'Love hormone': Are scientists wrong? BBC News Review

The love hormone. Are scientists wrong? A new study suggests they might be.

This is News Review from BBC

Learning English. I'm Neil. And I'm Beth. Make sure you watch

to the end to learn vocabulary to talk about this story.

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Now, the story.

Are scientists wrong

about the so-called love hormone? Decades of research

suggests the chemical called oxytocin is linked to love and friendship.

But, a new study says this hormone might not be necessary

for social relationships after all.

You've been looking at the headlines,

Beth. What's the vocabulary?

We have 'upend', 'overrated' and 'not so fast'.

This is News Review from BBC Learning English.

 

Let's look at our first headline.

This is from Spectrum.

'Mind-blowing' study upends conventional wisdom on oxytocin.

So, the headline says that a new study, which is mind-blowing,

which means incredible, will change the way we think

about this love hormone, oxytocin and we are looking at the word 'upend'

which means change completely.  

It does, yeah. Let's think about it literally.

So, it's made up of 'up' and 'end'.

Now, I have a mug here.

If I upend it, then the water or coffee might come out.

Yes, we're lucky

there's no water in there.

If there was, it would be quite dramatic and that is important to this word,

'upend'. It describes complete changes, dramatic changes,

not little ones. That's right.

So, according to this headline, this study completely changes, or upends,

what we think we know about the love hormone.

Now, this word 'upend' is also used a lot for situations.

If we think about Covid,

it really upended everyone's plans for a few years.

Yep. OK, let's look at that again.

 

Let's have a look at our next headline.

And this is from Gizmodo.

Oxytocin's reputation as the love hormone might be overrated.

OK, there's a similar theme in this headline to the first one,

but we are looking at the word, 'overrated'.

Yes. So, the word

'overrated' means that something is not as important

or not as good as people think it is. So, in this headline,

it's saying that the idea that oxytocin as the

love hormone might not be as accurate as people think.

Can we break this word down, Neil?

Yes, we can.

It's got two parts 'over' and 'rate'. 'Rate' means to say how good

you think something is and 'over' is a prefix

which means 'more than'. You put them together, 'overrated' means

something's not as good as people say.

Yeah. So, we can use 'overrated'

for lots of different things.

If you think about music, books, sports people.

Maybe these are things everyone else thinks are amazing,

but you think,

well, they're not so good –

these are 'overrated'.

Yeah, like those superhero movies.

They are so overrated.

Everybody loves them. I think they're boring.

I think they're really good!

Anyway, a note on spelling and pronunciation.

So, 'overrated' has two Rs in the middle

but this doesn't affect the pronunciation.

Now, we also have the opposite of this word, which is 'underrated'

and that means that people don't realise how good something is.

OK, let's look at that again.

 

Time for our next headline.

This is from France 24. Love hormone?

Not so fast, new study suggests. Yes, so this headline is

similar to the previous two.

It's talking about this love hormone, oxytocin, and perhaps it's not

as important as scientists previously thought. We are looking at

'not so fast'. Now, those words separately,

I understand. But when you put them together,

what's the sense?

Yeah, this is a great expression!

So, we often use it to say that people shouldn't make a decision too quickly

or that maybe things are a bit more complicated than you think.

Now, here, it's asking people to think again about oxytocin.

Yes. And that's a metaphorical use, but we can use it literally.

Yeah, we can. So, a more literal example

might be a teenager that says to their parents

"I'm going out", but they say

"not so fast,

you haven't finished your homework yet".

Yes. And we have lots of other expressions with a similar meaning.

Can you tell us?

Yeah, we have, 'hold on a sec',

'wait a minute', 'hang on'.

We use all of these in the same way.

Are we finished now, Neil? Not so fast!

Let's have a look at that again.

We've had 'upend' – completely change the way we think

'overrated' – it's not as good as you think it is.

 

And 'not so fast' –

slow down, wait.

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