Are You Soft-spoken or Straightforward Using Slangy Words?

Are you a user of vulgar language or euphemized version of expressions? Are you a huge fan of politically correct terms to be on the safe side? Whatever dispositions your languages are, you might want to sound like just who you really are. Here are some interesting examples of putting things in English. (*Caveat: Please watch out for vulgar, slangy words so you won’t offend anyone who you’re talking to. LOL)

Euphemized/ Polite Expressions	More Straightforward/Vulgar/ Harsh/Slangy Expressions
Please be a good sport/ Be nice.=>	Don’t be a dick.
Could you please let me finish? =>	Shut up and listen.
We’re letting you go. =>	You’re fired.
She passed away or dearly departed. =>	She died.
He’s on the street. =>	He’s homeless.
My dog has been put to sleep. =>	My dog has been euthanized.
Mom, can I have some potato chips? =>	Hey, mom, just hit me up with a bag of chips.
They are going through poor cash flow these days. =>	They are dead broke these days.
The professor is extremely neat and precise. =>	The professor is just too anal/ anal-retentive. He’s always splitting hairs.
I’m so out of luck!/ It’s so frustrating!=>	FML! (acronym for Fuxx my life!)
They went all the way last night. =>	They did Netflix and chill last night.
Her boy friend is a but vertically challenged. =>	Her boy friend is a migit.
I’m not quite impressed by your choice of friends. =>	Your friends are all scumbags.
She might not have been the sharpest pencil in the box. =>	She was dumb.

Idioms related to School & Education

May is typically the month in a year for family and friends to celebrate the completion of school years. The wonderful sense of achievement, pride, and elation fills the air, and parents have the moment full of tears of joy. This week, let us brush up on interesting English expressions related to school and education.

(source from http://www.idiomconnection.com/education.html)

    

    1.   old boy network/ society: social and business connections among former pupils of male-only private schools. It can also mean a network of social and business connections among the alumni of various prestigious schools

    2.   town and gown: In a college town, the relations between “town and gown” are those between the residents of the town and the students and faculty associated with the school, who in the past wore academic gowns. Such relations are often not friendly or pleasant.

    3.   to live in an ivory tower: to live in a state of sheltered and unworldly intellectual isolation.

    4.   to learn something by rote: to learn something in order to be able to repeat it from memory, rather than in order to understand it

    5.   get through (a course or a set of materials): to complete or finish a course or a set of materials

    6.   to put / get one’s thinking cap on: to engage your mind and think in a serious manner.

    7.   an eager beaver: someone who is a keen/ enthusiastic worker

    8.   to goof off: to slack off or waste time with the implication that the time is better spent at something to hand (like one's job)

    9.   Honor Roll: If we belong to the honor roll, then our names are included in a list of names of people with outstanding performance or achievement

    10.               A for Effort: Giving “A for effort” to students when they try to put in their best in a work, which may or may not necessarily be great, acceptable or successful

Let’s fill in the following blanks with proper idiomatic expressions.

1.    Peter thought that he could use his old_____________________ of the class 2019 in finding the best working position right after graduation from college, but it was harder than he had expected.

    2.   Maria was working at night at two different restaurants, but she went all out to get ______________________ her courses at school with flying colors during the daytime. Everyone of her classmates called her a eager _________________.

    

    3.   Jeffrey’s father told him to stop _________________ off and get a job. He kept telling Jeffrey that he is not living in an __________________ tower anymore.

    4.   When Theresa heard that her daughter had qualified for the ___________________ roll in her final semester, she jumped up and down in joy.

    5.   Our local festivals seem so divisive between residents outside campus and college kids. It doesn’t feel so pleasant to be living in this _____________ and ______________ rivalries.

    

    6.   Ted is a hard-working rookie in his department, but his manager said at the meeting that he’d need to understand the mechanism of how things are going in the upcoming project instead of learning things by ______________.

    

    7.   Wayne: You know what, I’ve been stood up by Amy three times in a row. Guess it’s time for me to put a ___________________________ to figure out this situation.

Jean: Agreed. She doesn’t deserve your love!

    

    8.   This fashion show did not turn out like I had planned, but I’d like to give all the models on my show ____________________________.

Answer Keys

    

    1.   boy network

    2.   through, beaver

    3.   goofing, ivory

    4.   honor

    5.   town, gown

    6.   rote

    7.   thinking cap

    8.   A for effort

Dr. Jedidiah's Diary Episode# 18. Was It for Real?

Dr. Jedidiah is a psychiatrist who loves traveling, meeting new people, and exploring different cultures. As a single father who lost his wife Demi to drug overdose 10 years ago, he has not been his old perky self for the last decade. During those hard years, he has met hundreds of, thousands of people from various walks of life around all over the world. Meeting new people and listening to their stories outside his office have given him different feelings from the ones through the formal encounter groups or support groups for therapy. These people he has accidentally come across were the paths through which Dr. Jedidiah could look back on his own life, being truly honest with himself. Here is Dr. Jedidiah’s monologue that has left him with some food for thoughts in life….or a fodder to justify his own mistakes in the past.

Episode # 18. Was it for real?

Whenever I reminisce about my old days in high school, I always get a bit puzzled by this boy named George. He was a painfully quiet guy who moved into our town with his grandparents. Since we were living in a small boring cow town where everyone knew mere trifles of each household, a newcomer family would easily become a talk of the town. Still can hardly believe that no one in our school ever doubted if he was able to speak. Teachers never singled him out to answer any questions or participate in class activities. George was a total loner who would eat, mosey around, study, and walk home after school all by himself.

One afternoon, I wanted to tail him along the way to his house…or wherever he was heading after school. George seemed to be meandering around on the way to his destination. I said to myself ‘Is he aware of me following him all along? This shouldn’t be the shortcut to his house’ In about 20 minutes, he stopped for a moment in front of a shabby old house and turned the key to get inside. 

Hiding behind a huge maple tree, I was struggling to detect what was going on inside the house. There were a couple of people to be seen through the dirty windowpane. Must have been George’s grandpa, grandma, and George himself sitting around the small dining table in the dark room with a dim light from a couple of candles. I had no idea of what I saw back then, but now that I have become a psychiatrist, I’d say they were holding some kind of a séance. 

Through my squinted eyes came the blurred silhouette of George and his grandparents sitting around the table hand in hand. I tried to figure out what was happening with them inside that house, but it was way out of the range of my common sense or even wild imagination of my own. I rubbed my sore eyes that were too tired catching a glimpse of George and his grannies. When I looked back inside the house, I became frozen from head to toe. George was all by himself praying at the table. ‘Where have his grandpa and grandma gone all of a sudden?’ ‘Am I dreaming?’ I kept rubbing my eyes and blinking to take a closer look of George. Yes, he was all alone. It was such a short moment that I wasn’t able to realize or understand what I had seen in broad daylight. I was still hiding myself behind the tree, but George’s eyes and mine happened to meet as I was trying to wake up and get real. Then, I almost got to the point of being out cold for a second. It was not George’s face that turned to me and smirked. It was my long-lost brother who died of a car accident when he was only 9. What I experienced that day was so surreal but far too vivid to be denied.  The second wallop on that day.

Since the weird, creepy day, nobody had ever seen or heard about George. It still remains mysterious in my mind. Probably the boy named George made me decide to become a psychiatrist who would navigate through human mind and soul.  That boy could have been George or the ghost of my own brother visiting me to keep himself in my sad memory. Hard to expatiate. Hard to figure out… and always hard to revisit that day of my life.

Expressions

     1.   mere trifles: insignificant or unimportant matter

     2.  talk of the town: rumor or idle gossip

     3.  to single someone out: to choose/ select/ pick/ distinguish someone from others

     4.  to mosey: to move in a leisurely, relaxed way; saunter; move along; amber

     5.  to tail somebody: to secretly follow and watch someone

     6.  séance: a meeting where people try to communicate with the dead, often with the help of someone who claims to have special powers to do this

     7.  to be out cold: to faint or pass out

     8.  wallop: hit; blow; attack

     9.   to expatiate: to speak or write about something in great detail

Dr. Jedidiah’s Diary: My First Love

Dr. Jedidiah is a psychiatrist who loves traveling, meeting new people, and exploring different cultures. As a single father who lost his wife Demi to drug overdose 10 years ago, he has not been his old perky self for the last decade. During those hard years, he has met hundreds of, thousands of people from various walks of life around all over the world. Meeting new people and listening to their stories outside his office have given him different feelings from the ones through the formal encounter groups or support groups for therapy. These people he has accidentally come across were the paths through which Dr. Jedidiah could look back on his own life, being truly honest with himself. Here is Dr. Jedidiah’s monologue that has left him with some food for thoughts in life….or a fodder to justify his own mistakes in the past.

Episode #17. My First Love

When Sarah came back to my life, I was enwrapped by two polarized feelings. Surprisingly happy and unbelievably sad. She was a totally different woman until she opened up her mouth to ask if she was still in my memory. The same old sweet voice that I remembered. There was a rail thin lady with haggard, sunken cheeks standing right in front of me that I could hardly ever recognize just by her hopelessly desperate eyes. That moment I ran into Sarah at the city event of Spring Festival was like the final harsh blow after all those years that had wildered me since she left for that vagabond named Riley.

Sarah was the only girl that held a special place in my heart when our love for acting was passionately kindled in the society “Act Right”. She was often criticized by our coach because of the way she camped. Coach used to say “Sarah, you’re always making it sound ‘pompous’ or ‘pretentious’. Just say like a beggar when you’re a beggar. Act like a loser when you are one. Your exaggerations tend to make you look kitschy in the play.” However, Sarah never seemed intimidated or dispirited by the coach. She was rather like “Beggars could sound like the pompous rich….I think.” Yes, she might be right, but did not meet the coach’s expectation at all. Not even agreed with my interpretation of her role in the play. It was not because the coach and I were pathetic OCDs, but because Sarah was not acting right that constant arguments were occurring in every practice.

Whether Sarah was hiding herself behind each unrealistically magnified colors or not, I found myself becoming more and more enchanted by her own contrived version of characters. I must have enjoyed wishing that I had discovered her true pictures and visions in life. We were seeing each other for three years in what I’d call ‘deep love’. By the time when I was able to confidently boast that I had made up my mind to spend the rest of my life with this fine young lady, Sarah switched up out of the blue. There came a newcomer to ‘Act Right’. He was Riley. Every time his name comes to my head, I still feel like throwing up. Even without my realizing, Riley stole Sarah’s heart, ….and just as might be expected of an actress who’s really good at playing her own versions of roles that no one could ever expected, Sarah left me for that new guy.

A year had passed so painfully since Riley joined the society. Sarah seemed so excited about the change in her life with Riley next to her: Overnight driving around the town, hopping from one watering hole to another, tasting all different kinds of liquor offered there, smoking,….and then something else that makes me shudder. I knew she stepped into a hell of a different side in her life, but just sat still, swallowing a bitter sneer.

Today was the happiest, but also saddest day of my life. The one that I luckily ran into at the local Spring festival was my first love, Sarah. She came back with the same old, sweet voice and smile. But her eyes filled with inexplicable or irreparable sorrow seemed to make it hard for me to bring up our precious old days being together. To me, she was truly my first love. To Sarah, maybe I will be her final love that would last through vicissitudes of all those lost years. Yes, I will probably be her love again… as long as she is truly what she is showing today.  

Expressions

   1.  to wilder…: to cause someone to lose one’s way/ to bewilder someone

   2.  to camp: to speak or behave in a coquettishly playful or extravagantly theatrical manner.

   3.  pretentious: making an exaggerated outward show; ostentatious

   4.  kitschy: gaudy, ostentatious, vulgar, showy

   5.  contrived: phony/ false/ overdone

   6.   to switch up: to change state of mind or leave

   7.   watering hole: a bar, nightclub, restaurant with popular bar or other social gathering place where alcoholic drinks are sold.

   8.   a hell of a …: Used to emphasize the exaggeration of a noun to a positive extent. Other variations include: "one heck of a", "heck of a", or "hell of a …”

   9.   vicissitude: successive, alternating, or changing phases or conditions, as of life or fortune; ups and downs