08 Mar

butt dial vs booty call

Who taught: Carol and Alan

butt dial

butt dial (source: http://aiminglow.com/)

A few days ago, Carol forwarded me a tweet by AlanHungover.

His tweet says:

My Grandpa confused the term “butt dial” with “booty call.” I almost fainted when he said “I booty called your mother last night.”

I already mentioned about the expression, booty call. If you do not remember, here is the link to my old post.

What is butt dial? Have you ever gotten a phone call but the one who makes the call does not speak at all but you keep hearing noises? That is probably due to butt dialing. You would have probably made that kind of call in the past too. Usually, it happens when you put your cell phone in your back pocket and sit down in a chair or a sofa. So, it is not a horrible thing to do. On the other hand, booty call is not considered to be a good thing. Well, it depends, I guess.

As I already mentioned in the old post, booty actually means butt. Call and dial mean the same thing. In that sense, it is not impossible to confuse those two expressions, even for native English speakers.

In reality, they are so different from each other. I would also be very very surprised by my Grandpa, saying “I booty called your mother last night.”

I would be like, “What? What is wrong with my family. My mother is your daughter, Grandpa!”

Anyway, since I heard that story, I feel a lot more comforted because even native English speakers are confused with all of these crazy expressions. I guess I am doing OK. What do you think, my friends? Wait, can I also say butt call to mean butt dial? How about booty dial? Would that be OK?

BTW, you should never forget these two expressions.

01 Mar

The second anniversary of LEfF

Terry Lee

Hello, my friends! How have you been? I am excited to announce that today is the second anniversary of LEfF (Learning English from Friends). This is my 277th post. Time does fly, don’t you think?

Over the past two years, I have done my best to share my experiences learning new expressions. Most of the expressions that I have written here are the ones that would not be taught in English as a Second Language class but still used by many American people. I really hope my blog has been a helpful resource for all of non-native English speakers out there.

 

Let me start with talking about top five most popular posts.

1. black sheep

2. I really appreciate it

3. native American vs native to America

4. bun in the oven

5. what is your brownie point?

I would like to congratulate all of the friends who taught these top five posts (Brian, Jeff, Andrew, Jean, Alex, Sangeetha and Ari). Speaking of these five, I just realized that my sister-in-law has a bun in the oven. It’s been five months. Let me take a moment to congratulate her and her husband!

LEfF has gotten about 85,000 page views (3,541 per month and 117 per day) in two years and they are from 170 countries. That means LEfF got attractions from almost 90% of the earth. That is amazing, isn’t it? Here are some of the country names that I have never heard of : Djibouti, Guernsey, Martinique,… The list goes on and on.

How about top five countries? Here is the list.

1. United States

2. United Kingdom

3. South Korea

4. Canada

5. Japan

Hey, I have another interesting statistic. Do you know what is the number one browser people have used to get to LEfF? It is not Internet Explorer. It is Firefox. Thank God! Please stop using Internet Explorer. It is horrible. Chrome is the third browser but not far behind IE. You can use Chrome. 🙂 In fact, it is my default browser and I like it a lot.

What else? Oh.. it shows that readers use 105 different languages. My analysis is that people do want to learn new English expressions online.

Thank you all for your visits and support! Because of you, I am so happy to come back to my desk to write new interesting expressions. Don’t worry! It will keep updated. There are so many out there that I still do not know or have never heard of. It is like going down the rabbit hole every day.

Please share new posts with your friends so that many people get to have a chance to learn new ones.

See you soon!

 

23 Feb

rediscovering a word series 2: flash

Who taught: Melissa

There are three rivers that run across or around Pittsburgh, PA. And there are more than 29 bridges cross the three rivers in Pittsburgh city boundary. That is a lot of bridges. Don’t you think? Do I know the names of all of the bridges? Not at all! I know a few such as the Liberty Bridge and the Fort Pitt Bridge.

Because of these crazy number of bridges and the three rivers, there is a very interesting aspect of the city. People in the South and the North do not get along with each other. Also, they do not even think about taking a trip to the other side of the town. They stay where they are from. In my opinion, because of this, people from Pittsburgh always come back to the city after a few years of living in other states or cities. They just love the city, or I should say the area they are from, either South or North.

Where do I live? I live the Eastern part of Pittsburgh. Kind of neutrality zone, I guess.

Well, today’s story is about another experience of rediscovering a word for me. Everybody knows what “flash” means. It is a light or something that reflects light that shine in a bright but brief, sudden, or intermittent way. Like camera flash.

That was the only definition I have known till this morning. Today, I was briefly checking my facebook feed and I found a very interesting youtube video shared by Melissa.

The title of the video is “Have you ever flashed someone?” I thought this question should be related with taking a picture at night or something. But then next thing I thought about was what is so interesting about taking a picture at night? Not much, right? So, I decided to watch the video. Oh My …..

What the heck? Flash has that kind of definition? No way! Here I am embedding the video here. You should really watch it to understand it.

Oh.. also, you should watch it till the end. If not, you would not be able to understand what it means. At the end, there is a lady who shows what it means by really doing it.

Hey, have you watched it? If not, watch first. …

………

By now, I assume you did watch it. Do you get it? Can you feel it? Here is the definition of flash: To show an “inappropriate” body part by quickly moving an object or article of clothing out of the way then back “flashing” the part at someone.

So, the thing is I do not think it is “inappropriate” body part if a woman flashes. What do you think, my friend?

 

16 Feb

walk it off

Who taught: Sam

Walk it off (source: http://almondspeaks.blogspot.com/)

My mother-in-law really likes watching movies. Before she came and had stayed with me for a few months, I had no idea that she is into movies. In some sense, it is not a surprise at all because Jessy also loves movies.

So, for that reason, ever since she came to the United States, I have been watching more movies than any before. It is fun and also at the same time it is an amazing chance for me to learn new expressions.

About two weeks ago, I watched a movie called “Happy Thank You More Please.” It was an interesting movie but most of all I heard something that I have never heard of.

While two guys were talking about their tough lives, one guy said, “I can now sort of understand what it means to just walk it off.” He used “walk it off” as he was also talking about his baseball coach when he was young.

Can you feel it? Here is the situation. Suppose that you and I were ice-skating and you fell down on your butt. Oops! That sounds very hurt. Then, I can say to you like, “Oh man! That looks hurt. But you gotta walk it off here! There are a lot of girls watching you now.” In the story, you have to be a man. I think it is an expression that can only be used between men. But, I am not sure. Maybe, my friends can fill me in here.

That is what walk it off means. If things are tough, just move on like a man or be strong. Can you do it? I think I can walk it off after falling on the ice but I do not think I can walk it off after falling down on the slope while I am snowboarding, especially with very fast speed. That really hurts and cannot even get up if you know what I mean. 🙂

Hey, my friends, when life gets tougher and tougher, sometimes you need to really walk it off.

10 Feb

beefcake

Who taught: Monk

Recently, Jessy and I have been watching this TV show, Monk, almost everyday on Netflix. As a private detective, Monk is amazing. But he has OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). Because of that, he does not even want to shake hands with other people. Once you hear the theme song and see the lyrics from the Youtube video that I am attaching here, you will totally understand what kind of person he is.

I like this line, “You better pay attention or this world we love so much might just kill you,” from the song. Isn’t it so true? We should not love things in the world, they will eventually kill you in one way or the other.

Well, anyway, he used this word in one episode, “beefcake.” Jessy and I was confused because, as far as we know, there is no beefcake in America. I mean no cake made of beef. So, we looked at each other, saying “That word gotta mean something else.”

You know what it is? It means an attractive man with well-developed muscles. As soon as we found out the definition, we looked at each other again, saying “Oh… that makes sense because he used the word when he saw a good looking guy with muscles.”

I am not sure who would be a good example for this word. How about Arnold Schwarzenegger? No? He is not attractive? But he has well-developed muscles.

Maybe he is just a piece of beefcake? Also, who knows there might be a literal beefcake in southern states like Texas.