problems,
  66. meaning sort of ironically things that we complain about but actually
  67. compared to other parts of the world may well be relatively minor.
  68. That started life as a Twitter hashtag for example.
  69. Another modern idiom is breaking the internet,
  70. causing so much excitement about something online
  71. that too many people visit the website at the same time
  72. making it crash.
  73. Social media outlets like Twitter have also created their own idioms,
  74. including first world problems
  75. a trivial problem that does not seem very important
  76. when compared to the serious problems
  77. faced by people in poorer parts of the world.
  78. If you don't know some of these idioms, don't worry.
  79. Unlike general vocabulary,
  80. a native speaker's full knowledge of idioms takes longer to develop,
  81. usually at around the age of 30 to 40.
  82. Meanwhile, you can still rely on classic English idioms like pull my leg,
  83. kick the bucket and throw in the towel,
  84. which I think comes from the sport of boxing.
  85. Rob? Yes, in my question I asked
  86. which sport gave birth to the phrase throw in the towel
  87. and Sam's answer was...
  88. Correct! Well done!
  89. The idiom throw in the towel comes from boxing,
  90. where the coach of the losing boxer would literally throw a towel into the ring to surrender.
  91. OK, let's recap the rest of the idioms – old and new – that we've learnt today.
  92. To spend a penny is an old-fashioned way of saying go to the toilet.
  93. Groundhog Day describes a situation in which events that have happened before happen again exactly the same way.
  94. If something is ubiquitous, it seems to appear everywhere.
  95. The modern idiom break the internet
  96. means to cause so much excitement about something online
  97. that you can make the website crash.
  98. And finally, a first world problem
  99. is a problem that does not seem very important
  100. when compared to the serious problems faced by people
  101. in poorer parts of the world.