Learn the English Phrases "a piece of my mind" and "in one piece"

4,537 views ・ 2023-01-03

Bob's Short English Lessons


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

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In this English lesson,
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I wanted to help you learn the English phrase
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"a piece of my mind."
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Now, we usually use this phrase
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with the verb to give
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and I could say,
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"I'm going to give someone a piece of my mind."
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That means I'm angry with them
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and I'm going to tell them exactly what I think.
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If you were angry with your boss at work, you could say,
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"Tomorrow I'm going to give my boss
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a piece of my mind."
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I'm going to tell him or her exactly
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what I don't like about my job
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or exactly what I don't like about
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how things are going.
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I'm going to give them a piece of my mind.
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So again, it means you're angry, it means you're upset
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and you're going to tell someone exactly how you feel.
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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase
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"in one piece."
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Now, this is kind of a weird phrase.
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"We just had a storm here,
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but we made it through in one piece."
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"The other day I heard on the news
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that someone had a car accident,
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but they made it through in one piece."
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So what I mean by it being a weird phrase is
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it kind of sounds weird
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if you think about the alternative.
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We don't think about that
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when we use it in English, though.
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We use it to mean when something bad has happened
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and we are still feeling good
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and no one was hurt.
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"So we had a bad snowstorm,
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but Jen and I made it through in one piece."
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The alternative, I'm not gonna talk about the alternative.
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We made it through in one piece.
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And again, when we use this in English
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we aren't thinking about something gruesome.
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We're just saying that everything is okay.
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So to review, "a piece of my mind",
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if I was to give you a piece of my mind
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I would tell you exactly
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what I think about something
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and I might even be angry while I'm doing it.
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And when you make it through something in one piece,
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it means that everything went well
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and everyone is doing okay.
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But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.
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This comment is from Judit.
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"Nowadays, I drink a cup of hot chocolate every day.
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I love it too.
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Snowstorm?
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Wow, I hope you and Brent will survive."
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And then I said,
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"We all made it through intact."
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And when I replied to this comment, Judit
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that's when I thought of the phrase in one piece.
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We all made it through intact.
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We all made it through in one piece.
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Let's have a look around though.
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You might be surprised to know
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that we went through what they were calling a blizzard,
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but we don't actually have
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that much snow on the ground.
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The snow was everywhere.
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You couldn't see across the river,
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you couldn't even see across the road.
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I went out to check our mailbox that day
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and there was so much snow blowing
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I couldn't see in either direction.
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So I actually decided to just not cross the road.
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It was far too dangerous.
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But if you look, you'll see
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that you can still see little blades
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of grass sticking up.
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You can see that we did get snow,
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my camera,
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my camera doesn't like the cold.
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We did get snow, but not an outrageous amount.
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Let's spin this way a bit
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so you can see the farm yard a bit better.
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So you can see my tracks,
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you can see the grass,
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you can see the peonies still sticking up,
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the little stubble from the peonies.
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If you look in the distance
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you can see an ominous sky, though,
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the sun above,
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but this very very dark cloud.
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It's not coming this way.
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When I looked on the radar this morning
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that storm is actually moving that way,
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so it's not coming here.
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But yep, we had two days of really really bad weather
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the day before,
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so it was the 23rd and the 24th, yes.
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Our power went out.
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We ran the generator for a bit,
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so we were all safe and sound.
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We made it through in one piece.
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We made it through intact.
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But my brother who lives further south of me
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actually had it worse.
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Their electricity was out for 48 hours,
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almost two days straight,
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and it snowed there the entire time.
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Whereas here, it eventually stopped snowing a little bit
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and it wasn't too bad.
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Let me check my time here.
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I still can't see it.
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It's very, oh, I went overtime, didn't I?
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Oh, well, sometimes I talk too long
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and that's just the way it goes.
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Anyways, it's a beautiful day.
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I'm off to dinner at my siblings,
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with my siblings at my sister's house today.
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That should be fun
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and I'll see you in a couple days
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with another short English lesson.
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Bye.
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