| Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them, maybe! |
| Okay, let’s get to your first question for this week. |
| First question this week comes from Lamiae. |
| Lamiae, I hope I said that right. |
| Hi, Lamiae! |
| Lamiae says... |
| Hi, Alisha! Hope you're doing well. I'd like to know the difference between “give in” and “give up.” Thank you so much. |
| Sure! “Give in” versus “give up.” |
| Let’s start by talking about “give in.” |
| So, “give in” means to agree to something after you’ve been asked many, many times. So, a good example of this might be a child asking for something from their parents. So, they might say, “I want this candy! I want this candy! Will you buy it for me mom?” And she says, “No, no, no…” And the kid says, “I’ll do my chores!” or I’ll do this or I’ll do that. She goes, “No, I don’t believe you.” He keeps asking, he keeps asking. Finally, she agrees. The mother in the situation agrees. We could say, “She gave in,” so in a past tense. “She gave in to her son’s request.” So, eventually, she agreed. |
| “Give in” is used in other situations, but it always has this feeling of multiple requests. Someone has asked for something many, many times and initially, at the beginning, we thought, no, not a good idea, or no, I don’t wanna do that, but after a long time, we finally say yes. So this is what “give in” refers to. |
| Another situation in which you might hear this expression is in a work situation where someone is trying to pass responsibility on to you. Your co-worker might say, “Don’t give in to him. It’s his responsibility!” So that means don’t allow yourself to be persuaded by that person. Make sure they take care of their own responsibility, so this is “give in.” |
| Now, let’s talk about “give up.” |
| So, to “give up” means to quit something, yes, but “give up” sounds like we tried and tried and tried and we failed maybe many times, or we struggled a lot. And eventually, over time, we decided to quit. This is the difference between “quit” and “give up.” |
| Let’s say, for example, you’re training for a marathon or another big sporting event, and you’ve been working for a long time, but you get an injury and then you get another injury and another injury. You might say, “Ah, I have to give up for now,” which means I have to quit for now. So, that’s that feeling of trying something many, many times and eventually, you have to give up, you have to quit. |
| So, that’s the difference here. The key difference is that you try for a while and then decided to quit, so I hope this helps you understand the differences between “give up” and “give in.” Thanks for the question. |
| Okay, let’s go to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Ying Galau. |
| Hi, Ying! |
| Ying says... |
| Can you say “I’ll be at the office until 7 PM," and "I'll be at the office by 7 PM"? What is the difference? |
| Good question! So, the keypoint here is the difference between “until” and “by.” |
| Let’s look at the “I’ll be at the office until 7 PM” first. |
| This means starting from some point before 7 PM and continuing until the deadline point, we can imagine 7 PM is our deadline point, the speaker will be at the office. So, at 7 PM, something will change. We can imagine the speaker is going to leave the office at 7 PM. |
| In contrast, on the other hand, “by 7 PM,” “I’ll be at the office by 7 PM” also marks 7 PM as the deadline point. However, it sounds like the speaker is not at the office. They’re saying, at some point before, but not later than 7 PM, I will come to the office. |
| So, this is the difference here. |
| “I’ll be at the office until 7 PM” marks the point at which the speaker will leave. |
| “I’ll be at the office by 7 PM” marks the deadline point for when the speaker is going to come to the office, so key difference here, very important to understand the differences. Check out the video on the EnglishClass101 YouTube channel that covers the differences between “until” and “by” to learn more about this point. I hope that that helps you. Thanks very much for the question. |
| Okay. Let’s move on to your next question. |
| The next question is from Avi Ard. |
| Hi, Avi! |
| Avi says... |
| Hello, Alisha! My question is, what does "OK boomer" mean? |
| Okay. Great question! “OK boomer” is something you see on the internet a lot and you might hear it in everyday life too. “OK” of course means yes or I understand or right, but the key here is “boomer.” So “boomer” refers to a person of a certain generation in the United States. So, a person who is a boomer is a person who was born during the baby boom of the United States. This means during a period in...like about the 1950s and maybe, depending on who you ask, a little bit later, when lots and lots of babies were being born. We refer to this period as the baby boom or as a baby boom. |
| So, a person who is now older, was born in that time period and is now older, is referred to by some people as a boomer. So, that’s the generation that they come from, the baby boom generation. Some people consider boomers, people from this generation to have very different opinions or to have very contradicting opinions to young people from today. So, one way that some people like to kind of dismiss other people’s opinions from the boomer generation is with this expression, “OK boomer.” It has that kind of very condescending feel like you’re looking down on that person. |
| So, if you hear somebody say “OK boomer,” it means they heard that person, that older person’s opinion and they disagree with it and they’re just kind of putting that person off to the side. Let’s say, for example, you’re in a conversation with a boomer, a person from this generation, and a younger person from maybe the millennial generation or younger. And the millennial person, the younger person is very accustomed to changing jobs or maybe working freelance or they have a certain workstyle they’re accustomed to and they’re talking about how difficult it is to work and earn money in today’s economic climate. The boomer, however, being from a different generation might make a comment about securing a job like a full-time position in a big company, for example,which was perhaps the normal thing to do many years ago. So, they might say something like, “Why don’t you just get a full time job? A stable job at a regular company” something like that. In some cases, the younger person might feel offended by this kind of comment and say, “OK boomer” which really means you don’t understand my situation at all or this is an outdated idea that you’re expressing to me right now. |
| So, “OK boomer” is used in this kind of impolite way to dismiss the opinions of older people and it’s often used, actually, not just with boomers, but with people who are older than the speaker too, so I hope this gives you a good introduction to what this expression means. It relates to different generations and a dismissal of older people’s opinions by younger generations. So, thanks very much for an interesting question. |
| Okay, let’s move on to the next question. |
| Next question comes from Erika. |
| Hi, Erika! |
| Erika says... |
| What’s the difference between “sorted” and “ready”? |
| Great question! “Sorted” is used in British English. “Ready” is used in American English. When we say that’s sorted in British English, it means like that’s finished or that’s taken care of. When we say “ready” in American English, we don’t say that’s ready, we usually say, “I’m ready.” |
| So, we don’t use “sorted” in the same way as it’s used in British English. British English uses it to mean like something is taken care of, like preparations are done. In this way, we can use “sorted” but we do not use “sorted” in this way in American English. Something that is sorted is something that has been organized, like according to color or size perhaps. We don’t use it as an adjective in American English. We use “ready to talk about being prepared for something or to talk about something that is complete, like “Oh, dinner is ready!” We would not say “Dinner is sorted” in American English. You might hear something like that in British English though, so I hope that this helps you understand the differences. Thanks for this question. |
| Okay. Onto our next question. Next question comes from Karla D. |
| Hi, Karla! |
| Karla says... |
| Hi, Alisha! What does “fangirling” mean? |
| Great question! “Fangirling” or you might also sometimes hear “fanboying” refers to being super, super excited, super enthusiastic about your favorite celebrity. This can be any kind of celebrity; a musician, actor, actress, an artist, whatever it is. You are so excited about that person or that group that you scream maybe, you have posters of them, you buy all their merchandise, you wear their T-shirts, you talk about them, you have pictures of them on your social media, whatever. It means to go super, super crazy for your favorite celebrity or your favorite artist or whatever that is. So, you might say something like, “Oh my gosh, sorry I missed your message, I was fangirling about this person.” So, it’s kind of like an expression of really, really excited, like passion for some kind of celebrity, usually. |
| So, you might also hear people say “fanboying.” I feel like fangirling is used a little bit more, but you can say he’s a fanboy of such-and-such artist. You can say that as well. You can use it as a noun, like a fanboy or a fangirl. That means that someone is a super fan of a certain celebrity. |
| So, this is what it means. To fangirl or to fanboy means to be super, super enthusiastic and excited about an artist of some kind. A really interesting question. Thanks very much! |
| All right! That is everything for this week. Thank you, as always, for sending your great questions. Thanks very much for watching this week’s episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next time. Bye! |
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