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Como falo em inglês: Dá um jeito na sua vida!
By Ana | Podcast Inglês Online
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What’s up?
Hoje eu falo sobre dois idioms super comuns com a palavra clean.
What’s up? You’re listening to the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast. Thank you for telling everyone you know about this podcast and, enjoy!
We have a couple of idioms today with the word clean. Yep. I bet you all know what clean means – both the verb and the adjective. There’s always more to learn when it comes to English though… and that’s because the sheer number of idiomatic expressions in this language is just unbelievable.
So our first idiom of today is come clean. People sometimes come clean with someone about something. That means they have admitted something to that person. Obviously we’re talking here about something unpleasant or difficult, right?
Let’s say this guy called Peter came clean with his dad about how his car got damaged. It wasn’t someone else’s fault, like Peter originally claimed; it was Peter’s fault and he came clean about it with his dad. Last week, Peter came clean with his friend Tina about his true intentions when they became friends: he actually has feelings for her, and Tina had no idea. So Peter admitted, or came clean, about his feelings for Tina.
Ideally politicians would come clean about all their misdeeds, all at once, like right now – wouldn’t that be perfect? Obviously many people never come clean about lots of things they’ve done, or how they feel, and so on. Some people do, however – can you remember the last time it happened to you? Or maybe you were the person who came clean about something. I’d like to hear your story – please leave a comment.
Our second idiom with clean today is about getting your act together. It’s about improving your behaviour in some way; it’s about changing the way you do things and perhaps behaving in a way that is more acceptable, constructive, or nice – you get the idea. I’m talking about the idiom clean up your act. Let’s say your friend Karen was fired for being a lazy and dishonest employee. You could tell her “Karen, you brought this on yourself. You know you should not have lied to your boss and you should have done your job. It’s up to you now to clean up your act and start behaving like a mature, reliable person.”
Or let’s say you stayed in a hotel for a few days and found that your room was a bit dirty, the flush valve in the bathroom didn’t work, the service was sloppy and the food was bad. So now you’re back in your home and you go to the Trip Advisor website to leave a review – you feel it’s your duty to warn others before they make the same mistake and spend money on a horrible stay. You go ahead and write “Hotel ABC needs to clean up their act. Sloppy service, room hadn’t been cleaned, couldn’t flush for a whole day.”
You could say that someone who used to drink excessively, for example, and got into a bit of trouble every now and then because of their excessive drinking, has now cleaned up their act. That means this person doesn’t drink excessively anymore.
That’s it for today! Tell me about how you cleaned up your act about something, and talk to you next time!
Key expressions
Vocabulary
sheer = palavra usada para dar ênfase, como em português às vezes se usa “puro” ou “simples”
he has feelings for her = ele gosta dela (no sentido romântico)
brought this on yourself = você foi a causa dessa coisa indesejável que aconteceu com você
service was sloppy = serviço foi com má vontade, descuidado
