Como falo em inglês: Desabafar

By Ana | Podcast Inglês Online

Jun 11
Inglês Online Desabafar

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Hello! No podcast de hoje você vai aprender como dizer ‘desabafo’ em inglês. Não perca…

Transcrição

Hello! You’re listening to the new episode of the Inglês Online podcast. Thank you for telling everyone you know about this podcast and, enjoy!

So today I’m talking about this little word, vent. It’s so common in everyday speech that… you don’t even know how common it is. If you read Internet forums in English, if you watch movies or sitcoms or anything especially from the United States, you’ve come across it.

To vent means to talk about how you’re feeling when you’re upset, or stressed out, feeling pressured, exhausted… Anything really that has been making you feel basically not well and that you’ve been enduring for a while.

Then one day you decide to vent. You decide to vent your feelings. Maybe you’re out with a good friend, and you guys weren’t even talking about anything difficult or unpleasant. You were just catching up, having a nice conversation and drinking beer… when all of a sudden it just comes to you.

You’re relaxed, you trust your friend, he’s told you about what he’s been up to, the latest ups and downs in his life, and all of a sudden you feel relaxed enough to open up. You start venting.

You vent about this situation you’ve been having at work that… is not easy. You’ve been having some kind of problem, let’s say with a coworker. That’s it, a difficult coworker. This is someone you’ve had to work very closely with and it hasn’t been easy. There’s not much you can do about it – you guys are in a project together and it’s your responsibility to make sure the project gets completed successfully. At the same time, you don’t really get to pick who you work with.

So you’ve been putting up with some bad attitude and lack of cooperation from this coworker, and it has been a hindrance to the execution of the project. It’s been tough, and you’re not the type to complain too easily, but today seems like a good opportunity to vent. Your good friend is all ears, so you vent about how tough it’s been to make sure every phase of the project gets completed on time and how this has been actually making you lose some sleep!

Yep, you’ve actually lost sleep over this – you’re so stressed. So you vent to your friend for a good ten minutes. You get your feelings out… you get it off your chest. Those feelings you had been bottling up because you didn’t want to complicate things even further? They’re all out now. You get them off your chest by telling your friend all about your work woes.

It’s like when you have a pressure cooker that’s been cooking for a while and then you spin that little thing on top to release some steam, right? Which explains the second term of today: blow off steam.

When people have some pent-up anger or are very stressed or tense, anything like that… they may do something to blow off steam – like a pressure cooker that lets off some steam. Many people go to the gym and exercise a lot as a way to blow off steam.

The tweet below is a very nice example for the term ‘blow off steam’: it reads A great way to blow off some steam! And the attached video shows a family happily stomping on this big puddle of water with their wellies. So, that doesn’t mean everyone in the video was necessarily super angry before and they’re doing this in order to release the anger!

Like I said before, and you’re probably aware of, idioms and expressions are used in a variety of situations and their meaning will sometimes be a softer version of the original meaning that you’d find in a dictionary. In this example, these kids are blowing off some steam by playing in the puddle. Maybe they’re just releasing some built-up energy. Or they’re just having some fun after a rainy day.

What do you do in order to blow off some steam? Let me know! See you soon.

Key expressions

  • vent
  • blow off steam

Vocabulary

to come across = se deparar ou encontrar alguém ou algo por acaso

to catch up = pôr a conversa em dia, ficar por dentro do que está acontecendo

ups and downs = altos e baixos, bons e maus momentos da sua vida

to put up with = tolerar, aguentar, aturar algo ou alguém

A hindrance = um obstáculo

woes = problemas

pent-up anger = raiva contida ou acumulada

wellies = galochas

Ana
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Salomão 05/11/2019

Hi Ana,

It´s difficult I vent but when I´m very anxious, it´s possible i vent with my brothers.

Thank you.

    Ana 07/11/2019

    Great that you can vent to your brothers!

Vera 16/09/2018

Hi Ana Luisa! My mom has vent her spleen every time I don’t tyde my bedroom out.
Thanks,
See you around

    Ana 16/09/2018

    Hi Vera
    Thanks for stopping by! “Venting one’s spleen” is a great idiom, isn’t it? :-) One note though: to vent one’s spleen é mais como “soltar os cachorros” em alguém, sabe? Dá até pra chamar de desabafar, mas é um desabafo mais violento – scary :-( Bjs.

Alexandre 13/06/2018

Ola Ana XX

Muito bom texto e muitas palavras novas .Adorei,

    Ana 13/06/2018

    Que bom!!
    Enjoy.

mariah 11/06/2018

You’re great! I really enjoy receiving your stuff!

    Ana 11/06/2018

    Thanks :-) Enjoy!

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