Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, everybody. How's it going? Welcome back to Catchword, the Q-Lips vocabulary series for intermediate and advanced English learners that teaches you idioms, phrasal verbs, and more. Our goal with this series is to make your speaking sound more natural and help you understand the English you hear the next time you're watching a TV series or having a chat with a native speaker.
In today's episode, I'll be joined by my co-host, Indiana, and we're going to teach you two expressions related to speed. But before we do that, I want to let you know that if you're serious about improving your English fluency, becoming a Q-Lips member is the best way to do it.
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Okay, and now let's welcome Indiana and get started with this episode. Here we go. Enjoy. And joining me now to help teach this lesson to everyone is my co-host, Indiana. Hey there, Indiana. How's it going?
It's going well. I've been very productive this week, and I've got a lot done, so I'm feeling good about that. How are you doing, Andrew?
I'm doing great and I'm excited for this episode today. Indiana, we are going to teach everyone two expressions that we can use when we want to talk about speedy and quick results and doing something fast. The key theme for this episode, everyone, I think is this word speed. So Indiana, you said you were very efficient and you did a lot of things this week, got a lot of work done.
Maybe you did some speedy work. Maybe this is an appropriate topic for today's episode.
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Chapter 2: What expressions related to speed are discussed in this episode?
But guys, keep this theme in mind, speed, and I think it will help you to understand the two expressions that we're going to teach you today. today in this lesson. So the two expressions that we are going to explain and give you some examples and tell you how to use in this episode are number one, to make short work of something and number two, in short order.
And we'll start with the first one, Indiana. I think that's an appropriate place to start. So the key expression, everyone, I'll say it for you one more time. And then Indiana, maybe you can say it for us as well. So we can hear your lovely voice. Also, the expression is to make short work of something. And when I say it quickly, it sounds more like to make short work of something.
Indiana, could you say it for us as well?
Absolutely. To make short work of something. To make short work of something.
All right, and I'll let you do the honors with the definition. What does it mean if we make short work of something?
So this expression refers to completing a task or something in a very short amount of time. Thus, we have this word short in it. So to make short work of something, the amount of time you expected that it would take is actually much shorter. Easy to remember, work, the work was short. But we don't only have to use this expression with work tasks.
We could use it for chores, household chores, or perhaps even finishing a meal. I think this is the most common situation where I would say this is if somebody like, let's say my friend, I served him a plate full of dinner. And he finished it up in like under two minutes. I would say, wow, you made short work of that. Like you really finished that quickly. Do you want some more?
It could be eating. It could be doing a task at work. But to make short work of something is to finish something very quickly.
Yeah, well said. And that's exactly how I got the inspiration for this episode, to be honest with you, is that one of my friends was visiting my home and it was time to give my dog her dinner. And so I prepared the dog food, put it in her bowl and gave her the food and she woofed it down. And that's another expression that we use to talk about eating something very, very quickly, right?
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Chapter 3: How do you use 'to make short work of something'?
Yeah, something like that. Anyway, I'm starving. Should we go grab a sandwich or something? Definitely. Okay.
All right. So we just heard a brother and sister quite surprised after they made short work of a pretty daunting task. They cleaned out their parents' basement in 90 minutes. And if you think about how big a basement is and how much junk could be in there, you might think that that kind of task could take you many hours, if not multiple days. but they made short work of it.
So this again means doing a task, completing a task in a pretty quick and short amount of time. And this actually reminds me of a similar situation that just happened with me and my husband. We, in our house, we have a two-car garage. Just barely, you can fit two small cars in there.
And we haven't been using it for the year and change that we've been living here because we just had a bunch of stuff on one of the sides of the garage. And I was like, please, before it starts snowing, can we just finish clearing it out and make room for there to be two cars in here? So we got it.
I mean, mostly it was my husband because it was a lot of his stuff, but he also made short work of it and got it done in like less than an hour. I was so impressed. So yeah, this is basically the same situation, but with a garage.
Yeah, very good. And I love that expression that you just used, a year in change, to say that you've been living in your home for over a year, but not quite two years, right? Just some months. And yeah, a year in change is a nice way that we can talk about kind of an unspecified amount of time that's over a year, right? End change. Cool.
And Indiana, one other thing that we should probably highlight is that we can kind of alter this expression. There are some different ways to say it as well. For example, we could say make quick work of something, right? Maybe when your husband was cleaning the garage, we could say, well, he made quick work of it, doing it very, very quickly.
Again, the meaning is exactly the same, but sometimes we can change that adjective, make short work of it, make quick work of it. I think you could probably say make fast work of it. Would that sound bizarre to you? Or are there any other adjectives we could use in that expression that come to mind?
I think you could say fast work, but I think quick and short are a little more common. I think those would be the three main adjectives, yeah, that you could use with this. Quick work, short work, fast work. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
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