Your English Five a Day #49.4

🎙️ E393 of The English Like A Native Podcast.
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Transcript

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Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 49, Day 4 of Your English Five a Day. This is where you'll get your healthy daily dose of English words and phrases that will help you to expand your vocabulary and improve your listening skills. So, let's get started with the phrasal verb, make up. Now this time, make up is referring, to invent, to invent something. So make up, two words, make, M A K E. Up, U P. To make up, make up. If you make something up then you create it, you invent it, you fabricate it. And this is usually in regards to a story or an explanation, an excuse, perhaps. So let's imagine you arrive late at work because you simply could not get out of bed. Oh, it's just one of those mornings you were so tired and you kept hitting the snooze button on your alarm and you ended up being quite late for work. But instead of telling your boss that, you're going to make up an excuse. You're going to tell them,"Oh, I'm so sorry. You'll never believe what happened this morning. I went to get my bus, but my bus, when it arrived, was then delayed because there was a horse loose. We live near a field and there was a horse had escaped from the field and was galloping around the street just ahead of us. And so we were delayed for about 20 minutes while the horse was being chased down and finally was captured and returned to the field. And then, as the bus started to drive off, it suddenly burst into flames because it was overheating from sitting idly at the side of the road for so long. And so we all had to be evacuated off the bus, and then we had to wait to be checked by the firefighters to make sure that we hadn't inhaled any smoke. And then the firefighters insisted that we headed to the hospital just to have a final check. And so, goodness me, it was such a palaver. So, sorry about that." You just made up that story. You just made up that excuse. Terrible. Here's another example of make up,"When asked about her absence from school, Lily decided to make up a story about a family emergency." When was the last time you made up a story? Okay. Next on the list is the idiom to cover your tracks, to cover your tracks. Three words, cover, C O V E R. Your, Y O U R. Tracks, T R A C K S. To cover your tracks. This idiom means to try and hide what you've done because you don't want people, other people, to find out about it. Now, you could think about this quite literally. If you are escaping someone, maybe you are a criminal, and you've just stolen some jewellery, and now you are running away, but while you were in the house stealing jewellery, a blanket of snow fell. And so now everywhere is covered in pristine snow. And so as you run away from the house, you're leaving all these footprints, a trail showing exactly the route you're taking. So anyone could follow the trail and find you. So you will then make a great effort to cover your tracks, to hide them, maybe with leaves or by, I don't know, how would you cover your tracks in the snow? That would be quite hard, wouldn't it? That'll be very hard indeed. So, to cover your tracks, to try and hide what you've done. Here's an example sentence,"After making the mistake, Marco quickly tried to cover his tracks to avoid any consequences." If you do something digitally, if you do something online, that you later realised was a mistake then you may start deleting files, deleting comments that you've made publicly, deleting the logs, the history of your computer so that no one can find out it was you. Okay, next on the list is the adjective stilted, stilted. We spell this S T I L T E D, stilted, stilted. Stilted means that something is characterised by a lack of naturalness or a lack of flow. It might be quite artificial. Or maybe overly formal. Have you ever met someone who's being overly formal? It feels a bit unnatural, doesn't it? Maybe you arrive at a work social event. So it's out of office hours, it's a party, everyone's there to celebrate the holidays, whatever it is. And no one's wearing their office clothes, they're all wearing like T-shirts and jeans and having food and drinks. And there's music playing and people singing on karaoke, and everyone's really relaxed, yet you're talking to a colleague who continues to speak in a very formal way. Maybe they're addressing you as Sir or Ma'am, or Mr. Clark, or whatever it is that they would normally use to address you at work. And you say,"Hey, come on, let's be on first name basis, you know, it's a party, just relax." And they're,"Okay. Okay, Mrs. Clark, whatever you say." And just continue to be really formal. It doesn't feel comfortable, does it when someone is overly formal? So this would be quite stilted. You'd say,"The conversation between George and I at the party was quite stilted. He just couldn't relax and talk to me like a normal human being. He just couldn't get out of work mode." Here's an example sentence,"The actor's stilted delivery made the heartfelt scene feel awkward and forced, failing to resonate with the audience." Next on the list is the noun fallout, fallout. All one word. We spell it F A L L O U T, fallout, fallout. The fallout is the residual effects that follow a significant event, particularly those with negative consequences. So when something big happens, a significant event, the effects of that event, that is the fallout. So for example, if an important person, a person in power makes a bold statement, then that will likely have some impact. It will create fallout. For example, if the Bank of England says that they believe they are going to cut interest rates in the next few days, then that will have an impact on the markets. The financial markets will suddenly react to that statement. There will be fallout. When we had our very, very short-term Prime Minister, Liz Truss, she put in place a budget or made a statement about her budget that scared the markets so much. It had a huge, huge impact that was very negative. So there was quite a lot of fallout from her budget. And she didn't stay in that position for very long because she caused all kinds of chaos. The fallout was quite significant. Here's another example,"The fallout from the controversial decision to close the local library was significant, sparking protests from community members who valued the resource for education and culture." Last, on today's list, we have the idiom to cut a long story short. To cut a long story short. To cut, C U T. Cut a long, L O N G. Story, S T O R Y. Short. S H O R T. To cut a long story short is something that we say when we are about to explain something with fewer details. So we want to give you the overview, basically, or the important points of a much longer story. For example, if I have a very, very, very long journey from where I live in London to Birmingham, a trip that should only take a couple of hours, maybe three at the most. Maybe it's taken me eight hours to get from London to Birmingham. And you say,"Anna, what on Earth happened? Why did it take you so long to get from London to Birmingham? How on Earth did it take you eight hours?" And I, I huff, and I puff, and I think this is a very long story. Many things happened. And so I might say,"Oh, well to cut a long story short, my train was cancelled. But there's a lot more to it than that, but we don't have time to go into all the details. So my train was cancelled and I had to find an alternative mode of transport." So I am reducing the story to very few words. Sometimes we shorten this idiom to long story short, long story short. So I might be saying to you,"Hey, I didn't prepare for today because I was supposed to have yesterday to prepare after travelling to Birmingham. But long story short, it took me eight hours to get to Birmingham. So I lost most of my day just trying to get here. So, now I'm ill-prepared for today's presentation." So cut a long story short or long story short. Here's another example,"Ah, to cut a long story short, we ended up missing our flight, but found a later one that was even better." Okay, so that's our five. Let's do a quick recap. We started with the phrasal verb make up, meaning to invent or fabricate a story or an explanation. Then we had the idiom cover your tracks, which is to try and hide what you've done because you don't want other people to know about it. Then we had the adjective stilted, stilted, which means that something is lacking a naturalness or lacking flow, it's kind of artificial. Then we had the noun, fallout, which is the residual effects following a significant event, and it's usually negative. And we had the idiom to cut a long story short, meaning to explain something, something that happened in few words. So let's now do this for pronunciation purposes. Please repeat after me. Make up. Make up. Cover your tracks. Cover your tracks. Stilted. Stilted. Fallout. Fallout. To cut a long story short. To cut a long story short. Very good. Okay, let me test your memory now. If I have done something I'm not proud of, and I don't want anyone to know about it, and then I try to hide what I've done. What idiom could you use to describe what I'm doing? I'm trying to cover my tracks. Very good. And if we have a conversation, but I am very awkward. I'm not very natural in my conversation with you. It's a very strange conversation. There's no flow. I'm quite artificial. What adjective could you use to describe me and our conversation? Stilted. Stilted. And then if you want to tell me what happened to you yesterday because that will really help to explain why you are the way you are today. But you don't have time to tell me everything that happened. You're just going to give me the important points. What idiom could you use to show that you're going to give me just the important points? To cut a long story short. Yes, very good. And if I tell you a story that has never previously existed. I've just invented this story on the spot. What phrasal verb could you use to describe this invention? I made up a story. Yes, I made up a story. Fantastic. And finally, if something significant happens, maybe I cut down my neighbour's tree. I'm so cross with my neighbour for not pruning this tree that I get my chainsaw and I lean over the fence, and I chop down the tree. I'd never do this in real life, but if I did, then there's going to be a negative response, isn't there? There's going to be negative effects from me cutting down this tree that doesn't belong to me. What noun can we use to describe these effects that follow this event of me cutting down the tree? Fallout. Yes, I'm going to have to deal with the fallout. Absolutely. Okay, so let's listen out for these items once again in today's storytime. Detective Sonia Moore stood in front of the whiteboard, eyeing the scarce details of her latest case. The victim, a reclusive author named James Hawthorne, had been found dead in his study. It looked like suicide, but the detective was unconvinced. As she interviewed Hawthorne's neighbours, their responses seemed stilted, rehearsed, even. It was as if someone had coached them on what to say. Sonia's instincts told her that there was something else going on. She discovered Hawthorne had been working on a book revealing the corruption scandals a local politician was part of. Sonia couldn't find the original manuscript, but she did find a cryptic note in a drawer in his study: They're coming. I had to make up a story to buy time. If you're reading this, I failed. The case took a turn when Sonia noticed subtle attempts to hide certain things. Security footage had been tampered with, and all the files on Hawthorne's computer had been deleted. Whoever did this was trying to cover their tracks. As she pieced together the clues, Sonia realised the implications reached far beyond a simple murder. The potential fallout from Hawthorne's unpublished revelations could shake the city's political landscape to its core. To cut a long story short, Sonia's persistence paid off. She uncovered a conspiracy involving the politician and several high-ranking officials. They had silenced Hawthorne to prevent their secrets from coming to light. In the end, justice was served, but Sonia still felt that this was just the tip of the iceberg. As she closed the case file, she wondered what other secrets lurked beneath the city's surface, waiting to be uncovered by a determined detective, willing to look beyond the obvious. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. Before you go, please do just take a second to leave a like if you're watching on YouTube or a rating or review if you're streaming on another service. Thank you so much for listening and I look forward to tickling your eardrums again tomorrow. Until then, take very good care and goodbye.