Describe people in English with animal adjectives & idioms: sheepish, sluggish, fishy...

Dodo do do dodo do.

Hey, what's that smell?

E, have you been cooking again?

Oh, no, he says it's fishy as well.

Hi, James from www.engvid.com . We're going to work on some animal idioms in a different

fashion.

What I mean by that is you've probably heard many idioms using animals.

The ones I want to use now is how we use them as adjectives to describe something, and why

are we doing this?

I've said before, when it comes to idioms, they are shorthand.

So, instead of saying five sentences, we can use two words, five words, or one sentence

to get across a meaning to someone.

Or, when someone says it, you go oh, I have it.

I've got it right away.

So, I want to teach you these ones because they're commonly used to describe people's

characteristics.

Okay?

So, I've got six of them on the board.

I will go over and explain what they mean.

Before I start, I'll do vocabulary, because how I will help you is by teaching you some

maybe foreign vocabulary, then we'll do a quiz to help you make sure we further your

understanding.

And I'm going to have - may have - I do have a bonus section for you.

Are you ready?

Let's go to the board.

So, Mr. E says "Something seems fishy", and that looks like a dead fish.

If you have a dead fish, you put it in a car at say, 30 degrees centigrade, leave it for

a day or two, it'll be fishy.

But before we get to "fishy", let's look at the other ones we have on the board.

But we'll start with our vocabulary.

Backstabber.

A backstabber is someone that, when your back is facing them, they take a knife and they

go "weeheh, weeheh, weeheh!"

Usually, a backstabber is somebody that looks innocent and you think you can trust, but

you cannot trust them.

They may even seem to be your friend, but they are not nice to their friends.

They're actually worse to their friends than they are to their enemies.

So, a backstabber is someone, when you turn your back, they stab you with a knife.

Untrustworthy.

The next word is "grudge".

When you have a grudge is to hold bad feelings against somebody for something they've done

in the past for a long time.

So, if someone did something to you three years ago and you hold a grudge, you don't

forget that.

You remember it and you still feel angry about it.

Okay?

So, those are two key words we're going to use for the vocabulary to work on our adjectives

here.

Sheepish.

Baah!

Baah!

Sheep are lovely animals.

They're fluffy, they feel nice when you touch them.

They're a little bit shy and nervous.

If somebody is sheepish, it means shy, nervous, or no confidence.

So, if someone had a sheepish smile, it'd be like - not really a smile.

Barely a smile, because they have no confidence to really smile or they're a little bit shy,

okay?

The next one, chicken.

The world's most favorite meat.

I'm sorry.

Anyway.

I'm a little hungry.

When someone is chicken, we have two ways of saying it.

"You are a chicken", or "You are chicken".

You might say, "That's the same".

No.

If you are a chicken, it means you are afraid of many things.

Everything makes you afraid, because that's what "chicken" means, afraid.

When someone says, "You're chicken", it means in this situation, you are afraid.

So, if I said, "Do you want to jump off a tall building?"

"No, that's crazy!"

You might go, "Chicken!".

I go, "Yep, I'm a chicken, because this is not smart, it's dangerous, I'm afraid of it."

But if you're a chicken, everything scares you.

I heard a noise, that scared me, you're a chicken.

People push you, you're a chicken.

Traffic scares you, everything scares you, you're a chicken.

So, it's a little different how we use it.

If someone says, "You're a chicken", it means you're afraid of many things.

If they say, "You're chicken", you're afraid of that particular situation.

It's a small difference, but it's a difference.

Number three: pig.

A pig is an animal, "Oink, oink, oink", that likes to be in the mud.

Mud is earth and water mixed together, and it's dirty.

It likes to roll around.

It's a happy animal, but it's also a dirty animal.

In fact, in some cultures, they don't eat pig or pork because they think pigs are dirty.

When we use the word "pig" in English, we can use it for some slang as well as a basic

meaning.

One meaning means unpleasant.

Remember I said earth and water mixed together and the pigs play in it?

Well, it's kind of dirty.

It's unpleasant.

We don't like to get dirty, so we don't like to be like pigs.

If someone doesn't wash themselves regularly, or here's something else that seems strange

but it's true.

If they use bad language, if they're always saying the f-word or the s-word or saying

bad things about people, they are unpleasant to be around and we call them a pig.

Sometimes, especially, women will call a man a pig if he talks about a woman's body and

other things.

Greedy.

Another thing for "pig" means you like to eat a lot, or you take more than your share.

If Daniel and I have a pizza and, on the pizza, there are ten slices, big pizza.

And I eat eight and Daniel eats two, I'm a pig.

Because he should have five, but I took most of it.

I'm a pig.

I'm probably unpleasant to be around as well.

Anyway.

And in North America, "Bad boys, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when the police come

for you?"

Don't call a police officer a pig.

Just letting you know that.

It's slang, but sometimes you'll hear people in North America, when they're upset with

the police because maybe they stopped them in their car and gave them a ticket, they'll

go "Pig!"

But they will never say it to the police officer's face.

I don't suggest you do, but if you're watching "Bad Boys" with Will Smith, or you're watching

other movies and you hear people say, "The pigs are coming!"

They're usually not talking about "oink, oink", they're talking about the actual police.

Okay?

Good to know.

Snake.

"Hssss."

I had his liver with some fava beans... sorry, bad joke.

But a snake - the Native Americans, Indigenous people from North America, used to say that

people speak with forked tongue.

Forked tongue means you could not trust it, because the tongue went this way and this

way.

It said two things at the same time.

A snake is untrustworthy.

Snakes, as you know, are in the grass.

You never know where they are and when they're going to bite you or strike you.

So, we say "Snake in the grass" to say you can't trust them.

If a person is a snake, they are untrustworthy.

They are also - do you remember backstabbers?

They're the ones who seem friendly to you - remember forked tongue - "I'm your friend"

and then behind your back, "I'm going to kill you!"

If someone is a snake, they are a backstabber or they are untrustworthy.

By the way, this is not Mr. E, before you get confused.

That's Mr. E, this is a snake, very different.

Number five: fishy.

Remember Mr. E says, "That seems fishy to me"?

When a fish is dead and been out of water for a long time, it tends to smell.

And if there were a fish in this room that would have been here for five days, I may

not know where it is but it would make me suspicious that there's a dead animal or fish

in here.

It would make me want to know - something's wrong and I need to find it, because it smells

very bad.

When people say somebody is fishy or something is fishy or a situation, it means something

is wrong.

I have a doubt or a suspicion, and I want to know what is wrong, because I can feel

there's something wrong, because something smells.

Something smells wrong.

Now, let's look at "beef".

Beef, mmm.

Barbeque.

Anyway.

So, when we look at beef, it's quite interesting, because a lot of people have - well, beef

used to be a very popular word to describe a situation with someone else.

And then it fell out of fashion, but we brought it back again, or people brought it back with

modern rap music or urban music.

If you look at movies in the 1930s, if you had a beef with somebody, it meant to have

a problem.

So, if you said I had a problem with you, I have a beef with you, it means I have a

problem that I - yeah, problem.

Yet, when we look at modern - the modern use of beef, they talk about beefing with somebody.

That's a lot of rap music or urban music.

They talk about beefing, but people still do use it on a casual sense, like "Do you

have a beef with me?"

Do you have a problem?

Now, now that we've got all six of these done, I would like to take a quick quiz to test

your knowledge.

Are you ready?

And we are now ready to do the quiz.

Let's see how well you learned those phrases - sorry, those words we used with animals.

The first one we're going to do is: I have had a beef with that guy from the first day

I met him.

Your two options are: problem or good relationship.

I'll give you a second or two to think about which is the correct answer.

Did you say the correct answer is "problem"?

You are correct.

You can actually put the word in there: I have had a problem with that guy from the

first day I met him.

We talked about beef being an old word used in the 50s and 60s or 30s and 50s.

And now, people are using it in urban music and rap, saying "beefing" with someone.

Number two: A lot of people think that Moe is a snake.

Which one would that be?

Very trustworthy or untrustworthy?

Correct.

You could actually put: A lot of people think that Moe is untrustworthy, and replace "snake"

with that one, "a snake".

So "untrustworthy" is it.

Let's look at number three now.

What do you think the answer for this sentence would be?

"You are such a pig looking at women that way!"

Would it be police officer, caring, or rude?

Okay.

Well, the answer is "rude", which I'm sure you know, because rude is another word for

unpleasant.

In this case, we cannot substitute "rude" for "pig", it's more the meaning of what someone

is saying than an actual substitution.

And now, we'll do number four, the final one: There is something fishy about the way Frank

was acting the other day.

Well, it's true, fish live in water which is usually cold.

It's not "cool", but remember we talked about being fishy is suspicious, because something

smells funny.

So, "suspicious" is the correct answer, as "rude" is in number three.

Now, for the bonus, because you stuck around with me this long, I think you deserve it.

Here are three other words, but before I continue, I'd like you to pay attention to something.

The words "fishy", "snake", "beef", and the other one, "sheepish", they tend to be negative

in characterizing people or situations.

So, where you would use this is when you want to describe a person or a thing in a negative

way for most of these ones.

Okay?

Now, I'll do the next three and you'll notice it takes - we go further on the negative zone.

It wasn't my idea, but it seems when we humans look at animals, we tend to look at negative

things about them and put them or project them onto other people.

So, the word "sluggish".

Sluggish means slow, because there is this animal that moves very slowly.

And for some of you, this the first time I have spoken slowly in any videos.

So, a slug moves slowly.

And, for many people, they feel sluggish unless they have a coffee in the morning, right?

Or they wake up tired and go "Oh, I'm sluggish today.

I'm very tired."

Asinine.

Asinine comes from ass, and that's that - my Spanish friends would say "culo", I think.

Yes.

But, that's not it.

It comes from "donkey", burro, the donkey.

Because people think donkeys aren't very smart.

So, when somebody says you made an asinine comment, they mean a stupid comment, because

it's like a donkey would say.

It's not intelligent.

Sorry, donkeys.

I think you're cute.

And finally, squirrely.

This is going to be really hard to explain to you, because a squirrel is basically a

rat that looks really cute.

In Canada, in the parks, we have them and people think they're absolutely beautiful

animals.

They are rats.

They're just cute looking rats.

They eat nuts and they put them in their cheeks, but if you look closely, they're like "Mmm,

I'm a rat!"

Anyway.

But squirrels are nervous.

If you ever see a squirrel in the park, it's like "Oh my God, Oh my God, I'm outside, I'm

outside, I'm all by myself, I'm outside, ah!"

And you're like "Chill out, bud.

Look at all the space."

"Yeah, but I'm afraid."

And they're always jumping around and they run very quickly.

They're nervous and they're restless.

They don't stay in one place.

So, if someone's acting squirrely, they're usually acting in an unusual fashion.

They might be looking around like this and you go, "You're acting squirrely".

Squirrely can also be "crazy".

Because if you had squirrels in your head and they're moving around, you're probably

a little bit crazy, okay?

So, in case someone says "You're a little squirrely", you should say, "What exactly

do you mean?

I know I'm energetic today, or are you trying to call me crazy?"

That's the bonus.

And of course, I have homework for you because we can't get better unless we practice.

Two homework questions I have for you today are worth one hundred points each.

So, when you write in the comments below, please write in the comments below, your answers

for these two questions and you can earn one hundred points for each one.

The first one is: I'm slow in the morning until I have a coffee.

Which word did you learn today for your vocabulary that you can use to replace "slow"?

The second question: Bob, you are too afraid to call that pretty girl.

What word did you learn today that can replace the word "afraid"?

Now, if you did well on this quiz, I'm sure you know the answer to that, and you can put

those answers in the comments and have other people comment on them.

But, I'm about to go, because it's time for me to leave.

But before I do that, I want to ask you to subscribe, and you can do that by looking

somewhere around here, there will be a subscribe button.

When you hit that, there will be a bell.

YouTube doesn't always tell people when my videos come out, so if you hit the bell, it

will let you know when it comes out.

You'll know on your cell phone, your computer, or your laptop that a new video has come out.

Please go to www.engvid.com , where you can do the actual quiz, because we've got a larger

quiz to test yourself on.

You'll also find other wonderful teachers you can learn from, and I look forward to

seeing you again soon.

I always say thank you and I'm going to say thank you now, because without you, none of

this is possible.

Have a great day, glad you enjoyed the video, don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you

again soon.

Have a good one.

I'm a little squirrely right now because the video is over and I've got nothing to do.

Hm hm hm hm hm hm.