Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Proverbs 121. The proverb today is to be
like a fish out of water. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If someone is
like a fish out of water, he or she feels uncomfortable in a new environment or is
completely unfamiliar with one's surroundings or activity. Yeah. I mean
this one is kind of easy to understand if anybody's ever gone fishing and they
see a poor fish if you pull it out of the water, if you put it on a boat or you
put in a bucket , you can tell it really feels like you know, you, you pulled it
into another world. t's gasping for air. Its flapping kind of like that and it
definitely is very uncomfortable. It doesn't know what it's doing and is you know
really lucky if it's just really trying to survive. Its fighting for its life
practically. This is kind of what we mean if somebody feels like a fish out of
water they feel totally and like they've been pulled out of their environment.
They've been pulled out of their comfort zone. And they feel uncomfortable in this
new environment or this new situation. Then we say somebody feels like a fish
out of water. Okay. Let's continue. Let's give a few examples here. Example number
one. That job is not suitable for me. If I were to get a job in that company I
would feel like a fish out of water. Well maybe this person knows this and
realizes this that I'm not going to put myself into that position because I know
that I won't I won't feel right. I won't feel comfortable there. So I wouldn't
even want it. I would feel like a fish out of water.
Okay good. Or number two here. I thought I was talented and a good dancer until I
entered that dance contest and I realized I was out of my league. Again
maybe many of the other dancers were far better than he was. He thought he was
good. Maybe he went to the disco and he thought he looked cool. He thought he
looked better than the other dancers. But when he was up against
the professionals, he realized he was out of his League. And he said, " I felt like a
fish out of water." Like I don't really belong here. They're much better than me.
I really can't compete with them. So he felt like he was a fish out of water. All
right. Great and let's look at this last part of the
note of the earliest citing of this proverb. So the earliest they could
find it comes from Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales. Of course it's a very
old famous classic novel. I don't know. I don't think that he was the one that
invented it. He probably used it. It was probably around already at that time, but
that's the earliest finding. Well the earliest citing they could find of it
and this was like the part of the line from where it was stated. So of course,
you have the ellipsis here. You have those three dots which means they've
taken something out. They'd just given you the important part. " ,,, a monk when he is
cloisterless. Yeah. Well monks usually belong to a
cloister. That's the like the monastery they belong to. That group or that
organization. So. " ...a monk when he is cloisterless is like a fish that is waterless. "
So that was the original phrase here. That is waterless, of course it
eventually formed into what today we say like a fish out of water, But I guess he
was saying that a monk. If he didn't belong to a particular organization or
monastery, he was just on his own. He just wasn't very comfortable. He's like you
know, a fish out of water or a fish that is waterless. Anyway, I hope you got it.
I hope it was a formative. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.