Show 820 Tuesday 9 September
Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.
Hi, I’m Sarah, welcome to The Daily English Show.
Today we’re going to look at another conversation from the movie Men in Black.
Last time we did a conversation from that movie I talked about using the hell to add emphasis.
Will Smith’s character said: What the hell are you? instead of: What are you?
Adding the hell expresses his shock or surprise.
Another similar expression is on earth. It’s slightly less strong than the hell, but it’s used in the same way.
Here are some examples of how you can add on earth to sentences to convey your shock or surprise.
What are you doing? What on earth are you doing? Why would he say that? Why on earth would he say that?
In today’s conversation, a character called Beatrice says to her husband: Edgar, what on earth was that? She says that after a spaceship has just landed outside of their house.
By the way, before she says this, there are a couple of good lines that I want to tell you about.
Edgar is a really stupid guy and he’s mean to his wife and he’s telling her off and he says: The only thing that pulls its weight around here is my goddam truck.
To pull your weight is an idiom, which means: to work as hard as everyone else in a job, an activity, etc.
And then right after that a spaceship crushes his truck and he says: figures.
It figures or that figures or just figures is also an idiom: used to say that sth was expected or seems logical. So he’s saying that, sadly, it’s expected that the only useful thing in his life gets destroyed.
STICK NEWS
Kia Ora, this is Stick News. Yesterday two sumo wrestlers were banned from the sport for life after testing positive for cannabis.
Last month a Russian sumo wrester was arrested in Japan for cannabis possession. Police say he had a small amount of the drug in his wallet. He was then banned from sumo for life. After that two other wrestlers were suspected to have smoked pot. They both denied it, but last Saturday sumo conducted its first ever drug tests and both wrestlers tested positive for cannabis. Yesterday, an emergency meeting of top sumo officials was held and both wrestlers were given lifetime bans. The head of the Japan Sumo Association has also announced he will resign to take responsibility for the scandal.
And that was Stick News for Tuesday the 9th of September.
Kia Ora.
Word of the Day
Today’s word is pry.
Apparently this is an American English word which I just discovered when I looked it up in my dictionary. It says that the British English word is prise. I think we use prise too, in New Zealand.
Anyway, pry or prise/prize … is a verb which means: to use force to separate sth from sth else.
And the example here is: He prised her fingers from the bag and took it from her.
So maybe she was holding a bag like this and he prised her fingers from the bag like this.
And in the film, Men in Black, when the spaceship has crashed into Edgar’s truck he goes outside with his gun to investigate and a voice asks him for his gun and he replies: You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers. Which means: I’m not going to give you my gun.
But the alien takes it literally and says: Your proposal is acceptable. And he kills him.
conversations with sarah
#504 What on earth was that?
* This is in chapter 4 on the DVD I have.
Step 1: Repeat Beatrice’s lines.
Step 2: Read Beatrice’s lines and talk to the Alien.
Beatrice Edgar, what on earth was that?
Alien Sugar.
Beatrice I've never seen sugar do that.
Alien Give me sugar. In water. More. More.
Beatrice Edgar, your skin is hanging off your bones.
Alien Oh yeah. There, is that better?
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