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Como falo em inglês: Dar de ombros

By Ana | Podcast Inglês Online

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Como falo em inglês: Dar de ombros

Aug 10

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Hey, everybody. No episódio de hoje, falo sobre a expressão “dar de ombros” em inglês (shrug, ou shrug your shoulders), assim como uma outra expressão equivalente a “Ele nem ligou” (he shrugged it off.)

Transcrição

Hey, everybody. Here’s a new episode of the Inglesonline podcast. Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app. Thanks for all the comments at the iTunes store and if you haven’t yet left a comment for this podcast please do so: The more comments for the Inglesonline podcast, the more people will find out about it and listen to the episodes. Thanks for telling your friends, your neighbors, your family and keep listening!

So I’m back in Brazil for a month or so and one of my favorite things to do is eat stuff I can’t get in London. Namely, pastel de escarola and mango. Oh, I can get mango in London, but… it’s just not the same. I’ll leave it at that. Let’s get started with an interesting term: shrug your shoulders. Listen again: shrug. That’s s-h-r-u-g, shrug. You may not be familiar with this term, but I’ll bet you’re very familiar with what it means. To shrug your shoulders, or simply shrug, means to move your shoulders up a little bit, you know… To raise your shoulders slightly, just to show that either you don’t care, or you don’t know. Maybe you don’t know what to do, or you’re in doubt, or you don’t care.

So let’s say you’re watching a tennis match and your friend asks you “Who’s winning?” You have no idea. In fact, you know nothing about tennis. All you know is, it involves two rackets, a few balls and a tennis court. So when your friend asks you who’s winning, you shrug and say “No idea.” You shrug your shoulders, or just “You shrug.” That works just fine – “You shrug.”

Another example: You have an exam tomorrow and your classmate Jane says she’s going to the movies this afternoon. You say “What? We have an exam tomorrow! Are you sure you don’t wanna join our study group this afternoon?” Jane shrugs and says “Nah. I have a feeling it’s gonna be an easy one.” Later as you get home your mom says “Where’s Rex? I haven’t seen him all morning.” Rex is the family dog. You’ve no idea where Rex is; you just walked in! You shrug and say “I just stepped in; Mary must have taken him out.” So when you have no idea, you may shrug. When you don’t care one way or another, you may shrug your shoulders. When you shrug, you’re expressing that you have no idea; you don’t know and you probably don’t care much.

Now imagine your classmate Kevin tells you on Monday that the exam is actually gonna be 2 hours long and that he heard it’s gonna be really tough. Kevin is really worried, but you just say “Hmm… That’s ok. I think we’re gonna be fine. We spent the entire weekend studying, remember? Don’t worry about it.” Here’s what you just did: You shrugged it off. Maybe you moved your shoulders; maybe you didn’t. The expression shrug something off can be used figuratively – in other words, you don’t need to actually move your shoulders as you shrug something off, although it’s ok if you do. When you shrug something off, you’re minimizing its importance. You’re expressing that you don’t think it is that bad, or hard, or difficult. Your brother says “Mom said we’re not getting our allowance this month.” You shrug it off saying “I’ve got my savings.”

That means that you think you’re fine, even if your mom doesn’t give you the allowance this month. So notice that this expression, shrug something off, actually involves an object: a direct object. You shrug ‘something‘ off. In my first example, what did you shrug off? You shrugged off the news that the exam is going to be hard. Your friend told you that the exam was going to be hard – and you shrugged IT off. It – the news that the exam is going to be hard – didn’t bother you. The news didn’t bother you. You shrugged it off, saying “We’re gonna be fine.” In the second example, your brother gave you the news that your mother isn’t gonna give you an allowance this month. Normally, anyone would be upset; but not you. The news didn’t affect you; you didn’t think it was that bad. You shrugged it off, saying “It’s ok, I’ve got my savings.”

Notice that when we say only “She shrugged” that means that this person actually shrugged her shoulders. So listen to this episode a few times and make sure to notice the difference between “She shrugged” and “She shrugged it off” What are your examples? Let me know in the comments and talk to you next time.

Keywords

shrug (one’s shoulders)
shrug (something) off

Glossary

allowance = mesada

Author
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Ana

Ana criou um blog de dicas de inglês em 2006, e depois de muito pesquisar o que faz alguém ganhar fluência numa segunda língua, criou seu primeiro curso de inglês em 2009.