Hoje eu falo sobre idioms muito comuns aqui no Reino Unido, e que ouvi recentemente por causa do que aconteceu numa saída em grupo. Não perca!
Transcrição
Hi, all. You’re listening to the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast, and today I’m telling you what happened at a recent group outing.
Thank you for listening and for telling everyone you know, and enjoy the podcast!
So you know when you get together with a friend and you catch each other up on what you’ve been up to… That’s what my friend Yasmin and I did about a week ago. So Yasmin was telling me that back in November her friend Sofia organised an outing on a Friday night. And here’s the first piece of vocabulary I’d like to highlight for our episode today: organise an event, organise an outing and so on. That’s what a British person will say when he or she is the one planning the event.
I’ll give you an example: a few weeks ago I organised dinner for a few friends of mine. I texted everyone with potential dates, heard back from them and settled on the final date. Then I called the pizza place, made a reservation and texted everyone back with the details. So I organised dinner for us, and later that evening my friends said “Thank you for organising”. This is more of a British way of saying it – I guess in the US you’d say something like “plan dinner” rather than organise.
So anyway, Yasmin’s friend Sofia organised an outing for herself, her boyfriend John, Sofia and two other people. So that was a total of 5 people. They went to a new pub in the neighbourhood, and once there they found a table and grabbed some drinks. Sofia, however, was disappointed that there was no dance floor. She really wanted to dance that night, and she was expecting to find a good dance floor and some nice music.
My friend Yasmin told me that the rest of the group was actually pleased with the pub, Yasmin included. Sofia wouldn’t let it go, though. She insisted on moving the party to a different pub with a dance floor, but by then it was already 10pm and no one really felt like leaving. Well, Sofia decided to go anyway – so she left and John, her boyfriend, went with her.
About a half hour later Sofia texted Yasmin, asking her to come to the other pub. Yasmin texted back saying she didn’t really feel like going as she was having a good time with the two other girls. Sofia insisted, saying that John was – listen to this – in a strop, and if Yasmin came over his mood might improve. To be in a strop means to be moody, to be in a bad mood. It’s British slang – never heard that in the US.
So basically Sofia wanted Yasmin to get to the second pub ’cause she thought John’s mood would improve – that’s because Yasmin and John have been friends for years. John was in a strop… And here’s another idiom my friend used to describe the situation – she said “Sofia told me John was throwing his toys out of the pram”. What does “pram” mean? A pram is a stroller – a four-wheeled sort of chair where you put a baby – and then you push it, of course! So the baby will often have toys in the pram, right? And when the baby has a strop and wants to throw a little tantrum, he or she will start throwing their toys out of the pram.
So when Yasmin told me that John was throwing his toys out of the pram, what she meant was, John was being immature and behaving like a child – maybe throwing a little temper tantrum. I think we can all think of examples when someone we know behaved like an immature child and threw their toys out of the pram.
Please let me know in the comments, and talk to you next time!
Key expressions
organise (an event, an outing)
be in a strop
throw toys out of the pram
Vocabulary
a group outing = uma saída em grupo
catch someone up (on something) = atualizar alguém (sobre algo); contar as novidades a alguém (sobre algo)
Ana criou um blog de dicas de inglês em 2006, e depois de muito pesquisar o que faz alguém ganhar fluência numa segunda língua, criou seu primeiro curso de inglês em 2009.
I think the last time I threw my toys out of the pram was when my little sis got a Christmas present and I got nothing from parents. It really pissed me off. But after some years, I started being the one who always buys presents for her.
