This is my second post in a series titled, “English is funny”. If you didn’t get to read the first one, you will soon see why I find these terms and sayings interesting. Many of them are probably used more regularly in British lexicon than American. As I’ve said before, the purpose is not to make fun of the way English is used or to denigrate cultural differences or the training environment, but rather to highlight some of the language differences that can make communication difficult or hilarious or maybe both! This list is a bit shorter than the first, probably because I’m slowly growing accustomed to the words and phrases that once were unexpected… Enjoy!
Again, please picture yourself in a training environment with a group of uniformed officers.
“Don’t feel like it’s a lion to be tamed, it’s actually quite nice” – said by a course instructor to the class; I believe he was speaking of the forthcoming course challenges, but I can't recall because I was so distracted by the amusing saying. I am a bit curious to find out how taming a lion can be quite nice…
“You/he/she/it got bashed up” – refers to someone getting beat up pretty good; might be a good description of a UFC fight?
“My palms are itching… I’ve not been in a fight for some time” – a quote used by a classmate during a very entertaining story; no names mentioned here to protect the innocent… or the guilty
“I was a mini-mobster once” – used during the same story to describe the mob-like actions of a group of people too small to be considered a real “mob”; again, no names will be mentioned here to protect the innocent… or the guilty
“We gave it back to him” – same story again, this describes getting even or exacting revenge or maybe its karma?
“We got into a scuffle” and “those guys were goons”… you guessed it, these terms were used in the mini-mobster/itchy palms/revenge story; all I can say is that the words scuffle and goon should most definitely be more widely utilized in the US, isn’t it?!
Trust me if you had heard this story, you would have been ROTFL with me!!
Trust me if you had heard this story, you would have been ROTFL with me!!
To be completely honest, many of these terms and phrases are used regularly in the newspapers here. They really have the best descriptions of petty crime you could imagine. One of these days I’ll have to post one of the colorful and entertaining small criminal (or should I say mini-mobster?) stories, so that you can share in the amusement!
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