Your English Five a Day #35.2

E310: 🎙️ Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast! I'm Anna, and you're listening to Week 35, Day 2 of Your English Five a Day. This series is 100% dedicated to increasing your vocabulary and improving your listening skills by focusing on five vocabulary items every day of the working week, from Monday to Friday.

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🔆 In today's episode, we start with the idiom "here, there, and everywhere." Next, we have the adjective phrase "to be wiped out", and then, we explore the adjective "moody". We also look at the verb "brighten", and finally, we discuss the idiom "there's no escaping the fact".

🆘 We'll go over the meanings, spellings, pronunciation, and examples, and then reinforce everything with a story to help cement these phrases in your memory. In today's tale, we meet Jasmina, feeling exhausted and moody from overwork, who talks to her supportive boss, Carol, and requests help with her project. Her mood brightens, realising the importance of asking for assistance.

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Transcript

0:01

Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 35, Day 2 of Your English Five a Day. This is the series that is absolutely 100% dedicated to increasing your vocabulary and improving your listening skills."How do we do it?" I hear you ask. Well, we focus on five items of vocabulary every day of the working week, from Monday to Friday. But we don't just do that. We talk around the vocabulary and bring it together at the end in a little story. So, let's start today's episode with the idiom, Here, there, and everywhere. Here, there and everywhere. We spell this here, H E R E. There, T H E R E. And everywhere, E V E R Y W H E R E. Here, there and everywhere. Here, there and everywhere means present in multiple locations or situations. So, for example, I might say,"I saw a stag beetle today.""You saw a stag beetle. That's amazing! I never see stag beetles.""Oh, well, I see stag beetles here, there and everywhere. Maybe in the area I live, maybe they are breeding. Because I see them here, there and everywhere." Here's another example,"Oh, my mind is here, there, and everywhere at the moment. I really can't concentrate on my work today." Sometimes you might say that you've been here, there, and everywhere. So, if I say to you,"Hey, what do you do for work?" You say,"Oh, I'm a presenter. I go to different companies and I present this workshop.""Oh, that sounds fantastic. Where do you do that?""Oh, you know, here, there and everywhere. We literally have covered most of the UK with our workshops.""Wow. That's fantastic." Okay. Next on the list is an adjective phrase and it is wiped out. Hmm... you might think,"Anna, we covered that yesterday." No, yesterday we looked at the phrasal verb wipe out. Today we're looking at the phrase wiped out, to be wiped out. We spell this W I P E D, wiped. Out, O U T. If you describe yourself or somebody else as wiped out, wiped out, then you're saying that they are feeling completely exhausted, completely drained of energy, often to the point where they're feeling emotionally numb. A bit like a zombie."Uhhh..." So, after a very long day at work, if I've recorded hours and hours worth of content, and then spent three or four hours with my children, trying to entertain them, trying to wear them out, then by the end of the day I will more than likely be wiped out. All I'll be able to do is sit down on the couch with a cup of herbal tea and make some grunting noises in response to my partner asking me what I want to do."Uh, I don't know. I'll watch some TV and then go to bed. I'm so tired. I'm wiped out." Okay. Sorry for that awful voice. Okay. Here's another example,"After the marathon, I felt completely wiped out, both physically and mentally." Now, when was the last time you felt wiped out? What caused it? Alright, moving on, we have another adjective and this is moody, moody. We spell this M O O D Y, moody, moody. If you are described as moody, then you are prone to sudden and unpredictable changes in mood. It's usually depicting sadness or irritability or gloominess. I was quite moody as a teenager, to be honest. I struggled through those years, those teenage years when I felt lost in the world. I didn't know who I was or what I wanted to do or where I wanted to be, who I wanted to be with. It was such a confusing time. I felt really, really gloomy. I felt really down about losing my childhood and having to suddenly become responsible and decide what I'm supposed to be doing for a career or a job. So I was often quite moody. Here's another example,"The stormy weather and the gloomy news always makes me feel quite moody." Okay, next on the list is a verb and it is brighten, brighten. We spell this B R I G H T E N. Brighten. Brighten sounds exactly the same as the coastal town of Brighton. It's a beautiful place to visit, actually, Brighton it's south of the UK and they have a pebble beach there. Lots of entertainment venues. It's a good place to go for a night out or a weekend break away, Brighton. But this is the verb brighten, spelled slightly differently, ever so slightly. And it means to make something more colourful, more cheerful or lively. For example,"A smile can brighten even the dullest day, don't you agree?" So we often talk about brightening someone's day. If someone is feeling quite moody, maybe they're feeling wiped out in general because of a very stressful situation and they're feeling wiped out, moody. Maybe they've been running around here, there and everywhere trying to fix people's problems. And you want to do something to make them feel happy, so you send them some flowers to brighten their day. Okay, last on the list is an idiom, and it is there's no escaping the fact. There's no escaping the fact. This is often followed with that, and then the fact. There's no escaping the fact that... There's no escaping. Escaping, we spell E S C A P I N G. Escaping the fact, F A C T, fact. There's no escaping the fact that means something is undeniably true. It can't be avoided. It emphasises the inevitability of the situation. Here's an example sentence,"There's no escaping the fact that winter is coming, and with it, the cold weather." Oh, I don't even want to think about winter right now. We've had such a drab, cold, miserable summer so far. I'm worried that our summer is going to be so short that it'll be over in a week or two and the winter will be coming in once again, lasting far too long. Anyway, let's keep it nice and bright. Let's brighten the mood by doing a quick recap. We started with the idiom here, there and everywhere, meaning present in multiple locations or situations. We had the adjective phrase wiped out, which means that you feel completely exhausted or drained of energy. Then we had the adjective moody, moody, describing someone who's prone to a change in mood, often sadness, irritability or gloominess. Then we had the verb brighten. To brighten is to make something more colourful, cheerful or lively. And we finished with the idiom, there's no escaping the fact that which means something is undeniably true. It can't be avoided. So, let's do this now for pronunciation. Please repeat after me. Here, there and everywhere. Here, there and everywhere. Wiped out. Wiped out. Moody. Moody. Brighten. Brighten. There's no escaping the fact that. There's no escaping the fact that. And just bear in mind, I've added that onto the end of that little phrase, that little idiom, just so that you remember that we have to add the fact afterwards. You could say it as a response to someone making a statement. So someone might say,"Oh, winter is coming, and I might respond with, well, there's no escaping the fact." But usually it appears with the fact in the same sentence,"There's no escaping the fact that winter is coming." And in which case you need that. Okay, so tell me, what adjective do we use to describe someone who's prone to a change in mood, often towards sadness or irritability? They are moody. Yes, a moody person. And what adjective phrase do you use to describe a feeling of complete exhaustion? Wiped out. Wiped out. And you might be wiped out because you've been to multiple locations. What idiom would you use in that case? Here, there and everywhere. And if you were to do something that makes someone feel more cheerful, what have you done, what verb would we use? You might brighten their day, or brighten their mood. And finally, what idiom do we use to say that something is undeniably true? There's no escaping the fact that... Very good. Okay, let's listen out for these items once again in today's storytime. Jasmina went to the coffee machine for the fourth time that morning. She watched as it poured out the strong, black liquid. Her mind was here, there and everywhere. She couldn't concentrate on work. She hoped the coffee might help, but it seemed to make things worse. She was wiped out after spending weeks working on an important project. At first, she had felt energised and prepared to put in a lot of work. But she was becoming more and more exhausted. She was spending long days in the office and had worked during the weekends. She felt moody a lot of the time. Jasmina knew she couldn't continue like this. There's no escaping the fact that I need to talk to my boss, she thought. But she was worried about disappointing her. Despite her fears, after she finished her coffee, she knocked on her boss's door."Come in," said Carol, her boss."Jasmina, what can I do for you?" she said warmly. Jasmina took a deep breath and said,"As you know, I've been working on a big project. It's going well, but it has taken a lot of my time and energy. I'm not sure I can continue to work at my best level. I need some help." She surprised herself by explaining the situation so openly."I'm glad you came to see me," said Carol."I will ask some of the other team members to help you. What exactly do you need?" Jasmina explained what resources she needed and which part of the project she wanted help with. She felt her mood brighten straight away. She felt lucky to have a supportive boss and colleagues. In fact, she wondered why she hadn't said anything sooner. From then on, she decided to ask for help whenever she needed it, instead of trying to do everything herself. Just to remind you, if you would like to get your hands on the Master Sheet, which includes today's vocabulary and the vocabulary from every other episode in the Five a Day series, then you can, for free, by joining the mailing list just click on the link below. Enter your name and your email address and I'll send the database to you. So, until tomorrow, take very good care of yourself. And, goodbye.