Idioms about Winning & Losing - 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

Hi everyone. I'm Jennifer from English with  Jennifer. If you've been following the U.S.  

presidential election, you know it's been  a tight race. But it's pretty much over,  

and there's one winner: Joe Biden. About  half the country is happy with the outcome,  

and the other half isn't. People react differently  to winning and losing. There's a lot you can learn  

about someone when you watch them compete and  then see how they handle victory or defeat.  

In this lesson, we'll study vocabulary  related to winning and losing.  

Let's start with the basics. "Win" is  the verb. Who's the person who wins?  

The winner. The opposite of winning is losing.  Who's the person who loses? The loser. "Win"  

is also the achievement of winning. It's the  same thing as a victory. The opposite is a loss.  

If you look at any sports team, you'll see their  record, and you can count their wins and losses.

No one likes to lose, but there are different  ways to do it. If you lose gracefully,  

then you stay in control of your emotions enough  to congratulate the winner. A sore loser is the  

opposite. A sore loser is someone who gets angry  about losing and then blames others for the loss.

Of course, just because you won, doesn't mean you  should go around gloating. To gloat means to be  

happy with your success in a selfish way to the  point where you're happy that your opponent lost.

In fact, you enjoy rubbing it in. You want  to remind your opponent that they lost  

and make them feel bad about it. The better  thing to do is to be a gracious winner.  

That's someone who wins, but still  treats their opponent with respect.  

Gracious winners and losers shake hands  at the end and sincerely say, "Good game."

It's hard to accept defeat when  you were very close to winning.  

The 2020 presidential election in the United  States was really tight in some states. It's  

somewhat easier for the loser to accept the  outcome when there's a decisive win. To win  

decisively means to win clearly, with no  doubt. A decisive defeat can't be argued.

You can win decisively. You can win easily.

When we talk about how close a competition was, we  can talk about winning by a large or small margin.  

In the case of the presidential elections,  Biden or Trump won by a large margin in  

most states. But in others, it took longer to  count the votes, and the win was by a narrow or  

narrower margin. In other words, fewer  votes separated the winner from the loser.

From horse racing, we have the expression "to  win by a nose," meaning not by much. The opposite  

is to win by a mile. Another way we can  say that someone won by a large margin  

is to say they won by a landslide. Winning by  a landslide means that one person received an  

overwhelming number of votes. Which of  these expressions are easier to remember?

Sometimes we can't even talk about the  margin of victory because there's a tie.  

A tie is when both sides do equally well.  There's no clear winner. In elections,  

there can be a runoff election. That's a second  election to determine the winning candidate.

In the sports world, there are different ways to  break a tie. In hockey, they go into overtime.  

Sometimes there's a shootout. In golf, they  have a sudden death playoff. That's when  

they play hole by hole until one person beats  the other. Tiebreakers can be really intense.

We talked about gracious  winners and losers in general.  

In sports, we can talk about sportsmanlike  conduct. If you have this kind of behavior,  

then you respect the other team, and you  treat them fairly both during the game and  

at the end. It's good sportsmanship  to shake hands at the end of the game.

Acknowledging the winner means  recognizing one's own defeat.  

It's not always easy to do, but at  some point, the loser must concede.

In 2020, this may take longer than usual.  

Usually the losing candidate makes a  phone call and concedes to the winner.

Eventually Trump must concede defeat. He  must concede the election. He must concede  

power to Biden, the President-elect. Will  there be a concession speech? We'll see.

Some people spend their whole life competing.  They're very competitive. Through competition,  

though, they've probably learned  that you can't win 'em all.  

You simply can't be the winner every time. Right?

You may enjoy a winning streak where you  have a long series of wins and no losses,  

but every professional athlete will tell you that  all good things come to an end. That's just life.  

You win some, you lose some. So the saying goes.

There's a lot to be learned from competition.  First place is nice, but there are worse things  

to lose, like losing face. "To lose face"  means to lose respect and status. You're  

publicly humiliated. If you're caught lying  and cheating, for example, you'd lose face.

In games, we play to win, of course, but we also  play to have fun. Agreed? Sometimes, though,  

winning isn't the most important thing.  It's more about what we're fighting for.  

When celebrities go on game shows, for instance,  they play to win money for a charity. Even if  

they lose, they receive a small sum of money  to donate to the charity of their choice.  

They also play to raise awareness for their cause.

They say that our attitude influences our chances  of success, and I agree with that. We need to be  

positive. Sometimes, however, I think we secretly  know we're fighting a losing battle. This means  

that we understand no matter how hard we try, we  won't likely succeed, but we keep trying anyway.

This can be in a competition with others or in our  individual lives, where we set goals and work hard  

to achieve them. One setback after the other can  make us feel like we're fighting a losing battle.

Quiz time! Let's see how well you remember  the words and expressions from this lesson.

One. What do we call someone who gets angry  about losing? A sore loser. Two. What's the  

action about being selfishly happy about your  victory and someone else's defeat? Gloating.

Three. Instead of rubbing it in, you can be a  nice winner. What kind of winner can you be?  

A gracious winner.

Four. What are two other ways to say  that someone won by a large margin?

Win by a landslide and win by a mile.

Five. What's another way to say  that someone won by a narrow margin?

Win by a nose.

Six. When there's a tie, what must we have?

A tie breaker.

Seven. If you have sportsmanlike  conduct, what do you show?

Good sportsmanship.

Eight. Who makes a concession speech?

The loser. The loser must concede.

Nine. When you lose respectability,  what else do you lose?

You lose face.

Ten. When you try without much success or  without hope of success, what are you fighting?

A losing battle.

And here's one bonus question. What  does every sports team want to enjoy?  

That long series of wins?

A winning streak.

We'll end here. Please like and share the  video if you found it useful and interesting.  

As always, thanks for watching and happy studies!

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