Meaning of TAKE THE BULL BY THE HORNS and JUMP IN WITH BOTH FEET - An English Lesson with Subtitles

2,716 views ・ 2020-04-01

Bob's Short English Lessons


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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So, when I was a kid, we had cows in this barn behind me.
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We milked cows, but we also had a bull.
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So, cows are female and bulls are male,
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and the bull had really big horns.
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We have an English phrase though,
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to take the bull by the horns
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or to grab the bull by the horns.
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And that means when you have a job to do
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and you just get started on it right away.
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You don't wait around.
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You don't sit around
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thinking about whether you want to do it or not.
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When you take the bull by the horns,
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it means that you get started on that job right away.
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You just decide to yourself that you know what you're doing,
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you know how to do it.
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You're just gonna take the bull by the horns
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or grab the bull by the horns
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and get started on it right away.
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By the way, when I was a kid
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and we had cows and we had one bull,
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I was really afraid of the bull.
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He was really, really big and he was quite scary.
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I would never have grabbed that bull by the horns literally.
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01:00
We have another phrase here, to jump in with both feet
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or to jump in with two feet.
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When you jump in with both feet on something,
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it means almost the same thing.
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It means you're excited to do it, you want to get started,
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and so you just jump in with both feet
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and you get started right away.
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When spring starts on the farm, Jen jumps in with both feet.
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She gets outside right away,
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even if the weather isn't very nice,
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and she starts doing all of her jobs on the farm.
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You can actually see behind me a little bit
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where she's cleaned up some of the area
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where peonies will be growing.
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When spring starts to get beautiful--
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When spring starts, Jen jumps in with both feet.
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So, again, when you take the bull by the horns,
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it means you get started on something right away.
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And when you jump in with both feet,
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it means you get started on something
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with a lot of excitement.
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Anyways, Bob the Canadian here.
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I hope that made sense today
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and I hope you're having a good day.
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I'll see you tomorrow in the next video.
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