| 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 Kirill. Hi Kirill. Kirill says, What's the difference between poison and venom? Super good question. |
| So I want to start by talking about venom. |
| So venom is something that comes from an animal. |
| This is something that happens when the animal bites you or when the animal stings you or when that happens to another animal. |
| So venom is something that comes out of the animal. |
| Let's say for example, a snake bites you, venom comes out of the animal and goes into your body. |
| It's very deadly. |
| So it could hurt you or it could even kill you depending on the type of snake. |
| So venom is used to talk about something that comes from an animal and that is used when the animal attacks you. |
| So another example of a venomous animal, meaning an animal that has venom is like a scorpion. |
| So when a scorpion stings, it can use venom to attack the other thing, whatever that is a person or another animal. |
| So venom is something that comes from an animal and that happens when it attacks you or when it attacks something else. |
| Poison, on the other hand, while it can be in animals, like for example, frogs, it's something that humans come in contact with, but not as an attack, usually, hopefully. |
| So if we see something that's labeled poison or poisonous, meaning it has poison inside it, that means it is dangerous for the human, like to touch or to drink or to put on the skin. |
| That means they can have a negative reaction, or it could kill a person or it could kill an animal. |
| But when things are poisonous, they generally do not attack us. |
| They're just things that we have in our home. |
| So for example, many cleaning products, if we drink them, it is poisonous like that is poison to the body and we could die if that happens. |
| So poison is something that is not supposed to be put into the body and it's not something that attacks us usually. |
| However, we do have the verb to poison, which is when someone intentionally, this means they have a plan to hurt someone else by putting poison in their food or in their drink. |
| So we have this word used as a verb too. |
| So for example, she poisoned his meal and he died. |
| This is a very dark example sentence, but this means she put something in his food that was very dangerous for his body and he died as a result of that. |
| So to poison can be used as a verb, meaning to add something that is poisonous to something else in order to hurt another person or to kill another person or an animal as well. |
| You might see some terrible stories in the news, for example, of a person who for example, poisoned a neighbor's pet. |
| This is when someone intentionally puts a poisonous material into the pet's food. |
| So we have this use as a verb, we could not use venom. |
| In that case, we could not say the person put venom in the pet's food, it would be really, really strange. |
| So unless somehow they had access to like the snakes poisonous material in their body, we would not say that. |
| So another point to make is that venom is the substance that comes out of the animal. |
| So when we talk about the difference between like poison and venom, again, we go back to the animal or not animal distinction. |
| So when we talk about something that is venomous, it comes directly from the animal. |
| So if we wanted to say for whatever strange reason, someone put venom in the dog's food, it would mean they had to get that poisonous material from a snake and put it in the dog's food. |
| So it is possible but very, very unlikely. |
| So we think of venom usually as something coming directly from the animal. |
| But maybe if you're in a situation, for example, like a science lab where you explore different kinds of animal venoms, maybe you have access to some kinds of dangerous materials in that laboratory environment. |
| But this is getting into kind of very extreme situations. |
| So let's go back to the main point, which is just poison refers to things that humans can contact and humans can touch venom refers to something that comes from an animal that is used when it attacks you. |
| So I talked earlier about like frogs, we consider frogs poisonous because frogs generally do not attack and bite people. |
| But if we touch certain frogs, or some people like take stuff off frogs and try to eat it or whatever, that can also be poisonous too. |
| So this is the key difference between poison and venom. |
| Super interesting question. |
| Thanks very much for sending it along. |
| Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Anna. |
| Hi, Anna. Anna says, What is the meaning of he needs to shape up or ship out? Nice question. |
| Okay, shape up or ship out. |
| This is kind of a set phrase, actually, he needs to shape up or ship out or you need to shape up or ship out. |
| So let's break down these two meanings. |
| First, let's talk about shape up. |
| Shape up is a way a very short way of saying improve your behavior, right? So to say to shape up is like saying you are doing something that's not so great. |
| Like you have poor behavior now, like you should be more responsible, or you should take care of yourself or you should not do these bad things. |
| So when we say to someone, usually a child shape up, it means please improve your behavior. |
| Okay, so this is kind of a direct phrase. |
| Hopefully, we don't have to use this with adults. |
| Usually we use this with kids and maybe teenagers when they show bad behavior. |
| So to shape up means improve someone's behavior to improve your behavior. |
| So we might say like, wow, he really shaped up after his trip to the principal's office or, oh my gosh, she shaped up so much since the last time I saw her. |
| She used to be so crazy. |
| So to shape up means improving your behavior. |
| On the other hand, ship out to ship out, you can imagine this as like a ship going out to see if it's helpful for you to remember this. |
| This means leave means go away. |
| So this expression is used when we want to like leave a situation to leave maybe a city as well too. |
| But when we put it together with shape up or ship out as in this example sentence, he needs to shape up or ship out, it means he needs to improve his behavior or leave. |
| That's what the sentence means. |
| And we use it usually together in an expression like this. |
| So if someone in let's say school or in a work situation has lots and lots of bad behaviors, and they're causing problems, maybe the boss would come or the school's principal might come and say he needs to shape up or ship out, which means if he does not improve his behavior, he needs to leave. |
| So that's what shape up and ship out mean. |
| And I hope that you understand this whole expression as well. |
| Super interesting one. |
| Okay, thanks very much for sending that one along. |
| Let's move to your next question now. |
| Next question comes from Nacho. |
| Hi, Nacho. Nacho says Hi, Alicia. What's the difference between realize and notice? Okay, realize versus notice. |
| Let's start by talking about notice. |
| So when we notice something, it's like we're not focusing on that thing. |
| Like, imagine you're driving a car, or maybe you're riding a bicycle, right? And you're, you're looking at the road, right, you're focusing on the road, maybe, or maybe listening to music or something. |
| And then out this way, like from your bicycle or from the car, there's some sign or some picture, an advertisement or something you might go, Oh, okay, and then you move on. |
| So this is a situation in which we would use notice like, Oh, I noticed an advertisement for that earlier today, or, Oh, I noticed he wasn't at his desk this morning, what's going on? So we use notice for things that we just happen to see or things we just happen to learn about. |
| We're not looking for information, just we come to the office in the morning, are my co workers not there? No, I noticed he's not at his desk today. |
| Like it's just something that we happen to see or we happen to learn about. |
| On the other hand, when we realize something, it's like we've been thinking about it for a little while. |
| It's like we've been kind of wondering about the solution for something, or we've been trying to understand a situation for some time. |
| So we might use realize when we solve a problem, for example, like, I finally realized the problem with my computer was related to the battery, or I finally realized that he just wasn't the right guy for me. |
| So it's like something that has been going on for a while, we wouldn't use realize to talk about something we happen to see. |
| So we cannot use realize and notice interchangeably, it would sound really strange. |
| So we use notice for things that we just happen to see. |
| And we use realize for things we have been thinking about for quite some time. |
| So here are a couple more examples of when we might use these words. |
| I noticed you haven't submitted your report. |
| Is everything okay? I noticed you've been a little bit tired lately. |
| Are you all right? You know what I realized this morning? I haven't been exercising enough. |
| You know, I think my neighbor finally realized that he was just too noisy for the neighborhood. |
| So I hope that helps you understand the differences between notice and realize. |
| Great question. |
| Thanks for sending it along. |
| Alright, that is everything that I have 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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