Monthly Archives: November 2011

28 Nov

dapper and slick

Who taught: Chris and Danny

Dapper Justin Bieber (source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/)

From time to time, I visit tech startups with my colleagues and have conversations about any possible partnership between the program that I belong to as a faculty member and the companies.

About 10 days ago, Tami and I visited one cool startup in Pittsburgh which is specialized in mobile application development. As we get into the office, one thing we noticed was that all of the people were wearing business attires or suits. We felt that we were underdressed. Chris who is one of the co-founders of the company came down, a few minutes later, and told us why they are wearing nice.

He said, “Don’t worry! Today is Pretty Friday! Employees are supposed to wear cloths to make them prettier.” After a very productive meeting with him, I came back to my office. Not surprisingly, he also updated his company’s status on Facebook saying, “Pretty Friday! Branders are looking dapper today.”

To be honest, I had no idea what “dapper” means even though I could easily figure out that it must be something good. I was thinking, “hmm… is it the comparative form of ‘dap’ or what?”

As I was looking it up in a dictionary, I remembered another word my friend Danny used a long time ago. Before I talk about another word, what is dapper?

Neat and trim in dress or appearance, typically of a man.

So, yeah.. it is a good word to use.

In a very similar situation, Danny used a different word. At that time, he and I were students at CMU and we were in different teams for final projects. On the last day of the projects, we all had to give presentations and demos about what we had done. To give a better impression to judges, we all wore suits. When we met in an elevator, he said to me, “Oh, you look very slick today.” Similar to dapper’s case, I did not know what slick means at that time but was able to decode what he meant.

Now, I think I have at least two words to say whenever I see my friends wearing suits or very neat business attires.

One big difference between these two words is that slick can be used for broader subjects than dapper. For example, if you want to buy an iPad 2, you could say to your wife, “Honey, you should see it. It is so slick.” Oh.. you want to buy a BMW?? Then, you can definitely persuade your wife by saying, “A new 2012 BMW is very slick. The best thing is that it makes you look even slickier when you drive it.”

21 Nov

stick it to the man

Who taught: Amber

Greenfield Bridge (source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/perfesser/)

Occupy Wall Street (OWS)! Sounds familiar? Ever since this movement started, there have been many similar demonstrations in other cities in the U.S. There is, of course, Occupy Pittsburgh. If you happen to not to know what OWS is, you should check out this wikipedia page.

People who are involved in Occupy Pittsburgh usually stay in downtown where Bank of New York Mellon, one of the major investment banks in the U.S., is located. But they also show up here and there in the city.

A few days ago, I was skimming through my facebook news feed and a new status from Amber caught my eyes. She wrote:

Occupy Pittsburgh…shutting down the Greenfield bridge during rush hour is NOT sticking it to the man!

Until “NOT” part, it was pretty simple and easy but then there was this expression, “stick it to the man.” So, before I get into the details of the expression, I gotta talk more about “the man” part. Do you know who “the man” is? It is whoever has the power or authority. For a country, it is mainly its government. For a company, it is the management team, etc. Now, you get the idea about the man, right? If you stick it, or whatever, to this man, what are you trying to do? You are basically rebelling against the man. It is a little hard to feel. And, also a little vague.

To remember this expression, I think like this: Consider myself being a man in the old days and the man to be the king of the country that I am in. And, I now try to stick a dirty thing, like trash, to the king. How dare I am! What will happen to me is pretty obvious, huh?

That’s how I think to feel and remember this expression. Hope you get to feel this too.

Hey, you know what is better? If you yourself become the man, then you do not need to try to stick it to the man. In this sense, if you are really good at something, your friends would say, “You are the man,” to you. That is for sure a good thing to hear.

16 Nov

let him stew

Who taught: Teresa

A cook holding a cooker (source : http://vspages.com/)

Do you cook? I personally do not really cook much other than ramen noodles. I am a way better cook than Jessy when it comes to ramen noodle soups. Speaking of cook, one of the questions I used to have on my English exam when I was a middle school student was the difference between cook and cooker.

Cook can be a verb as well as a noun. We all know what it means as a verb. As a noun, it means a person who prepares or cooks food. What is cooker? A cooker is an appliance used for cooking food. It sounds like I am preaching to the choir. You would be like… “Hey Terry! I know what they means. What’s the point? Do you think I did not pass my middle school English?”

Let me tell you this! I have a friend who has been living in the U.S. for more than 20 years (And, she got a bachelor’s degree.) and she still use “cooker” instead of “cook” to mean a person who prepares food. My guess is that she would distinguish them correctly when she writes but when she speaks she just do not have enough time to find the proper word. So, do not assume that you will be able to find correct words while you are speaking just because you know words. Knowing is totally different from speaking. To be able to speak with a good speed, you gotta speak aloud and think aloud in English as much as you can. Please, do it! Don’t just think that you want to do it! You gotta do practice English.

Well, I got sidetracked. The reason why I brought cooking stuff up is because of this expression I heard from the Mentalist, a CBS TV show that I enjoy watching.

Teresa who is a detective on the show said, “Let’s not interrogate now. Just let him stew for a while,” after she caught a suspect. As I heard her saying, I thought, “Hmm… Interesting! Stew? He is not cooking. It sounds like let him think but there gotta be more than that.”

So, I looked it up and apparently there was more. It is not just simply thinking. It means that let a person to think about something bad that has happened or something stupid he/she has done.

When is the best time to use this expression? I think if your children did something bad or stupid, then you can let them stew instead of helping them out to fix the issue. Sometimes, it is better to let people stew so that they can learn from their mistakes. Who am I talking? I think I should let me stew on stupid things that I have done so far. Maybe, we should all have some time to let all of us stew.

11 Nov

get hold of

Who taught: Tami and Sujata

Pittsburgh Winter (source: http://dashdingo.org/)

Sometimes, I hear the same expression from a few people around me in a short period of time. That happened last week. My colleague, Sujata finally switched to a Mac from her old PC. While I was talking to her the other day, I asked her, “Hey, How’s your Mac? Are you getting comfortable with it?”

She said, “Yeah. It is getting better but I think I still need some time to get hold of it fully.”

Last week, Tami and I were having a conversation with students from other schools. We were talking about the Pittsburgh weather which is pretty bad in winter as you can see from the picture. As she was explaining the winter weather, she said, “It usually takes some time to get hold of it, especially for international students.”

At that point, I was like, “Huh! Same expression!” So, I thought that I should really remember and try to use it later.

I believe you would get what it means through these two examples, right? The word, ‘hold’, means to retain or control. Basically, ‘get hold of something or someone’ means the same thing.

One good usage is that, if someone is impatient and you want him or her to calm down, you could say, “Hey! Get hold of yourself!”

There is an issue though. When I was researching about this expression, I found this expression interesting. The reason is that ‘get’ is a verb and I am pretty sure ‘hold’ here is a noun. Then, where is an article. Shouldn’t I put ‘a’ before ‘hold’ all the time? Like, “get a hold of yourself or get a hold of it.”

There seems a little bit of debates going on even among native English speakers about including ‘a’ or not. I am not sure which one is correct. What do you think, my friends? Which one sounds correct to you?

08 Nov

dicey and antsy

Who taught: Kevin and NYT

Antsy (source: http://ilovetrampolines.blogspot.com/)

There are so many words that end with “y.” I am not kidding.. There are so many and people here use them a lot. Listen carefully to a conversation between American people when you have a chance. You will hear those words, ending with ‘y’, in many sentences.

Let me give you two examples today.

1. Dicey : Ever played a board game? A lot of board games come with a pair of dice. As you roll your dice, you cannot be certain what numbers you would get. You are uncertain. And if it is an important roll, it even looks dangerous, right? That is the feeling of this expression. For example, a few days ago, Kevin on the Insider show was talking about Brad Pitt. He talked about his ex-wife, Jennifer Anniston. Unfortunately, it was not a good thing. As Kevin was reporting this story, he said, “It is always dicey to talk about ex-spouse.”

2.  Antsy: Do you like ants? I did when I was young but not any more. Ever since I own my house, I do not really like them at all. Especially if you ever see an anthill in front of your house, you would not like it at all. Speaking of anthill, if you sit on any anthill when you are on a picnic, they would get into your pants. Now what? You cannot sit down and be still. You have to move around and jump around to have them go away from your body, right. Suppose that I do not know what is happening with you, I would think like, “You are sort of upset or impatient.” So, there is an expression, “having ants in someone’s pants.”

Huh? Would you expect that American people use that long expression? No way! They simply say, “antsy.” Again, with “y.”

Let me give you a sentence that can help you to remember these two words.

Don’t get too antsy by doing something dicey!

I am telling you again…. There are a lot more words ending with “y.” If you found one, let me know.