Winning English - Mastering Idioms, Slang, and References
Float past you • Have the bandwidth • Do the leg work • Circle back • Pull the plug
With the workweek underway and the end of the year approaching, you might have a lot of work building up.
Imagine a colleague calls you on the phone. She says, “Hi. I have an idea I want to float past you.”
“Okay,” you say, “I can talk now.”
She goes on to describe a very useful - and potentially profitable - project, but it will take a lot of work.
You say, “That’s a great idea, but I’m afraid I just don’t have the bandwidth right now. Who else could we find to work with us on this?”
“To float something past” someone means you want to get that person’s feedback on an idea. The idea isn’t fully formed yet, and you are looking for input. Imagine a boat floating by on river, and you comment on it.
To “not have the bandwidth” means that you are too busy to work on - or even to think about - something. The saying comes from the world of electronics. Most electronic signals - like radio stations, for example - must use only a certain set of frequencies, called bands. That set is the signal’s bandwidth. If you use up your bandwidth, you cannot do anything more.
Your colleague answers your question about who else could help the two of you with her idea.
“Hmm…,” she says, “I’d have to do some leg work on who else might be available to help. I’ll have to circle back to you on that.”
You say, “Let me make some calls, too. I’d hate to pull the plug on your project. I think it could do a lot of good for us!”
“To do some leg work” means that you will investigate the details of a situation. The idea is that you will be like a good police detective. You will walk the streets, visit every witness, and explore every detail in order to understand a situation.
When you tell someone you will “circle back”, it means that you will find the answers to questions, then return with those answers. Like a circle, you start out on a path, but if you follow the line, you will return to where you started.
“To pull the plug” means to end something. A plug is what we call the part of a device that we stick into a wall to get electricity. If we pull that out of the wall, there will be no more electricity, and the device will shut off. Sometimes we have to do that with projects.
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