The Vocab Man - Fluent Vocabulary - 67 On the off-chance

67 On the off-chance

06/20/21 • 4 min

Check out the YouTube version! https://youtu.be/h0EUMOLwTz0
What is your favorite expression? For more info see the link below!
https://www.videoask.com/fwegskglw
Transcript:
So on the off chance that you are hoping to visit Scotland, or you just particularly like that accent, this is a fantastic TV show.
Hello guys today, we are going to cover the expression "on the off chance", which basically means in the unlikely event have fun.
So right at the beginning, you could hear the voice of Lucy from English with Lucy and she was recommending a series called Katie Morag , I think.
Hello. My name is Katie Morag I can call and I live in island Tour of Struay . I know it's not the biggest place to live. In fact, it's really quite ?xxx?, but that's just the way I like it. I know everyone and everyone knows me.
Katie Morag YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix6oyVgUDbc
But if you take a closer look, she says, so on the off chance that you're hoping to visit Scotland, or you just particularly like the accent. This is a fantastic TV show, but since on the off chance means in the unlikely event, or even in the very slight remote or unlikely possibility that something may happen or be the case, I think she's a little bit rude, right?
English with Lucie YouTube: https://youtu.be/_L_zlG2X2tE
Because she assumes that it is an unlikely event that you want to visit Scotland, but maybe I'm just too harsh. Because people usually don't want to go to Scotland. I don't know, but in my case, I really would love to go to Scotland one day. So let's listen to it once again.
So on the off chance that you are hoping to visit Scotland, or you just particularly like that accent, this is a fantastic TV show. And as I've said many times before, it's really important to understand, and to listen to a variety of accents, the Scottish accent is considered to be fairly difficult.
If you're in a situation where you want to say no and be firm and yell at the dog, I wouldn't really recommend that. Loud voices can actually get the dogs even angrier and make them want to go at each other more. Think about like a boxer inside a boxing ring. They don't hear people chanting. They're just in the zone.
But on the off chance, if you have like something. Like an air horn that makes a really loud high-pitched noise. It can be loud enough to disperse the fight. Now the most effective way to separate two dogs that are fighting requires two people.
Nice on the off chance that I win a million dollars. I will pay a whole team to work for the Vocab Man here so that I can produce in a more professional way.
I would also recommend having a personal reference to keyboard shortcuts that you use most often. And on the off chance that keyboard shortcuts are actually interesting to you that you can go even further down the rabbit hole and start learning about the wide world of macros.
So, instead of saying on the off chance, you could also use expressions such like by any chance or in the event that, or in the case that.
Oh, very proud moment of mine. This was my slick hair, dark, dark red lip, big hoops, lots of crop tops. I really can't show this to my daughter then. I won't be able to tell her she can't wear them. Those are the premier of death becomes her. I was a huge fan of Meryl Streep's. This was in the off chance I was going to get to meet her.
I thought she'd like this outfit.
Thank you very much. And thanks for listening guys. This is Daniel from Switzerland. Bye.
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If this video helped you learn just a little bit more English

Previous Episode

66 To slag off = to criticize harshly / informal

Transcript:
Slag off.
Welcome back, dear English, enthusiasts. This is Daniel. I'm the Vocab Man. And I was wondering, I mean, Don't get me wrong. I strongly believe that I have been learning a lot in the last four years here producing the Vocab Man for you, but let's take a closer look at it. Today is episode 66 and yeah, I have been producing over five hours in total.
So. Let's imagine if I produced double the amount or triple the amount, I mean, five hours in over four years, it's nothing. And let's say if I produced three episodes a week, I'd probably learn even more expressions. And as a result, of course, I would have become even more fluent in English, which is my goal, of course.
And I suppose it's your goal too, so I was just thinking, so now let's get started with an expression, which is a rather weird to me. It's called to slag off.
Because you must never, ever slag off the speaker because everyone, when you hear yourself, everyone always just gives, oh my God, I can't believe I sound like that company developed like that key thing is you focus entirely on you as the listener and you ask yourself just the following three questions.
Number one, how much does the speaker value? What he's saying to how much does the speaker value me as the listener? And then finally. Does the speaker make me care on that?
So to slag of means to criticize strongly, to say very bad things about other people, but it could also be a performance, etc. So it's rather a slang. So be careful when using it.
Some people are sort of saying, well, John Lennon know, he used to really slack off Paul McCartney. Um, and, and Paul says, no, no, no. He, we, we got on very well. It was just the way he was. He would be fast and loose and say crazy. Um, no Gallagher style things or Liam Gallagher style things. And actually he sentence overrated.
Anyway, he couldn't, uh, record an album like pipes of peace. If he tried.
So I repeat to slag someone off means to criticize them in an unpleasant way. So I think it's, it's rather British, right. And informal as, as I said before. So I really, I hope that you don't slack me off producing this episode, please, but if you have any suggestions for future episodes just drop me an email at [email protected].
Thanks.
Now I can tell you positive. I could slack off the professions and the juppies and how lots of them get paid for achieving very little goals . Um, I could question and challenge, but now I actually think, I think good things about people and places. Um, I rang a friend the other day. And I said to him, look, if I pay for your airfares, will you come to Northern New South Wales with me to the rainforest.
I just want to hang out in the peace and quiet. And, um, I can't do it on my own. And he said, yeah, I'll clear it with my wife. And I reckon that's alright

Next Episode

68 Cut me some slack! Guest episode with Stephanie from Geopats Language Podcast

Transcript:
Hello, Daniel and hello vocab man listeners. This is Stephanie from the Geopats Language Podcast coming to you with another guest episode. And this time we're going to be talking about "cut me some slack"
cut me some slack Taylor. Cut me some slack.
I used to be a cop.
First I want to tell you where I am. I'm not in the park today as in my previous episodes, I am in an outdoor cafe in the in the capital of Albania, which is Toronto, where I'm living right now. I am an American ex-pat, who is currently living in Albania by currently for how long, who knows, but that's not the point of today. Today. The phrase is "cut me some slack".
Oh, this one really hurt my head. Trying to figure out why it was so hard to come up with something to say about this. And I finally figured out this is sort of a dated phrase. You know, there are phrases that are popular for just a short period of time. That's pretty much what this one is. The period of time that it was popular, seems to be in a lot of movies and TV shows for that time period.
So I think this is a really clever one for Daniel for ask me to do. And I think it's one that I hope I can clear up for you. So let's get to it.
Cut me some slack. So again, I feel like it's a dated expression. I haven't looked it up, but I have a feeling that Daniel might look it up and let you know what time period this was popular in my gut says it was probably the eighties or early nineties.
1980s, early 1990s. Uh, more recently, I think we use things like give me a break or come on or something like that, but cut me some slack was definitely very, very popular and very used during probably the 1980s. Now some examples, it's usually in response to something. So I'm going to try to do two voices here to give you an example.
So I can't believe he said that to his boss. Uh, cut him some slack. He just had a baby and hasn't slept in weeks. I'm not so sure that came across as two different voices, but let me try again. I can't believe he said that to his boss. Come on, cut him some slack. He just had a baby and hasn't slept in weeks.
So basically slack is to loosen a tight restraint. So in this case, the tight restraint is your judgment on someone. So most likely it's your being most likely it's judging someone for some really not so great behavior. And the person in response is trying to say, Hey, be kind to them. They're having a hard time.
Basically. So it's cut them some slack. So, you know, when you're holding a rope with another person or a few other people, and it's very tense and you're both pulling, pulling, pulling, sort of like a tug of war, a cut type of game situation. And if someone lets go too soon, you fall to the ground because there's no tension.
That's not this. This is more of, if someone lets go of the rope a little bit, then you have a little bit more room to move back and forth. So the tension in this rope scenario is the judgment that someone is making on someone else. So if you cut them some slack, cut them some slack, you're giving them a little more flexibility on your judgment of their bad behavior.
Whereas if you didn't cut them any slack, which is something that would be said also, um, then your, your, your judgment is very strong there by the tension in the rope would be very, very strong. So you'd be pulling really hard on that. Um, yeah, so, so cut them some slack. Started as a boating phrase, if I understand it correctly.
And, um, with the slack, the rope from the slap being something that was used, I'm not a huge birding person. So I can't explain that too much, but I'm sure Daniel will fill in the blanks there for you. Again, it is a dated phrase, so it's not necessarily something that you would say nowadays. But it's definitely something that you would want to know so that when you come across it in, like I said, movies and TV shows, or if you were to talk to an older person who might use it, you would know what they said.
So generally speaking, you would probably hear it, not use it. I hope this clarified somewhat the phrase. Cut me some slack. Thank you so much, Stephanie, for clarifying to us the meaning of cut me some slack. So. Actually, this is a really good example to show that it is not always easy to find practical phrases, which we can use in our daily basis because here on the Vocab Man, we try to learn phrases.
Which we actually use in the real world out there. Right. So as Stephanie said, this is a rather dated phrase, so I didn't know that. Right. And I think she's right when she says that it was used in the nineties or eighties, because I came across this expression a lot when I was watching detective stories.
Right? So for example, Harry Bosch, which takes place, I think in the nineties or something like that, I'm going to show you an excerpt from the series. This came from season three, episode six of Harry Bosch. I'd like not to hear the name Bosch in my morning br...