10 English Idioms from Technology
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- čas přidán 7. 07. 2024
- Does your language have idioms that come from technology? We use technology in so many parts of our daily life, so it's natural that many English expressions have come from this field. Learn these idioms to make your English sound more fluent and natural. This lesson has all the bells and whistles. If you don't know what that means yet, there's no need to hit the panic button -- I'll show you what makes this English tick.
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TRANSCRIPT
Hi. Welcome to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. In today's video we're going to look at idioms, but idioms from the world of technology, so very specific idioms. I'm going to give you ten of them. I got five here and we'll have five more coming in a moment. Now, before I begin, what is an idiom? An idiom is an expression or a collection of words that the words themselves don't necessarily mean what the expression combined means. Right? So you have the words and you know all the words, but when they're put together in this expression the meaning could be completely different. So all of these come from technology because they started about an actual technological tool, or piece of equipment, or innovation and we took this expression and we applied it to other things.
So we're going to start with: "grease the wheels". Now, if you think about machines, they have these kinds of wheels, they're called gears or sometimes they're called cogs, the cogs... A cog in the machine. And a machine might have many of these wheels, and the wheels sort of work together. Now, the machines are most... Sorry, the wheels are mostly made from metal. And if you know from experience probably, if metal touches metal too much it heats up. Now, if it gets too hot then the two wheels will seize on top of each other. They will seize, it means they will catch each other and stop working. So, to prevent that seizure we put grease on the wheels. Grease is like a thick oil. Right? You put it all around, you make everything sort of lubricated... Okay? Oops. Lubricate means you make it so it doesn't heat up and doesn't create friction. Lots of new words for you, here. Friction is that heat that comes from the touching each other too much. So grease the wheels so they don't touch, but how do we use this idiom in everyday life? Well, if you think about bureaucracy, like government, you need to get a permit to change something in your building, for example. Now, in some countries to get this permit will take you months. You have to go to this office and sign the paperwork, take this paperwork to that office, get it stamped, take it to that office, back and forth - you can be spending months and doing lots of work just to get a simple permit. So, what you might do, you'll go to your politician friend and, you know, ask him to, if he can grease the wheels a little bit, make the process easier. You'll give him a little bit of cash, he'll give you all the stamps you need, you'll get your permit in a week, you build your building, everybody's happy. "Grease the wheels". So most commonly it's used to basically mean like a bribe, but it doesn't have to be a bribe. It could just ask somebody to make things a little bit easier, make a process a little bit smoother. Okay?
"Bells and whistles", ding, ding, ding. [Whistles] Right? So bells and whistles. If you're talking about bells and whistles on something, you're talking about all the features, especially you're talking about the cool, the good features. Right? So if you buy a car, you go to the dealership and you say to the guy: "I want this car with all the bells and whistles", it means I want every feature that's available; I want the stereo, I want the air conditioning, I want the automatic, I want the GPS, the mirror, the rear-view camera. I want everything that is available put into this car. I want all the bells and whistles. Okay? So basically all of the good stuff. If you go to an appliance store, you want the machine that has the most bells and whistles, the most cool features that you can put on it. Again, this is from old time, industrial machines worked on steam, so the steam created the whistle and then the bells for when a protest was done, etc.
"Hit the panic button", so in a factory that has a lot of machinery, if somebody gets caught in the machine, like let's say your shirt gets caught in the belt and you start getting dragged, all over the factory there's a button that you can press it and all the machines stop. That's called the panic button. Okay? So, when there's a dangerous situation or emergency, you just hit the panic button, everything shuts down, you go save your friend from the machine. We use this in everyday conversation. Basically we say: "Don't hit the panic button just yet", maybe, or: "He hit the panic button." It basically means to panic, to be really nervous, really scared, really worried about something.
You are ahead of your time, Adam!
God bless you for helping tons of students around the world.
You best of the best ! ! !
There are many teacher but you are the best
Abeer Mohamed right
There are many teachers, but you are the best. Mohamed, teachers must be plural in this sentence in order to be correct. I hope that helps your understanding, Mohamed.
Thanks for these videos Adam , I followed your channel and was able to score over all 8 .
Overall
8.0
Listening
9.0
Reading
7.0
Writing
7.5
Speaking
8.5
keep doing your thing
i understand better American people because of you
Adam thank you
Fascinating!
In Arabic, at least in my culture, we use “Blow a fuse” for a different meaning; “his fuse is blown”, means he lost his mind! He is acting non-sense.
! Plural is used usually for that; “ His fuses are blown”!😁
Thank you engVid for these excellent vídeos.
Thank You, Adam, I really appreciate your English lessons. I hope you will keep uploading video-lessons on idioms like these.
Great idioms, all of them unknow for me, thanks, you're a great teacher.
Here we have another Adam's perfect video with all bells and whistles. Many thanks, Adam!
I love your examples!! Perfect, understandable, simple!! 💙💚💛🧡💜
hey teacher! you do not know how thankful I am with engvid.com you specially, I have used these videos over and over, I teach English with them, If possible please prepare a class about au pairs in USA, I am training a girl for the interview with her host family. thanks a million.
Excellent explanation!
Thank you Adam!
As usual, this lesson is very useful and very funny.
In my opinion, this is the best way of learning.
Go on like this!
I love your good general knowledge, which makes it possible to support teaching with a variety of practical instructions. This was one of your briljant lessons.
Thank you Adam 💛
Supercharged teaching !!
Thank you very much indeed :)
Thank you, Adam for your great lessons!!
You're amazing sir keep teaching us like this....lots of love from India🇮🇳 to you
Speechless!!! Thanks!!!!
Very complete and clear explanations. Excellent examples as well.
Thank you , Adam
another great lesson.
So great! Thank you Teacher Adam!
Thank you Adam, your classes are really fantastic. I have learnt a lot the in the last few months.
Very interesting teaching, excellent. Thanks Adam
Very useful lesson. A lot of thanks.
Adam thank you for teaching us🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
I love your Classes! Thank you teacher!!!
Thx Adam, ever a pleasure watch your videos.
Thanks a bunch for the effort, Adam.
Thanks so much Adam for each video that you post here....
You're the best
Thank you , Adam
another great lesson
Brief and useful as always!
a great lesson Adam, you are very gifted in explaining things, big respect and thumb up, thanks a lot!
I loved it thank u so much 💖
Thank you Mr. Adam
Great lesson, Adam!
finally I got a very good teacher.
as usual great....many thanks dear Adam.
Thanks a lot, Adam.
Awesome lesson Adam.
I love your english easy to understand !!!! thanks for the class !!!!
Thank you for sharing! Please keep making more videos
Thank you Adam 😊. My favourite was "to blew a fuse " . You have good explanations here !! Thanks again 👍🏻😃.
Thank you for this amazing video!
I like this lesson! Thank you)
Thank you Adam!
you are the best... thanks Adam.... I`m from Colombia
Thanks! you explain great.
Your lesson is very useful.Hope for more.
You are awesome, thanks!
You know, in Russian we have exactly the same idiom about reinvention of the wheel)) Although, I've always thought that it's more about useless efforts. Like "stop reinventing the wheel" means "stop pretending that you're doing something worthwhile, you're just wasting time and resourses".
A lot of sayings came from ancient Greece and Rome Empire. So they are similar in many languages, because they have the same origin.
Oh yeah, and we often say "no need to reinvent a bicycle" :)
My dear teacher Adam, I saw that sheepish smile when u mentioned the eg of 'mother n daughter'.Ahem, gd idioms, some of them absolutely new to me.😍
Thank you Adam you are the best
Thank"s. Good
Додаткові пояснення дуже допомагають зрозуміти суть:) Лайк за якісний контент!:)
Thank You Adam😊
Thanks a lot!!!
Hmmm I can't stop watching this one... Your lessons are more interesting when you are in a good mood 😉👌💫💞.
Thank you once again for course
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 CONGRATULATIONS MY TEACHER!
You rock, Adam!
Very great lesson! :D♥️
Thank you very much you are the best teacher
Thanks for a lot Mr. Adam,
You've give me a better way to understanding English. But, I can't understanding someone saying clearly. I have to describing what does it mean. I don't know how to remember my vocabulary and use them fluently.
But, thank you so much
Awesome Adam
thank you teacher !
thank you so so much my lovely master.
I'm from Germany and the most of them we use in German too. Thanks for your explanations. 👨🏫👍🏻
Thank you so much.
You’re really the best 👍
Awesome....sir ur pronunciation is very clear....that anyone can understand....thank u sir....😃
u are the best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Adam
Nice channel. Cool. Thanks man.
Adam thank you!
Great lesson, Adam! Thank so much! In Russia we have some of these idioms too))
excelent!
Your vídeos are the best as always
Thanks Adam
Good Sir. you are awesome teaching
super lesson like it
You are the best as always :)
Hello ! I undesratand very good !! Thank you ! :)
U R a great teacher
All of the examples he given are very vivid and intelligible！
Hi adam, you're realy good teacher.
Your video is helping me to learn English in quorantion time .... thanks 🌼
he is the best teacher i have ever seen in the world.who is joining me,like this comment
Adam, vous allez me faire aimer l'anglais. C'est une méthode très vivante.
man you're the best!!!!!
Thanks 👍
Great job
Thanks so much for your video which has bells and whistles.
I also took the quiz and I got 9 out of 10. It helps me a lot to review one more time all of those wonderful idioms.
11/26/2020
Thank you so much 😊😊😊😊
Hi Adam! Very interesting lesson:-)
Good teacher Adam
Thank you Adam . I am frim Saudi Arabia . We actually have the same expressios in Arabic Language. Almost have of these ones have the same meaning in my language.
Thank you bro.. താങ്ക്സ് ചേട്ടാ 😊
ADAM you are my favorite
Thanks Adam for vary thing
Hi Mr.......Hi great lesson !!!