Tag Archives: fruits

31 Jan

Is it in the bag?

Who taught: Kim

Money in the bag (source: http://cicmusic.wordpress.com/)

As you know, I teach at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). A few days ago, I stumbled upon a youtube video that is about the stereotypes of CMU. Typically, the workload at CMU is intense and heavy. Students spend a lot of hours in libraries and meeting rooms. From the comments on the video, I found one very funny saying among CMU students. They say that the campus was made up of two types of people “the fruits” (drama, fine arts) and “the vegetables” (science, engineering). Sadly (??!!), I was one of the vegetables because I graduated from the School of Computer Science (SCS). Consequently, I am now a vegetable grower since I teach computer science students. Well… vegetables are well known as healthy food. I will do my best to grow nice organic ones so that they can help people.

About two weeks ago, I heard a very happy news from my friend, Kim. She applied for the Fulbright scholarship program a few months ago. She changed her status on Facebook, saying that she passed the first round. I do not know how many people know the program but it is actually a huge one to get as a student in the U.S. I was so happy that I commented saying that, “Awesome! So happy to hear that!” Of course, there were her other friends who added comments. She replied, saying, “It is not in the bag yet. But I will keep you posted.”

Not in the bag… That was a new one to me. I am sure you guys can also understand what it means, right? So, I replied to her, “That is a new one and it will be going into my blog.” That is what is happening now.

If you know the etymology of the expression, you will definitely be able to feel the expression. Based on my research, this expression is from the 16th century. At that time, bird hunting was famous and hunters go out with a bag. When they finally retrieve a bird and put it in the bag, they now can declare that they catch a bird for sure.

Can you feel it? This is the question Jean asked me when I say that “In the bag is the new one to me!” I now feel the expression a lot better after knowing the etymology. How about you? Don’t you like to know etymology of new expressions? Here is today’s homework! Why don’t you ask your American friends whether they know the etymology of this expression? I bet many of them would not know which is not surprising at all. We just use many expressions of our mother tongue without thinking about their origins, don’t we?

31 Mar

fruits in phrases – Is apple winner?

From Monday till today of this week, my company has provided free lunches. During the lunch time, we also had sort of meetings. In the meetings, Scott made a series of presentations about our new consulting services. I found a very interesting one from the meetings. He used the same expression a few times, “Golden Nugget.” In the context, I believe it was supposed to mean something like “real good core value of a company.” Am I right? I will let our other Professional Services team members add their thoughts on this. Then, my curiosity killed me so that I had to look it up in a dictionary. Then, I found the following from the urban dictionary.

The First piece of excrement that comes of out after a long constipation allowing the persons bowels to empty.

Oh no! so gross! I hope he did not mean this one in the meetings. (Wait! Nobody laughed when he said this.) I was not able to find any other good definitions as I felt from the meeting. Which one is more correct and used by people?

Speaking of the expressions I heard from the company meetings, the other day, I heard this one, “low-hanging fruit.” This means some sort of goal or target you can achieve easily. I can guess the origin of the expression. Thinking of an apple tree, it is a lot easier to pick the low-hanging ones from the tree. Any fruits hung high, it requires a ladder and a lot of efforts.

But, then I had to make sure if this one is really safe for me to use in the future meetings I would participate. So, I looked it up. You know what I found in the urban dictionary. Check this out!

Girls who are somewhat hot – but not too hot, and who often work in posiitons of high public interaction but with low-barriers-to-entry, thus making them open and attractive targets on the one hand, but often self conscious and/or harboring self esteem issues on the other. This, as a whole, makes them susceptible and quite receptive to any overtures from the opposite sex. I.e., They are the easiest of fruit to pick.

What is wrong with the urban dictionary? Is this really something I can rely on? Andrew! I do not think urban dict is my friend any more. –)

Oh, there are other expressions that have fruits in it.

1. big apple : easy one! New York City! I have no idea about the origin of this one. Does anybody know?

2. apple bottom : I learned this one from Jessy. When she was working at a clothing store, there was a jeans brand. It was “apple bottom jeans.” They are for women. Can you guess what this means? Yeah, it describes women’s butt. But, not all of them. It should be looking good from back. I know it is personal. For example, all of the male coworkers of Jessy said, “Jessy, I do not think you have apple bottom.” Well, honey, I do think you have. You got THE apple bottom! 🙂

I guess apple is the Gold medal list when it comes to the expressions with fruits in it???