Hi everybody, welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them, maybe. |
Let's get to your first question this week. |
First question this week comes from Rubo. Hi Rubo. |
Rubo says, what's the difference between blame and frame? For example, he blamed me, or he framed me? Super interesting question. Great. Okay. So let's talk about blame first. |
So when we blame someone, we blame another person for something, we are saying you are responsible for this thing. |
So another key part of the meaning of the word blame is that we are saying you are responsible for usually something bad that happened. |
So if an accident happened, and we want to talk about the person who is responsible for it, we might blame that guy, which means it's that guy's fault, or he is the one who is responsible for the accident. |
So when we blame someone for something, we are pointing them out as the reason something happened. |
So again, we tend to use this in accident situations, maybe in cases where someone has done something against the law, so they've stolen something, we can also use the word blame to assign responsibility to a machine for something bad that happened. |
So for example, if you have a security system in your house, and a thief breaks into the house, a thief is able to get into your house and steal things. |
After this happens, you might say, Oh, no, the security system didn't work, or the security system had some kind of problem. |
You could say, we blamed the security system for the break in. |
So that's assigning responsibility or pointing out the security system as the responsible thing in that situation. |
So a key with blame, as I said, usually, we are talking about something negative that happened, and we use it to point out the person or the thing that is responsible for that. |
So to summarize blame, we use the word blame to show the responsibility of a person or a thing in a negative situation. |
Or pointing out the reason that a negative situation happened. |
Let's compare this now to the word frame. |
So frame is also used as a verb in negative situations. |
Generally, we use the word frame when someone has done something illegal, something that is against the law. |
So we typically don't use the word frame in accidents. |
Because as you'll see in just a moment, frame is used when there's some kind of plan involved, someone has an idea or an intention, and they make this plan happen. |
So to frame someone, this is the key phrase here, we're not talking about framing a picture or framing a piece of art, this is a different use of the word frame. |
To frame a person means to create a situation in order to make it look like that person did something bad, but they actually did not. |
So what does this even mean? So let's imagine there's a company situation, there's a company scandal, something terrible has happened. |
Like the company sent out all of the personal information of their clients. |
And you might think, oh, well, that's terrible. |
Who should we blame for this? And let's say the media says person A, this is the person who did it, we can blame this person for doing it. |
But this person might say, No, no, it wasn't me. |
I was framed, which means another person did something created a situation to make it look like person A did this. |
So for example, maybe person B used person A's email address to send the sensitive information to a lot of different people. |
So they created a situation, they made it look like the information came from person A, but person B was actually the person to do the terrible thing in this situation. |
So this kind of planning where one person does something bad and makes it look like another person did it, we can say that this is being framed person A was framed. |
So when we say someone framed someone else, it's like saying one person created like a target around another person or put the focus on someone else, you can kind of imagine it as a frame like a picture frame, right, but around a person. |
So the key with framing someone is that it's usually planned and it's usually done for a reason. |
So for example, in this company scandal example, it might be because maybe person A is doing really well in the company and person B is jealous and wants to get them out of that position. |
So person B can move into that spot. |
Or maybe I don't know person A is a really bad person and person B wants to remove them from the company. |
So they create a situation. |
So when we use frame in this way, there's usually a lot of different layers and we have to look at the reasons that other people created the situation to make this negative thing happen. |
So it's a very interesting word, I think. |
So I hope that this helps you understand the differences between blame and frame. |
To summarize again, very, very quickly, when we blame someone for something, we point out they are responsible for something, usually a negative thing that happened. |
When we frame someone, we create a situation to make it look like someone did something negative, but actually someone else did the negative thing. |
So this is the difference between blame and frame. |
I hope that this answered your question. |
Thanks for sending it along. |
Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
Next question comes from Seppilu. Hi Seppilu. I hope I said your name correctly. |
Seppilu says, What is the meaning of MIA and how is it used in everyday conversation? Nice question. Okay. MIA, maybe you've seen this online, or maybe you've seen this in movies as well from time to time. So this is not read as Mia or Maya or anything like that. We read this as MIA, we read the letters out loud. |
So this means missing in action, missing in action. |
And this expression comes from the military, actually, this is an expression that was used in the military, and it's still used in the military to mean that someone as part of their duties went missing, or we were not able to find that person as they were doing their duties. |
So to give an example of this, maybe someone who is active in the military, they are doing their job in the military, goes on a mission or goes to some location, and we can't find them after that. |
So we don't know, were they hurt or were they injured? Did something else happen? We don't know. |
So in those situations, that person might be described as missing in action, or MIA. |
So your question asks, how do we use this in everyday life? Because sometimes, yeah, it is used in everyday communication. |
Generally, we don't have this very, very strong and serious meaning when we say that someone is MIA now. |
In the military, this is a very serious situation, right? We can't find someone. And that's very concerning. |
But in everyday communication, when we say that someone is MIA, we usually use it to mean that someone we expected to be there is not there. |
So for example, if our boss was supposed to join a meeting, and we know he's in the building, but he's not here, we might say our boss is MIA, where is he? So we kind of use it as like a joke a little bit. |
So someone who is there, who is active, who is doing their job, but is not currently there is not reporting in for some reason. You might describe that person as MIA. |
So this could be for a very short time, or it could be for a longer period of time. |
Like for example, if your friend disappears, and you don't hear from them for a week, you might think, Oh my gosh, he's MIA. |
And then you find out maybe he had to go to the hospital for a few days, and he's been recovering. |
You might use MIA to describe that time period you weren't able to reach your friend. |
So to summarize, we use this word in everyday communication in kind of a light or a joking way to mean that someone is not there, but we expect them to be there. |
But if you hear this word, or you see this word in maybe a military situation or other kind of official or government situation, it may mean a more serious thing has happened and someone is actually not reporting in or we cannot find that specific person. |
Generally, you'll probably see it in everyday communication, but I hope that this answers your question about MIA and how to use it. |
Thanks very much for sending it along. |
Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
The next question comes from Miguel Alberto. Hi, Miguel. Miguel says, I've heard other people say for a rainy day. What does that mean? Nice question. |
Nice question for a rainy day. This has a couple of different common uses. I'll talk about a couple of them here. |
So one is saving money we use for a rainy day a lot to talk about saving money. |
The most common expression that you might hear with this is I'm saving this money for a rainy day. |
So what does this mean? When we say I'm saving money for a rainy day, it's like we're saying I'm saving money just in case something doesn't go as planned, or I'm saving a little bit of money just to have in case things aren't great at a certain point in time. |
So the kind of image that we have of a rainy day is that it's sad, gloomy, maybe we can't do the things that we want to do, we feel a little bit depressed, perhaps. |
And so that same image we can take into our lives, right? So for those times when maybe we feel sad or depressed, or there's some kind of problem that we have, maybe we can't do something, or we're not able to go to the next step, whatever it is, maybe we have a medical issue, or maybe we have a job problem or something like that. |
For those times that we have challenges in our lives, we have some money saved. This is the concept of saving money for a rainy day. |
So some people use this expression to mean I'm saving some money to just, you know, keep myself safe in hard times. |
We also have this expression, saving money for a rainy day to mean I'm going to save this money so that I can just use it on a day when I don't really have anything else going on. |
You kind of also have some people that use it in this way too. |
So on a rainy day, again, you can imagine, I can't really go outside, I can't do a whole lot, but maybe if I use my money a little bit, I can do something interesting inside. |
So some people use this expression to mean this as well. |
But I think most people, I would guess that most people tend to use it to mean like they just keep a little bit of money to be safe, to have a little bit of safety money available. |
So as I said, we tend to use for a rainy day to talk about money, saving money for a rainy day. |
But also, we sometimes use this to talk about activities. |
So for example, if you suggest an indoor activity, like going to an art museum, or maybe visiting a restaurant or something like that, someone might say, let's save it for a rainy day, which really means let's save it for a day that it's raining outside, or let's save it for a day when we don't have very much to do. |
So that means let's do that activity on another day or another time, maybe when it's a little quieter outside. |
So we have a couple of different ways that we use for a rainy day. |
And these are generally the situations in which we use them when we're talking about money and when we're planning activities. |
So I hope that this helps you understand how we use for a rainy day. |
Thanks very much for sending your question along. All right, great. That is everything that I have for you for this week. |
Thank you as always for sending your super 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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