Winning English - Mastering Idioms, Slang, and References
The cart before the horse • Train wreck • On your radar • Under your radar • TL;DR
Technological developments have a big impact on every part of our lives. That’s true of language, as well. Today I highlight a few words and phrases from the technological past and present.
We don’t think about the horse and cart very much nowadays, but at one time, this was the most advanced form of transportation available. And sayings from this time are still used today.
For example, you might hear at work, “I like your marketing plan, but let’s not put the cart before the horse. We don’t even have the product finished yet!”
For a horse and cart to work, the horse needs to be in front, pulling the cart along. The horse comes first. This is the order of things. So, when you “put the cart before the horse”, you are not doing things in the usual order. It’s probably less efficient and could even fail.
Recently, a researcher in a news article about the new coronavirus vaccines used a slight variation on this saying:
“As you can see, the cart is a little bit ahead of the horse here in that we don't have an approved vaccine yet,” Schaffner said. "But the ACIP is already weighing in on who should get this vaccine should it be, and when, it's approved.”
Trains were the next development in transportation. So, naturally, they contributed a number of words and phrases to English, as well.
For example, here in the United States, the number of coronavirus cases is growing quickly. A researcher from the University of California described it this way:
“We can see this sort of train wreck in slow motion coming, and there’s nothing we can do about it because these cases have already been infected, and they’re going to show up in hospitals.”
A “train wreck” is when a train accidentally crashes. As you likely know, train wrecks are usually quite big and quite shocking to see. So, when something is described as a “train wreck”, it’s very, very bad.
This phrase is used quite commonly - in business, to criticize sports teams, and even to describe people and personal relationships.
After trains, cars and airplanes came along, and eventually, radar was developed to track airplanes in the sky. Radar has inspired phrases that are commonly used today in many settings. Here’s the title of recent article on home renovation:
“Flipping Houses in 2021? Keep These 5 Home Renovation Trends on Your Radar”
When something is “on your radar”, it means that you know it exists and that you should pay attention to it. Picture it being on a radar screen in front of you.
Another similar phrase is “under your radar”. When something is “under your radar”, you do not know that it exists. We usually discover something was “under our radar” only after it has become a problem.
By the way, “to flip a house” means to renovate it and then sell it right away. You never live in a “flipped” house.
Today we have the internet, and of course, that has created a wide variety of new English phrases and words. One big group of new words is initialisms. In other words, the new words are created using the first letter - or initial letter - of each word.
For example, here’s a recent article from the prestigious academic journal Nature:
“TL;DR: This AI sums up research papers in a sentence”
“TL;DR” means “too long; didn’t read”. The internet has made a lot of information instantly available to us, but none of us can read it all. We often need a summary. Sometimes internet users will write “TL;DR”, then provide a summary.
Other times internet users write “TL;DR” when they want to ignore a long article. For example, when someone shares a link to an article - but people judge it to be too long and not helpful - they might just respond “TL;DR”.
There are many, many other examples of these internet initialisms. In fact, AI is one, too - for artificial intelligence. Here are links to more examples. Enjoy learning them all!
Thanks for reading Winning English! Please make sure to listen to the podcast, as well, to reinforce your leaning. And remember, if you like what you read or hear, like the post, comment on it, and please tell a friend. Talk soon!