How are you doing? You’re listening to the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast. Thank you for telling everyone you know about this podcast and, enjoy!
So think about the last time you had a brilliant idea during a conversation, or an amazing suggestion that you were about to make… Then, before you could open your mouth, your friend or a coworker went ahead and said the exact same thing. Just a few seconds after you had that brilliant thought, and you were getting ready to say it. Somehow, your coworker… Todd had the same thought, and he was faster than you. Todd beat you to the punch.
I think many of you listening today will be able to relate. The situation I just described is not uncommon; it happens fairly often. It’s kinda funny how sometimes people have the same idea at the same time.
I remember listening to an interview with a TV director once and he was telling the interviewer about this great idea he had for a TV show. It was something he had been thinking for a while, really original and interesting. And, what do you know? Just when he was about to start developing the idea he heard about this new show that another TV producer was working on. Guess what: it had the same premise. So his amazing idea wasn’t new or original anymore… The other producer beat him to the punch.
We also use this idiom in a figurative way, of course. Not everything is a competition, but if anyone, let’s say… achieved something faster than you, you can say “Hey, you beat me to the punch!” So let’s say you and your friend Sam were chatting the other day about making ice cream yourselves. So today you bump into Sam and he tells you he’s made ice cream. You haven’t yet, so you say “You beat me to the punch! How was the ice cream?”
Or let’s say that you and your brother still live at home and depend on your dad for money and other stuff. You’re getting ready to ask your dad for a relatively large sum of money to buy a bike, and then you learn your brother has done just that while you were thinking. Your brother beat you to the punch.
If you’re used to watching American TV shows, you’ve probably heard it before: “You beat me to it”. Someone was going to say something and then someone else said it first. It’s interesting that there’s another expression with beat that almost means the opposite: beat around the bush. When someone’s beating around the bush, they’re sort of like going around in circles and not getting to the point. They’re either afraid of saying something or they’re not sure how to express their ideas… sometimes you can tell, though, that the other speaker wants to say something but for some reason keeps hinting at it, rather than just communicating it clearly. They’re beating around the bush. You can check out a previous episode with this idiom.
I’m sure you can think of an example when someone beat you to the punch. Was it your brother or sister? Was it a coworker, when you were ready to give your boss an idea and he or she beat you to the punch? Let me know! Tell me your story, and see you next time.
Key expressions
Beat someone to the punch
Beat (me/you/etc) to it
Vocabulary
to bump into someone = maneira informal de dizer: encontrar com alguém por acaso, esbarrar com algúem
large sum of money = grande quantia de dinheiro
to hint at = dar a entender, insinuar ou sugerir 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.
Last week i was listening to some of your old podcast and i remembered that every year you used to made some recap podcast with some of the main idioms in that year. I had an idea here, it’s actually a suggestion.. why don’t you make a recap podcast every month ? I think that would be awesome because every time that you use an expression that you taught on previous episodes, is even more efficient to remember those idioms (isolated words too). I know that you make this with some podcast, but i think if you do this with all of your futures episodes it would make a huge difference to help internalize some idioms. What do you think ?
Hi Maurício,
Thanks for the suggestion :-)
I’ll keep that in mind. Right now it’s a bit hard for me to commit to doing that but who knows – I may try that out in the future.
