Mm, mm, eating.
New Orleans is a gourmand's dream. Oh, and I'm so hungr-...
Hi. James from engVid. I'm hungry, and I'm thinking about eating, and I'm sure you do,
too. After all, eating is a natural thing. But in your experience of what you've been
taught, I'm sure you've been told words like: "delicious", "eating", and that's about it.
Hey, the world's a big place and a rich place, so why don't we give you a rich vocabulary
and give you, you know, some native-speaker speak on eating. Are you ready?
Let's go to the board.
So, I'm looking at a book. I'll say... Oh, what's this? "Time to pig out, Mr. E? It's
not time to scarf down pizza and beer. We've got work to do." I'm sure you're going: "Scarf?
Why 'scarf'?" We'll find out. On the board, we have: "How to talk about eating". Simple
enough. Chew, swallow. No, not so simple. Like, in every country, there's a way to speak
about things, and I want to give you a good... Good introduction to our eating lexicon, which
is dictionary. We're going to go from a little to a lot. And I'll give you the words that
we might use, and explain each one, and you'll notice there are some pictures here, so I
will give you the number with each picture. Some won't have pictures, but hey,
that's life. Suck it up, baby.
So the first one: "nibble". I want you to imagine a mouse.
[Nibbles]
Do mice eat a lot?
No. They eat a little bit, just a little food. Okay? Now, "nibble" can be a noun as in the
amount of food you eat, or verb, and it means to eat just a little bit. Okay? And that's
our first one. "Nibble". Think of a mouse. A mouse nibbles its food; has a little bit
of food.
"Graze" is number two. "Grazing" is funny. You kind of eat a lot, but you don't. Huh?
Well, when you graze, think of cows. You see the cow: "Moo", it's moving through,
[eating noises]; moves over here,
[eating noises] moves over here.
It eats a little bit of everything,
or as I like to say, when I go to people's houses and I don't know if the food is good,
I just graze. I try a little, [eating noises], and I move on. Try a little, I move on. I
might stay in a place where I like that. Okay? Cows graze. Funny enough, men don't really
graze. Women graze more than men. They do it because they eat, they go:
"I'm having fun, I'm enjoying myself. I'm going to try this, this, this, this, this."
Men just want to, boom, gulp it down. So, to graze is to move and eat a little bit of food at a time.
We usually do this at buffets or with foods we're not sure of, like, I'm just going to
graze a bit. Okay? You see the cow? That's Bessie, graze. So, when you see people eating
a little bit of food, and moving around, and keep coming back to the same food - they're
grazing. Not really eating.
Numero uno. Uno? Did I say "uno"? See, I don't speak Spanish. That's why I shouldn't.
Number three: "bite". You know a bite as, here? Yeah. Easy. Right. Oh, sorry, I should say "graze"
is a verb before I forget, there. "Graze", a verb. "Bite", a bite. Now, notice a bite
is singular in this case. "A bite" is interesting because it's a medium amount of food, and
it's a noun. When you go for a bite, you want some food. When we talk about "nibble", I
said cheese, I should have actually said: "Think nibbling as on peanuts, chips maybe,
a cookie or two". I just want to nibble; not a lot of food. Remember the noun? When you
go for a bite to eat, you want something like a hot dog. You go:
"Okay, I get it." No, no, you don't get it. I want just a hot dog,
or I want a slice of pizza, or I want a hamburger,
but I don't want a salad, I don't want dessert, I just want something more than a nibble,
more than chips, but not a full meal. I'm not... I don't have the time or I'm not that
hungry. So when you go for a bite, some people might go... They won't even go for a doughnut,
like a doughnut would be something to nibble on or just eat, but a bite would be a hamburger,
hot dog, something like that. Big, but not too big, because it's a medium amount of food.
All right? So, I'm going to go for a bite. And look here, there's a mouth. There you
go. "Bite". Don't forget to get a bite. Okay? I might even say as an idiom:
"I'm going out for a bite. Do you want something?" If you go: "Yeah, give me a salad, plus this", I go:
"Dude, I'm going for a bite. You want a meal, go by yourself. That's way too much food."
Number four: "munch". "Munch"? Well, "munch". It sounds like something, right? Think of
a Coke can, when you crush it, [crunching sound] it makes a sound. "Crunch", "munch".
"M" stands for "middle". Munching is like nibble, but you have a bit more food. So,
nibbling is a small amount of food for a mouse. When you're munching on something... Here's
the thing about munching: First, it's not going to be one little thing. It might be
a few carrots and some celery. But here's what's going to get to you [crunching noise].
You know: "Man, I can hear that guy munching from all the way over here." It's sound. Munch
and crunch, think crunch the can, munch with your mouth - you hear the sound from over
there. Usually makes you upset. Okay? So, when somebody's munching on something, you'll
go: "What is he munching on?" How do you know? You can hear it. So, crunch the can, sound;
munch with a mouth. And it won't be two or three peanuts; it'll be more. Okay? So, "munch"
for medium and sound.
"Rumbling". At night, sometimes it's raining or in the day, and thunder and lightning-right?-comes down.
So there's a big sound. Have you ever sat down in a room from somebody, like E right
now, and you go [mumbles], and you're like: "Is there somebody in there?" You say:
"My stomach's rumbling because I'm very hungry." We're now moving from medium to more, like
you're more than just hungry. You're not a little hungry; you're almost getting very
hungry. So your tummy starts to rumble or your stomach. "Tummy" is for children and
ladies: "My tummy's rumbling". "Stomach" is for men who are macho people. "Stomach's rumbling."
It means: I'm hungry, it's making sounds. Okay? So, if you see this... Here we go. "Rumbling",
think of thunder, that big noise. Right? "Rumbling".
"Scarf". Look at E. E is eating a pizza and drinking beer. The whole meal cost him $2.
Trust me, you don't want $2 pizza and beer. It'll make you sick, but it's very cheap.
It's inexpensive; not a lot of money. "Scarf it down." Imagine a scarf, you know, in the
winter in Canada, we wear scarves to keep our necks warm. When you scarf something down,
you take the food, [eating noises], and you just take it right down, right down your throat.
The throat and the neck are in the same area. It means sometimes you don't even swallow,
or chew. Where's my word "chew"? See? We munch. We look at scarfing, "scarfing", and these
words here, no "chewing". Chewing's with your teeth. When you scarf down the pizza, usually
you'll just: "[Eating noises]". You go: "Man, you didn't even chew your food. You just swallowed,
like a snake." [Laughs] You're like: "Yeah, I did." Right? So, when you scarf it down,
we sometimes don't even chew the food, and it's usually cheap. So, "scarfing"... Hmm.
This is interesting. You can say: "I was scar-... I scarfed down the pizza." That's okay. It
tells me you were very hungry, and you ate or drank very quickly.
If you say: "Mr. E scarfed down the food", I think he's an animal.
It's not a compliment. You go: "He's scarfing down that food." You're saying: He's acting in a way
that might send him to the hospital. Right?
See? E, told ya, don't scarf that food. Cheap beer and pizza will get you in trouble.
Right? So no scarfing. Scarfing is not good. Okay? Chew your food. Remember "chew"?
Very good. All right.
"Scarf" and "devour". "Devour" means to eat something completely. So that arrow was in
the wrong place, so when we go here, leaving nothing. "Scarfing" and "devouring" are almost
the same. Do you want to know the big difference? Yeah. When you devour something, you're saying
two things: A) it is delicious, and B) is that it's expensive. If somebody says to me:
"Hey, I devoured that cake." Cake is sweet and nice, it's delicious. It makes sense why
you would devour the cake. If you said you scarfed it, I would think you were eating
it in a hurry. So, generally, you'll hear...
Here's a perfect example: "I went to a cheap pizza place the other night and I, you know...
I ate... I scarfed down a pizza and some beer. It was like 10 bucks."
You will never hear that same person say this: "I went to a fancy Italian restaurant the other day. The pasta
was divine. I devoured it." That's what they'll say. They'll never say: "The pasta was divine.
I scarfed it down." Anybody hearing that who speaks English is like: "[Laughs]. What's
wrong with that guy?" So am I saying money makes a difference? Well, it's really about
if it's expensive and it tastes really good or it tastes good, we'll say "devoured". You
devour your mother's food; you don't scarf it down. If you scarf it down it's because
you have to run out of there, but you would never say: "Mom, I'm scarfing your dinner."
It's not polite. But if you're in a pizza joint, or eating a hamburger or a hot dog
off the street: "I scarfed it down. I was starving." Everybody understands. The other
thing is "scarf" is usually used by younger people, teenagers and that. Okay? Cool, so
we've got "scarf" and "devour" and we're on the "a lot". We're eating a lot, now.
"Starving". You usually scarf food down and devour it because you are starving. What does
"starving" mean? You know "hungry": "I'm hungry", "I'm a little hungry", "I'm very hungry".
Starving is this: "Food, now!" No conversation. Food, gone. That's why I scarfed it or I devoured
it because I need food now. All right? So, you got "hungry" we already know, then we're
going to give you a new one, "starving", which means: "I'm so hungry, I don't want to talk,
give me my damn food now." Are we good? I think we've almost done all of these. Right, E?
"Time to pig out!" Well, wait a second. I just want to do something before we go there.
Okay? So it's not time to pig out now. Chill with your cheap beer.
"Gulp", "swallow", "spit". You'll notice I have on the board, here, "eat" and "drink".
I want to do "drink" a little later, but today we're going to finish off with there are some
words that you can eat and drink, and we use the same words or verbs with them. Okay? By
the way, this is called a Venn diagram, and it shows you what is common. And these are common.
A "gulp", if you have a drink of something, and you [gulps], that's a gulp. You can also
gulp down your food. If you're gulping the food, you're probably not chewing. You're
probably, [gulps], gulping it down. You take air in with the food you gulp. Sometimes you
[burps] when you're done, which is called a "burp", because you gulped, took in too
much air with the food. "Swallow" is this, down my throat, [swallows]. You take medicine,
[swallows], you swallow, and that's to put it down. And "spit" is this, [spits], spit out.
Give you a great example before we go to the next board.
Mr. E, one night we're out, we're partying. Mr. E finished drinking and he couldn't find a place to pee,
so he peed in a bottle,
and put it in the fridge. I don't know why. I don't know why he did it. Anyway, I woke
up the next morning, went to the fridge, took out the I thought water-[Laughs] It was really
pee-and I gulped it down. But before I could swallow it, I knew it was pee, so I, [spits],
spat or spit... "Spat" is the past of "spit". I was spitting it out.
"E, what is wrong with you!?"
No, it's still not time to pig out. End of the story? I don't think so.
All righty, then. We are going to go through just a couple of... Well, I did eating and
I gave you things like "chew", and "swallow", and whatnot. Just for some fun, I mean, it's
a little bit extra, just want to give you through some animal idioms for eating, because
when we eat, we are animals after all, but we usually tend to use the animals to emphasize
what we think. "Emphasize" means make stronger of what's going on. So I gave you five of
them just to play with for a little bit, and we've got a bird, and we've got a dog. I stopped
drawing because, really, I'm not good at it. But I got a dog... If you're going:
"What is that? It looks like a turd." Don't ask me what a turd is, okay? Yeah, that's a turd
with legs. The pig looks like my sis-...
No, it doesn't look my sister. I love you. I'm not even going to say her name.
A bird, a horse, and a wolf. A wolf is like a big dog,
in case you don't know what it is, it's like a dog that's not been domesticated. That's
not a wolf or... It, it's just... The idea is think of dog. All right.
So let's start small. "Eat like a bird". This one is actually what we call an oxymoron.
"Oxymoron" means the two words really don't really go together,
because birds are supposed
to, you know, eat like a bird. Birds are small, not eat a lot. In reality, they eat a lot.
But when we say someone eats like a bird, we mean they don't really eat. Maybe one cookie,
one peanut. Not very much. They eat like a bird, that's why they're so slim. Okay?
The opposite of eating like a bird is to "pig out", dude. E's gone, but E was wanting to
pig out. He wanted to eat, eat, eat, eat like a pig. Pigs are known to eat anything, and
eat a lot, and eat all the time. So if you're a bird, you don't eat a lot of food. If you're
a pig, you eat all the time. If you "make a pig of yourself", it means you are embarrassing
yourself because you're eating so much that now people are looking at you and staring.
They might even charge money to watch the animal eat the food. So don't make a pig of
yourself. Okay? So, you know, two, three slices, okay; 10, 20, problem.
"Dog's breakfast". If you have a dog, I don't need to explain; if you don't have a dog,
I will. Dogs are not known for being very tidy or neat eaters. You know, they don't
cut their food and eat slowly; it's all over the place. So when somebody tells you:
"It looks like a dog's breakfast", it's very messy, very disorganized. Okay?
Horse. When you "eat like a horse", it means to eat a lot of food. It's similar to pigging
out. There is a difference. When you eat like a bird or eat like a horse, they're exact
opposites. You eat like a horse, you eat all the time, you like to eat a lot. You're a
very good eater, let's say. When you eat like a bird, you don't eat a lot of food all the
time. Okay? So those... That's what that means.
Now, so we got these two as being opposite. Right? "Eat like a bird" and "eat like a horse".
When I say "pig out" it's because you're eating... Maybe one time you're eating like this. Sorry,
I forgot to put "dog's breakfast", because the breakfast belongs to the dog. Sometimes
I forget that. But yeah, "pigging out", you're going to say: "Aren't they the same?" I go:
"No." These two are like normal behaviours. You "eat like a bird", you don't eat a lot
all the time. "Eat like a horse", you eat a lot all the time. When you "pig out", it's
maybe a one-time thing. Tonight I'm going to pig out on spare ribs. I don't always eat
a lot, but I'm going to eat... Pig out now. When I "make a pig of myself", I'm making
it embarrassing. I'm eating so much, there's rib juice, it's all on my face, on my hair.
It's embarrassing. "Dog's breakfast" is when it looks bad, like you put the food down,
you're like: "Ughl. That looks like a dog's breakfast." It's not good to look at. Okay?
"Wolf down". See how we got dogs and wolf? I don't know why. "Wolf down", remember we
talked about swallowing and gulping? When you wolf it down, you don't chew, you're like
[eating noises], you're wolfing it down, [growls], like a savage animal. [Laughs] All right?
So we got a cool, few animal idioms you can spring on your friends now. All right?
-"I eat like a bird, that's why I look so good." -"I'm always working out, so I have to eat like a horse." Okay?
How about a quiz? Because you know we have a big quiz, but I want you to do this quiz
first and see what you've learned. All right?
So the first one we want to do is this:
"I was at an excellent Italian restaurant and I __________ the meal."
Did I mention: "excellent" also means "expensive"?
Hopefully that helps you.
That's right, you got it:
"I devoured". "Devoured" it, yeah.
"Devoured the meal". Okay? You devoured the meal.
What about this one:
"We were at a cheap pizza joint and I _______ _______ a whole pizza."
Hmm. It's not winter,
but I sure could use something if I was cold.
I'll give you a hint.
I knew you'd get it.
"Scarfed down". Remember we talked about scarfing down pizza and beer
from cheap places? Because this one is no
money; that's a lot of money. There's the difference, okay?
Two more to go, and if you can do this, I can just imagine what you're going to do on the quiz.
"I'm going out for a __________."
I don't know. You tell me.
Hmm, mm, mm, mm.
What do you think?
Could it be "a bite"? Remember?
When you go for a bite... Think "bite", "bit",
a little bit of food. Right? "I'm going out for a bite. Do you want something?"
I'll get you some food, too.
And finally:
"I can hear you __________ over here!"
Think Coke can.
Hmm?
Go with your hunch.
Yeah.
"I can hear you munching over here!" Remember?
Hunch, crunch, munch, making sound. So you can hear [eating noises], it's not a dog's
breakfast, but it sounds like a dog.
So, how did you do? Did you get 4 out of 4? If not, watch the video again. And if so,
I challenge you to go to www.eng as in English vid as in video.com (www.engvid.com),
where you can do the rest of the quiz, and take some other quizzes while you're at it, and
watch some other videos. By the way, as always, thank you very much for coming back.
Don't forget to subscribe. Okay? Anyway, I'll see you. I'm out. That was a lot to swallow.
I don't think I can do anymore.
But if you're starving for more knowledge, you know where to go.