Category Archives: From friends

As a non-native English speaker, it is fun to learn new English expressions from friends. I am not afraid of asking questions to my friends. Luckily, my friends are so nice that they always do their bests to explain to me. Thank you, all!

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.ย 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.

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?

01 Nov

cheer up vs cheer on

Who taught: Phil

Cheer on (source: http://wehearyouamerica.readersdigest.com/)

Yesterday, I once again realized that a proper usage of the preposition is so hard. Mondays are soccer days for Phil and me in winter. It is so fun to play a soccer game with good friends. Jessy usually stay at home while I am away playing soccer. But, yesterday, I managed to allure her to come with me to watch my playing. ๐Ÿ™‚

It was my turn to pick Phil up on the way to the sports complex where we play soccer. To let him know that Jessy is also coming, I texted him, “Jessy might go too to cheer us up!” Sounds very fine to me. How about you, my non-native English speaker friends? Do you see anything wrong with what I said to Phil?

After Phil hopped into my car, he told me how native English speakers would feel as they hear ‘cheer up’. For example, if Phil told Patrick, “I need to cheer Terry up,” then Patrick would think I am sad or depressed now so that Phil has to be with me to cheer me up. Once again, let’s try to feel it. Where is up? Up means above you like sky. Then, cheer someone up means make someone who is so down to be up by your cheering.

So, it is not correct to say ‘cheer up’ for soccer players who do definitely not feel depressed. In that case, you need to use ‘cheer on.’

As I was researching about the expression, I found that there was no ‘on’ part at first. And, in 1800s, this expression was augmented by having ‘on’ in the end. Well, I am not sure how I can feel this one. Probably, let soccer players stay on where they are already excited. What do you think, my native English friends? Do you guys have that feeling when you say ‘cheer on’?

For Korean people and my own reference, “cheer up” means ๊ฒฉ๋ คํ•˜๋‹ค(GyukRyeoHaDa) whereas “cheer on” means ์‘์›ํ•˜๋‹ค(EungWonHaDa).

20 Oct

cop a feel

Who taught: Kelly and Phil

cop a feel (source: http://www.2pep.com/)

October 14, 2011 was a pretty normal day for me until I got this text message from Phil. Phil asked me this question, “Do you know the phrase, cop a feel?”

I know what “cop” is and also know what “feel” is. Cop is Police who catch criminals. Then, I should be able to feel this expression, right? I thought it is pretty easy for me to figure out. So, I texted back to Phil, saying it should mean “keeping a feel.” You know when you have a good feeling about something, you want to keep it as long as possible.

Huh.. Am I joking? I was far away from the truth.

Phil told me that it means to grab a woman’s breasts or butt without her consent. I was like who would do that? But, then I remembered that one time when I was a swimming pool with a few other girls. One of the girls was not good at swimming and she touched my thing (you know what I am talking about here, right?) while she was trying to get out of the water. But, I was not sure she was intentional or not. I asked Phil whether this is a good example of copping a feel. He said the most important thing is that it should be deliberate. She might try to cop a feel but not sure. Oops! Don’t tell Jessy about this story. Nothing happened after that. ๐Ÿ™‚

Based on my research, the best place to cop a feel is like New York City or an amusement park like Disney World where it is so crowded. But, I am sure this is a crime. So, please do not do this! Ironically, in this expression that basically describes an act of crime, there is “cop.”

Anyway, Phil said, “Kelly’s mind is in the gutter now. :)”