Hello and welcome to News Review from BBC Learning English.
I'm Neil. Joining me is Catherine. Hello Catherine.
Hello Neil. Hello everybody. Yes, a sports story today and tennis player
Novak Djokovic has been disqualified from the US Open.
And don't forget, you've got to test yourself on the vocabulary from this
News Review. Go to our website at bbclearningenglish.com to find it.
Right. Let's hear more about that story about Novak Djokovic
from this BBC Sports report:
Yes. World tennis number one, Novak Djokovic,
is out of the US Open. He hit a ball in anger; it hit a line judge in
the neck. She's not seriously injured but he's been
asked to leave the US Open tournament.
OK. It's the story everyone's talking about. What vocabulary
have you picked out?
Yes, we have: 'kicked out', 'blown his or her or their chances' and 'fuel'.
'Kicked out', 'blown his/her/their chances' and 'fuel'.
OK. Let's have a look at your first headline.
And we're starting in Russia – the
publication Russia Today says:
'Kicked out' – forced to leave.
Yes, so we have two words here.
The first word: 'kicked' – K-I-C-K-E-D – and the second word 'out' – O-U-T.
'Kicked out.'
Now, I know what 'kick' means, Catherine.
Yes? It means to hit something
pretty hard with your foot so... That's right.
Are we saying here that Novak Djokovic was 'kicked' so hard
he flew out of the US Open?
Like a footballer? Like a giant football.
Err... no. Clearly we're not saying that. But the idea
of being forcibly – forcibly having to leave or move
is the idea of 'kick'. If you kick a football it moves, whether it wants to or
not, because you've used some force, and that's the idea here:
Novak Djokovic has been required to leave
forcefully – not with actual physical force
but he's got to go and he may – whether he wants to or not, he's going.
Now the idea of 'kicked out' also means that you have to leave
an organisation, an event, or some other kind of activity because
you've broken the rules. Now, here the rule – clearly there's a rule against
hitting umpires with balls and hitting balls in anger.
He broke that rule so he's required to leave. So, if you break a rule somewhere
Neil, you may be or you may get kicked out.
OK. Now, we've heard another word with a similar meaning: 'disqualify'.
So, why can't I just say 'disqualify'? What's different about 'kicked out'?
Well, 'disqualified' is more formal. It's a bit longer.
It's less dramatic than the idea of 'kick',
isn't it? So, newspapers like this because of the drama and because it's
more colloquial and because it's slightly shorter.
Meaning-wise, they're very similar but I would say that 'kick out',
as well as being informal, has a broader meaning.
So, if you get 'kicked out' of a meeting, you haven't been
disqualified because you haven't broken a set of
official rules and a meeting isn't a competition – because 'disqualify' is for
things like competitions – but 'kicks' or 'kicks out' has a wider range
of uses for a wider range of situations. But it still means you've
done something wrong; you're going.
Right, I was in a bar
for the first time in months, recently. Nice!
Yeah. Having a nice quiet
drink, but somebody had got a little bit too excited perhaps:
they had a bit too much to drink, they're making lots of noise,
upsetting people, and the barman kicked him out. He got kicked out.
Yeah. If you 'kick somebody out'
or you can 'be kicked out' – often used in the passive – and it's not just
for physical places as well; you can get kicked out of a
Facebook group if you break the rules or if you upset
people. So, you can get kicked out of virtual
organisations and groups as well as real ones.
OK. Let's have a summary of that:
If you would like to learn more about phrasal verbs like
'kicked out', we have the perfect programme for you,
don't we Catherine?
We do: The Grammar Game Show!
Don't miss it – it's a lot of fun. Click the link.
OK. Let's see your second headline.
Yes and we're in the UK
now, with the Express – the headline:
'Blown his, her or their chances' – missed an opportunity.
Yes. Two words: B-L-O-W-N – 'blown' – that's the past participle
of the verb 'to blow'.
The second word: C-H-A-N-C-E-S – that's chances,
or as people like you pronounce it, Neil?
'Chances'.
Yes, the North-South divide in the UK
and elsewhere. You will hear two pronunciations of this word:
'chances' or 'chances'. You choose the one you like; they're both
easily understood.
I think it's probably most useful to think of the word
'blow' here as an explosion.
Yes, it is. So, 'blow' is when you push
mouth out of your – sorry – air out of your mouth, like...
if you're blowing on hot soup, for example. But we also talk about things
'blowing up' if there's an explosion:
something, another word to describe... a synonym for explode is blow up
and this is right. This is the better way to think of it.
He had an opportunity. The opportunity is gone
and it didn't just fade away: it went
instantly. It went spectacularly: it was dramatic, it was exciting, it was
big, it was shocking and that's the idea. If you blow your chances,
you really really do something that just makes
the chance – the opportunity – gone, gone, gone.
Yeah. Normally of course, there would... Have you ever blown your...?
...be a pronoun in there: we would say 'blown his chances',
but because it's a headline, as we know,
words go missing, don't they?
Yes, that's right. Yes, the headline has
taken out the pronoun 'his' but generally you blow 'your' chances,
or he blows 'his' chances, or she has blown 'her' chances and Neil, I expect
you have blown your chances of doing something once or twice in your life,
have you?
Well, a long time ago when I was in a
different job, I had the opportunity for a promotion.
However, for some strange reason I was quite argumentative in a
meeting once... critical, No??
very critical of my boss in a very...
I find that very hard to believe – you
criticising people in meetings, Neil...!
Very, very publicly. And my boss didn't really like this.
Funnily enough, I didn't get that promotion.
No...! I blew my chance.
With your poor behaviour in meetings, you
blew your chances of a promotion.
I blew it.
You blew it.
Yeah, that's a shortened... And that's another way...
That's a shortened version, isn't it, of 'to blow your chances' –
just 'to blow it'. Exactly, yes.
We often say, 'Don't blow it!' as a warning to people
when they're doing really well at
something and we know – we're trying to say:
don't get over excited, don't get overconfident, don't do
anything stupid, don't blow it. It means don't spoil
this opportunity.
You've got a penalty in the last minute of the World Cup final...
...don't blow it. Don't blow it!
Very easy to blow it in that situation.
OK. Let's have a summary:
If you like stories about sport and exercise and keeping fit, we have a great
one for you.
We do. And you can find that story by
just clicking the link.
It's about running marathons and how they can add years to your life.
OK. Your next headline, please.
And we're in Australia now – the Sydney Morning Herald.
It's an opinion piece. It reads like this:
'Fuel' – make more intense.
Yes. F-U-E-L – 'fuel'. Now, you know what fuel is, don't you Neil?
So, I'm a little bit confused here,
Catherine; I thought fuel was something you put in your car
to make it go, like petrol or diesel, or wood or coal
that you would put on a fire, but here this is a verb. So, what's happening?
What's happening?? Yes, so you're right:
'fuel' is something that provides energy or power.
That's the key to this. Now, if we make it a... a verb form:
if you fuel something, you provide
energy or power. Now, we're not talking about
coal or electricity here, but we are talking about
sort of mental energy in the form of motivation.
So, where petrol makes a car move forward – what this commentator is
saying is that criticism will provide energy
for Novak Djokovic to perform even better. And some of us are like this,
aren't we Neil? If I say to you: 'You can't make that programme any better!'
you will go away and you'll probably make it better, because
you thrive on people saying you can't do something.
Am I right?
You're probably right, yes. So, it's probably useful to think of
Novak Djokovic here as a fire and the criticism
as a log, a piece of wood that you throw onto the fire.
The fire becomes more intense.
Exactly that, yeah. Good explanation.
Yeah. Often we see this word used as a
verb with the word 'speculation'.
Yes. Now, that's a slightly different way of using it but it's the same idea.
If you 'fuel speculation' – speculation is... means rumours
or ideas about something that's going to happen.
If you 'fuel speculation', you add to those stories. You
contribute to the rumours. So, if I see a colleague
looking in the window of a jewellery shop, and I come
back and tell you, that will probably
fuel speculation that that colleague is going to propose
marriage to his girlfriend, because he's looking at rings.
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And I've got a nice little
extra headline that I read about this morning: apparently
demand for teeth whitening has been fuelled during lockdown because people
have spent lots of time looking at themselves in the mirror.
Oh no! Neil, you're gonna start a teeth whitening crisis.
The whole world will be buying up teeth
whitening kits, because you said that.
Are you saying I'm gonna fuel that demand?
You're fuelling it right now.
I'm gonna – after this programme, I'm gonna
google teeth whitening... again.
OK. Let's have a summary:
Time now for a recap of our vocabulary please, Catherine.
Yes. We had 'kicked out' – forced to leave.
We had 'blown his, her or their chances' – missed an opportunity.
And 'fuel' – make more intense.
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Bye! Bye.