Your English Five a Day #37.4

E323: 🎙️ Welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast, your go-to resource for expanding your English vocabulary! I'm your host, Anna, and I'm bringing you Week 37, Day 4 of Your English Five a Day. Each weekday, we delve into five new vocabulary items, exploring their meanings, usage, and pronunciation.

🏡 In today's episode, we start off with the phrasal verb "storm out", followed by the adjective "stubborn". Then, we dive into the nouns "quibble" and "household". Finally, we wrap up with another noun "ironing".

👔 Don't forget to tune in to the pronunciation practice segment, and a quick quiz to review the words. In today's story time, we get a peek into the home life of Tom and Jenny. Living in a usually happy household, they suddenly clash over ironing techniques.

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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 37, Day 4 of Your English Five a Day. This is a little series that just seems to keep growing, where we introduce you to five items of vocabulary every day of the working week from Monday to Friday. And we deep-dive into this vocabulary, then bring it together in a little story in the hopes of entertaining you while also expanding your vocabulary and improving your listening skills. So, let's start today's episode with a phrasal verb and it is very dramatic, it is to storm out. Storm out. We spell this S T O R M. Storm. Out, O U T. Storm out. To storm out is to leave a place or a situation angrily and abruptly. So, if we are having a conversation and you say something that upsets me deeply, I might just turn around and walk out in an angry way. So that would be me storming out. Here's another example,"Jessica stormed out of the meeting after her proposal was rejected." Have you ever dramatically stood up and stormed out? Was it a work situation or was it a personal situation? I've stormed out in the past, I think with just my friends, so I remember a couple of occasions when I was younger getting upset within a group and storming out. I remember doing it at college actually. We were in a drama class and everyone was supposed to mimic someone else in the group and we were all supposed to guess who they were mimicking. And one of my very good friends did a very unkind portrayal of me and everyone jumped in and said,"Oh, that's definitely Anna." And it really upset me. And so I stood up and stormed out in floods of tears. Very dramatic. Okay, so next on the list is the adjective stubborn. Stubborn. We spell this S T U B B O R N. Stubborn. Stubborn. This instantly makes me think of my three-year-old. Stubborn means that you will not change your mind, your opinion, your attitude, your actions. Whatever you've decided to do or whatever opinion you hold, it cannot be changed if you are stubborn. My three-year-old is so stubborn. It's so tiring as a parent to have such a stubborn child. If he decides he's doing something or he wants something then it's impossible to make him change his mind. Here's another example of using stubborn,"Despite the overwhelming evidence against her, Anya was so stubborn that she continued to claim she was innocent of all charges". Next on the list is a noun and it is quibble. Quibble. This is a fun little word quibble. We spell this Q U I B B L E. Quibble. Quibble. A quibble is a minor, often very petty, point of contention, a little argument or a little disagreement about something. So it's a petty little argument. Here's an example,"The lawyer's quibble over the exact wording of the contract delayed the procedures." Sometimes when you run a business and you're so passionate about your business, you can get really caught up in the minor details. So for example, we're doing a redesigning of the website at the moment and I can get caught up on the smallest thing like the alignment of text or whether we should have a full stop at the end of a subtitle or not. You know, these tiny little details, the shade of the font. Shouldn't it be brighter? Shouldn't it be bolder? It's something that's very petty and very silly, but you can end up being quite passionate about these little things. And so you have a little quibble about it. Next on the list is the noun household. Household. We spell this H O U S E H O L D. Household. Household. The household is the group of people that are living together in the same place. So typically a family or a group of friends, they are a household. So, who is in your household? My household consists of myself, my partner and my two children. Oh, and my cat. That's my household. We are a happy household. Disorderly at times, but happy nonetheless. Okay, so here's an example sentence,"I've never seen such a happy household as my neighbours. They are always laughing, joking, and spending quality time together." Next on the list is another noun and it is ironing, ironing, ironing. Notice I don't pronounce the R. We spell it I R O N I N G. Ironing. Ironing. Ironing is the act of making clothes flat using an iron. It might not just be clothes, it could be tablecloths or napkins. Some people iron their bedding. I don't iron my bedding. In fact, I rarely iron. I try to avoid ironing if I can. When I was younger, I used to iron for a living. So I would let people bring that ironing around to my house or I'd go and pick it up and I'd literally pick up huge bin liners full of ironing and then I'd spend my entire day ironing other people's clothes, ironing their underwear and their bedding and all their shirts and trousers and T-shirts and socks all for something like£1.50 an hour or something. I'd spend the whole day doing it and only make£15 or£20 pounds. It was very depressing, and I burnt myself many times. Anyway, enough about my sordid past. So ironing, the act of making clothes flat with an iron. Here's an example sentence,"I absolutely hate doing the ironing. It's one of the most boring chores ever!" I have to say, the one good thing about ironing is you can actually iron while watching something. So, if you need to catch up on a series on Netflix or something like that, then you can set your ironing board up and plug in your iron and do your ironing while you're watching something. You just have to be careful that you don't burn yourself. Okay, so that's our five for today. Let's do a quick recap. We started with the phrasal verb storm out, which means to leave a place or a situation angrily and abruptly. Then we had the adjective stubborn, which means that you will not change your mind or your opinion. You're set in your ways. Then we had the noun quibble, a little petty argument about something, a petty disagreement. We had the noun household, which refers to a group of people that are living together in the same place. And we had the noun ironing, describing the act of using an iron to make clothes nice and flat. So let's now do this for pronunciation purposes. Please repeat after me. Storm out. Storm out. Stubborn. Stubborn. Quibble. Quibble. Household. Household. Ironing. Ironing. Very good. Okay, what is the adjective that I used to describe my three-year-old who will not change his mind? Stubborn. Yes. And when I was at my college doing a drama class where someone made fun of me, what did I do in anger? I left the place. But what phrase a verb would we use? I stormed out. I left in anger, I stormed out. And what noun describes a minor little point of contention, a minor disagreement? A quibble, a quibble. And what noun is the act of making clothes flat? The chore that I hate. Ironing. Yes. And if you're talking about a group of people who live together in the same place, what noun could you use? Household. Yes, my household. Alright, listen out for these items once again in today's storytime. Who would have thought that a quibble about how to do the ironing would lead to such a big fight!? Jenny and Tom prided themselves on their mostly happy household. With such different personalities, arguments sometimes happen. Tom is calm, organised and enjoys routine. Jenny is more spontaneous but can be chaotic and messy. Despite their differences, they do their best to resolve disputes without screaming at each other, slamming doors or going silent. Jenny knew Tom could be stubborn too. But this time, he took it to a whole new level. Tom hated doing the ironing. So one Sunday afternoon, Jenny offered to do it for him. To make it less boring, she listened to a podcast while she tried to get the creases out of their shirts. Suddenly, she heard Tom saying,"No, not like that", as she ironed his shirt collar. She hit pause on the podcast and took out her headphones."You're doing it wrong.""What am I doing wrong?" She asked, bewildered."That's not how you iron a shirt collar," Tom exclaimed."It's how I iron mine!""Well, it's not the right way to do it." Jenny passed Tom the iron and stormed out shouting,"Iron your own stupid shirts." She was annoyed at being criticised after offering to help. Seeing how upset he had made Jenny, Tom left the ironing and went to apologise."I'm sorry babe, I'm a bit stressed out. I have an important meeting at work next week. I want everything to be perfect, including my shirts. The way you iron them is fine.""That's not what you said a few minutes ago," replied Jenny."I know I was being stubborn. I appreciate your help. I need to relax and let you do things your way.""Even if it's not perfect?" she said, smiling."Exactly," said Tom."OK, apology accepted. You can finish the ironing though. I'm going to listen to my podcast in peace.""Of course, babe." he said, as he leaned in to kiss her. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. I do hope you found this useful. If you did, please take a second to leave a like, a rating, or a review. And don't forget to come back tomorrow for another episode of your English Five a Day. Until then, take very good care and goodbye.