Learn English Vocabulary Daily #16.2 — British English Podcast

Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast.

My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 16, Day 2 of Your English Five a Day.

This is a series that aims to increase your active vocabulary

by five pieces every day of the week from Monday to Friday.

So, let's kick off today's lesson.

We're starting with a noun and it is wear and tear.

Wear and tear.

We spell this W E A R.

And, A N D or an ampersand (&). And then tear, T E A R.

Wear and tear.

Now, wear and tear means the loss or the injury or damage or stress

which occurs over time to an item or person due to overuse or overworking.

I mean, with cars and general household machinery you expect a certain amount

of wear and tear over time, don't you?

So, you don't expect your washing machine to keep going forever, working as well

as it did the very first day you got it.

There will be a certain amount of wear and tear, a certain amount of damage or

loss of function that occurs over time.

My dishwasher at the moment is not working very well.

I can see that the jets that spray the water out, some of them are

clogged, they're blocked with what I can only guess is limescale.

We have very hard water here in London and it can cause chaos with your equipment

that uses water like the kettle, the washing machine and the dishwasher.

So, this dishwasher has been going for years.

We've had it here in this house for at least five years, and it

was already here when we moved in, so it might even be ten years old.

I'm not sure, but it's getting worse over time.

Every time we run it, it makes an even worse noise than

it did the previous cycle.

So, over time, there's a certain amount of damage that occurs,

or loss of functionality that occurs — general wear and tear.

So, here's another example sentence,

"My favourite shoes are showing signs of wear and tear, but they are still so

comfy I don't want to throw them out".

Oh, that reminds me, I had a pair of boots.

They were like Ugg boots, but they had really pretty patterns

on with like sequins and things.

And they were just so pretty, and I always felt like they were my lucky boots.

I felt so good when I wore them.

So, I always wore them to interviews and auditions, and anything where

I wanted to feel at my best.

And they lasted for a while but by the end, they really were

just taking themselves to the bin because they were in such a bad way.

Have you got anything like that?

Anything that's showing signs of wear and tear?

Moving on to a verb now and this is detach, detach.

We spell this D E T A C H.

Detach.

To detach is to try to be less involved or less concerned about something.

So, imagine you have a family member who keeps getting into trouble with the law.

They keep making mistakes and doing silly things like shoplifting perhaps

and getting in with the wrong crowd and drinking too much and maybe taking

drugs and just making bad life choices.

And then, after years and years of this, you just feel like

this is detrimental to your own sanity, to your own mental health.

It's detrimental to your own immediate family, your children and

your relationship because you're constantly giving so much to this

family member who doesn't seem to want to make an improvement in their life.

So, you decide, actually, I'm not going to help you anymore.

If you want help, you need to make good choices and change,

and then I'll be there for you.

But I can't keep doing this.

In that case, you are detaching yourself from that situation or

detaching yourself from that person.

It's like you are stepping away.

You're not going to get involved anymore.

Here's another example,

"Nurses often have to detach themselves from their feelings

when treating patients, they shouldn't take things personally."

Next on our list is an adjective and it is tone-deaf, tone-deaf.

Now this is spelled T O N E hyphen D E A F.

Tone-deaf.

Now, depending on the situation, this could be taken in two ways.

If you describe yourself as tone-deaf when it comes to singing, it means that

you can't hear the pitch of the note, and therefore you sing on the wrong pitch.

You sing in the wrong key.

You're just out of tune, basically.

You're tone-deaf.

And this really is a level of deafness, an inability to really hear the tones.

Many people say they're tone-deaf in singing when they're not.

They just need a little bit of ear training and voice training.

But you could also describe someone as tone-deaf outside of singing.

So, it might be that someone doesn't understand how other people feel

about something or what a person needs in a particular situation.

So, it's like not reading the room, not understanding a situation.

Here's an example sentence,

"I've received a complaint that our management team has been tone-deaf

when it comes to working conditions, the staff are not happy at all".

Next on our list is an idiom and it is in check.

Often this is preceded by keep something in check.

In check.

We're spelling this I N, in.

Check, C H E C K.

If you keep something in check, then you're keeping something

or someone, under control within reasonable limits, of course.

So, it's all about controlling something, guiding something, making sure it

doesn't do what it's not supposed to do, or making sure a person doesn't

behave in a way that's inappropriate.

So, you're keeping them in check.

Just like you keep checking them.

"Are you doing what you're supposed to do?

Yes, you are.

Okay, I'll check you again in a few minutes."

"Are you still doing what you're supposed to do?

I'm keeping you in check."

Here's an example,

"We've got to find ways of keeping our expenses in check this year,

last year we went way over budget".

Alright, last on our list is a phrasal verb and it is burn out.

Often we burn ourselves out.

Okay, so to burn out, we spell this B U R N.

Out, O U T.

To burn out.

To burn out is to get to a point where you have to stop working because you've

become ill or very tired or mentally tired from working too hard or too much.

This is a phrasal verb that I'm very familiar with because it's something

I experience on a regular basis.

'Burnout' is something that creators and entrepreneurs

have to try and keep in check.

They have to make sure that they're not heading towards burnout.

Here's an example sentence,

"If you don't stop working so late, you're going to burn yourself out".

With that phrasal verb in particular, it always makes me think of a candle.

If a candle is burning hard, burning bright, then it will get to the

point where there's no candle left.

It will burn all the way down and burn out.

The flame will eventually go out.

Okay.

So that's a good way to think of it.

Let's now recap everything we've covered today.

We started with the noun wear and tear where you incur damage,

loss or injury over time due to lots of use or overworking.

Then we had the verb detach which is to become less involved

or concerned about a situation.

Then we had the adjective tone-deaf.

Outside of singing, this means to not really understand how other people

feel or understand the situation.

Then we had the idiom in check or to keep in check, which is to keep something

controlled within reasonable limits.

And we finished with the phrasal verb burn out, meaning to work so

hard that you have to stop because you've become ill or overtired.

Right, let's do this for pronunciation.

Please repeat after me.

Wear and tear.

Wear and tear.

Detach.

Detach.

Tone deaf.

Tone deaf.

In check.

Keep in check.

Burn out.

Burn out.

Fantastic.

Now, if I am standing in a room and everyone seems really angry and

upset about something, and I make a handful of jokes and nobody laughs.

But I keep making jokes, I seem completely unaware that the mood of the room is

very angry and frustrated and annoyed.

And I'm making it worse.

What could you use to describe me?

Tone-deaf.

In that situation, I'm completely tone-deaf.

And if I work so hard that I end up with the flu and and I'm stuck in my bed for

days and days, what did I do to myself?

I burned out, didn't I?

I burned out.

And from now on, after recovering from my illness, I need to make sure that

I'm controlling the amount of hours that I'm working and not allow myself

to do the same thing again and burn out.

What idiom could I use to talk about controlling my behaviours?

Keep in check.

I need to keep myself in check.

Absolutely.

And if my friends decide that I'm working so hard they don't want to be

my friends anymore, they don't want to be involved with me anymore, what verb

would we use to describe what they do?

If they remove themselves from me, they become less concerned.

Detach.

They detach themselves from me.

And, oh, my goodness me, I need to get a new washing machine.

Because it's just not working anymore.

It's mostly due to what?

Wear and tear.

Absolutely.

Okay, it's that time in the show where we go to put everything

together in a little story.

A friend of mine, Jack, is a car mechanic who loves his job more than anything.

He works seven days a week, tirelessly fixing cars and making

sure they are in top condition.

His wife, on the other hand, has recently noticed the wear and tear

this demanding job is having on him.

She's tried to detach him from his work and convince him to take a

well-needed holiday, but Jack is completely tone-deaf to her pleas.

He always has an excuse for why he can't leave his work, even for just one day.

However, one fateful day last week, Jack burnt himself out

and realised his wife was right.

Finally, they are taking a break and going away on holiday to put his

health and well-being back in check.

Phew!

As the saying goes, "All work and play makes Jack a dull boy!"

And that brings us to the end of today's episode.

I do hope that you found this useful.

Until tomorrow, take very good care, and goodbye.