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Podcast: Idioms com rule
By Ana | Podcast Inglês Online
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Hey, all. Hoje falamos sobre dois idioms super comuns do inglês com a palavra rule.
Hey, all. This is the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast.
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Let’s get started with our first term of today: rule something out. To rule something out means to stop considering something as a possibility. Example: when I was looking for a place to live, I visited several houses. One of them was too far away from the city centre. It was a nice house, but it would take me one hour and a half to get to the city centre if I started living there, so I ruled it out immediately. I didn’t even consider that house a possibility after I visited it. I quickly ruled it out and kept searching.
I’m ruling HER out!
Imagine you’re the boss at work and you’re looking for a new assistant, so you start interviewing people from different areas since you’d like to hire someone who already works for the company. You need someone who’s very patient – your assistant will need to deal with clients all day long and they need to be able to remain calm under pressure.
So you’ve just finished interviewing someone. She left your office a couple of minutes ago. You decide to get some coffee and as you open the door you see your last interviewee screaming into the phone. She’s angrily reprimanding someone for forgetting to take a message for her. The moment you see that, you think “Well, that just rules her out”. This woman is not an option anymore. You just simply cannot hire anyone for this position who would not remain calm when things go wrong. You’re ruling her out.
Now, moving on to the next idiom… Have you ever heard the idiom ground rules? Ground rules are basic guidelines, basic procedures for… a project, a meeting, or any kind of endeavour or situation where people are gonna work together, or play a game and so on.
Let’s say you’re a celebrity and you’re such a high-profile celebrity that you feel OK establishing a few ground rules at a press conference. In other words, there are some topics about your personal life that you’d rather not talk about and that’s what your agent tells the reporters: “Here are the ground rules: no questions about the divorce, her plastic surgery and her dog Bernie.” These are the ground rules for this press conference.
Ok, now imagine that you’re at the beach with a group of people. It’s a rainy day so everyone’s staying in. Your friend Melissa suggests playing hide-and-seek so you guys can kill some time. Melissa then says “So these are the ground rules: everyone has ten seconds to hide and we all have to hide inside the house.” So these are the rules everyone has to play by – the ground rules.
What’s your example? When was the last time you were informed of the ground rules of a situation? Let me know in the comments, and talk to you next time!
Key terms
Vocabulário
press conference = coletiva de imprensa
hide and seek = esconde-esconde
everyone is staying in = todo mundo vai ficar em casa
