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Como falo em inglês: Isso não me cheira bem
By Ana | Podcast Inglês Online
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How’s it going? Hoje eu falo sobre mais idioms a respeito daquela intuição que a gente tem de vez em quando – algo aqui não está cheirando bem, ou simplesmente um palpite sobre o que vai acontecer. Não perca!
How’s it going? 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 check this out: we say ‘I smell a rat’ when we think something’s off. We have a feeling that someone is being deceitful. They’re hiding something; they’re not being completely truthful… Something is wrong, and you smell a rat.
That means that you have this feeling; you can tell that something is wrong. You can tell maybe from the way people are speaking, maybe from the body language of that person – you can tell they’re lying.
I think this is something everyone can relate to, right? You’ve been through this before. Sometimes you can just tell that person is hiding something. Let’s say your work colleague promised to help you with something, and you keep reminding them of it. Then after the second time you’ve brought it up, you notice that you’re the only person talking about it – your colleague Nathan is being very noncommittal. He’s not saying anything now although a couple of weeks ago the two of you agreed that he was going to train you on something. You bring it up and Nathan doesn’t say no, but he doesn’t say yes either. Nice.
You smell a rat. You think Nathan doesn’t want to do it anymore, but doesn’t have the guts to tell you directly. You can just tell by his body language that he’s acting all noncommittal. You smell a rat. So you confront him about it, and he says “Well, I probably won’t have the time to train you since I’ve been asked to participate in a task group”. Whatever that is.
Anyway, I’m thinking you’ll be able to come up with an example pretty easily of a recent situation where you smelled a rat, and you were right! So tell me what your story is in the comments if you feel like it.
What about having a hunch? Having a hunch is sort of similar to smelling a rat, though not really the same thing. Also, when you smell a rat – that is more specific to knowing that something is off. Something is wrong. A hunch, on the other hand, can be about anything, it can be quite positive!
A hunch could be your intuition speaking to you. You’ve got a feeling, you’ve worked out something inside your head and it’s coming to you in the form of a hunch. Your friend Layla tells you “I got a new job! It’s my dream job, and you’ll never guess what it is.”
Well, you have a hunch since Layla has been talking nonstop about how all she wants to do in life is knit little dog jackets, so I don’t know. That could be it. So you say “I have a hunch, Layla. You’ve been hired by a pet shop to knit dog jackets?” and Layla says “Yes!”. So there you go. Obviously, in this case it’s not a real hunch since you already knew what Layla’s dream job was.
A real hunch is when you sort of guess something, seemingly out of nowhere. And your hunch may be wrong, of course. Let’s say you’re playing some kind of friendly game against your friend, and you’re trying to anticipate their moves. You have a hunch they’re gonna go this way. Now, you have a hunch they’re going to go a different way. Sometimes you’re spot on and sometimes you’re wrong.
What do you think – can you apply today’s terms in your life? Let me know and see you soon.
Key expressions
Vocabulary
Noncommittal = qualidade da pessoa que não quer se compromoter com algo; não dá uma resposta firme ou se comporta de maneira a não se comprometer
to have the guts = ter coragem
to come up with = sugerir, propor ou ter uma ideia
something is off = tem algo errado, algo suspeito, estranho
to knit = tricotar, fazer tricô.
to be spot on = acertar na mosca, ser preciso, exato em algo
