Your English Five a Day #23.5

E233: 🎙️ Welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast with me, your host, Anna! Tune in to Week 23, Day 5 of Your English Five a Day, where we dive deep into expanding your active vocabulary with five pieces every working day.

🔥 In today's episode, we start by exploring the expression "in the firing line" before moving on to the adjective "dreadful". After that, we see two verbs, "emanate" and "seize". Last but not least, we take a look at the noun "commotion".

⚖️ In our gripping story, follow the journey of a young lawyer facing the consequences of a grave mistake. Experience the tension of the courtroom, the emotions of desperation, and the triumph of redemption.

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Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you are listening to Week 23, Day 5 of Your English Five a Day. This is the series where we are dedicated to expanding your active vocabulary by deep-diving into five pieces every day of the working week from Monday through to Friday. And don't forget, you can get more from your listening experience by becoming a Plus Member, where for a small monthly donation, you get access to transcripts, bonus episodes, and vocabulary lists, as well as knowing that you're helping this podcast to continue to grow. I'll leave the link for Plus Membership in the show notes. Let's start today's list. We begin with the idiom in the firing line. In the firing line. So, firing, we spell F I R I N G. Line, L I N E. So, if you are in the firing line, then you are the one who is going to get verbally attacked or criticised, especially if you have certain responsibilities within a company or organisation. So, for example, if you run a bakery and you're the manager, you have four people doing the baking. And then a large team beyond that deals with things like purchasing ingredients, sorting out distribution, delivering the bread and the products that are baked to the customers. Now imagine one day a batch of your loaves is found to be contaminated. Gasp! Dun dun duuuun... And lots of people eating these loaves that have been distributed by your company are getting sick. Now, there is going to be an investigation into what happened, and you as the manager are going to be in the firing line. It doesn't matter if it's not your fault, like literally you did not bake the bread, you did not find the ingredients. It wasn't you. You were sitting in your office at your desk. You didn't do anything wrong, but you are the manager. And therefore, because of your position, you're going to be the one in the firing line. You're the one who's going to get the criticism and the verbal attacks, the people who are very sick are going to stand outside the door to your office. And as soon as you come out, they're going to shout at you saying,"You made me so poorly. I missed a whole week of work because of you. I want compensation." So, to be in the firing line. Have you ever been in the firing line? I certainly have. It's not nice. Here's another example,"As account managers, you're in the firing line if we go over budget again this year." That is one of the drawbacks of being a manager or a supervisor. The buck stops with you. You have overall responsibility and if things go wrong, it all comes down on you. Alright, moving on to an adjective now, we have the word dreadful. Dreadful. We spell this D R E A D F U L. Dreadful. Full of dread. If something is described as dreadful, then it's quite unpleasant or it's not nice. It's of low quality. It's dreadful. If I tasted one of those contaminated bread loaves, then I would say,"Oh, this tastes dreadful. What's wrong with this bread? It's made my marmalade on toast taste disgusting. It's dreadful." Here's an example sentence,"Will you please turn that dreadful music off? I'm trying to concentrate on my essay." Next on the list is a verb and it is emanate. Emanate. To emanate. To emanate is to come out of, or to come from. So, you might say that there's a strange smell coming out of the drawer in the kitchen. Here we could use emanate. There's a strange smell emanating from the drawer in the kitchen. Or there's an unusual sound emanating from the fridge. It doesn't normally sound like that. There's usually a little humming noise, a little buzz. But today, It's a very strange sound. I think the fridge might be broken. Listen to the sound that's emanating from the fridge. Here's another example,"When I heard angry voices emanating from the living room, I thought twice about asking for my pocket money. I'll try again later when my parents are in a better mood!" Next on the list is another verb and it is seize. Seize. We spell this S E I Z E, seize. Just the same as the oceans, seas, or the same as someone seeing something with their eyes,"She sees." So, it's the same pronunciation. But this is the verb to seize, which means to take someone or something using sudden force. So, very quickly grabbing something and taking it. This is usually used when we're talking about law enforcement officers or perhaps criminals when you quickly grab something and take it away. If you are in the airport and you go through airport security and they check your bag and they go,"Oh my goodness me, you have something that is prohibited in your luggage. So, we are going to seize it. We're going to grab it and take it away." My mum came on a cruise ship that I was working on a long time ago, and she went through security before boarding the ship. And she had with her some cheese and some biscuits and a knife with which to cut the cheese to have a little cheese and biscuit snack when she first got onto the ship. Obviously, knives are considered to be weapons, even though it was just a simple cheese knife. It wasn't particularly sharp or dangerous, but they were like,"No, this is considered a weapon. This is prohibited. You cannot take it onto the ship. Therefore, we're going to seize it." So, they took it away and she never saw it again. So, have you ever had anything seized when you've been travelling? A burglar might seize some goods if they're going to steal something. Very naughty. Here's an example sentence,"The burglar seized the homeowner and demanded he take him to where he kept his money and jewellery." Next on the list is a noun and it is commotion. Commotion. We spell commotion, C O M M O T I O N. Commotion. Commotion. Commotion describes a sudden and short period of confusion, noise, or excited movement or disturbance. So, for example, if you are eating in a restaurant, there's a certain amount of background noise, people talking and clinking glasses. There'll be the sounds of plates and cutlery against plates, people eating, there might be some background music. And then suddenly a waiter drops a whole tray of food and there's just this noise and people gasp and,"Oh no!" And someone gets wine spilled all down their front."Oh my goodness, my favourite dress!" There is this sudden and short period of disturbance. There's extra noise and excitement, not in a good way, arising from this incident. This poor waiter who dropped his tray of food. So, that would be a sudden commotion."There was a commotion in the restaurant tonight." Here's another example,"There was quite a commotion on the roads today as the police tried to remove large crowds of people protesting about the price rise of petrol." Alright, that's our five for today so let's do our recap. We started with the idiom in the firing line. In the firing line. If you're in the firing line then you are going to receive verbal attack and criticism, usually because you are responsible for an organisation or a company. So, you're in the firing line. Then we had the adjective dreadful, which means unpleasant or of low quality. We had the verb emanate, which means to come out of or to come from. We had the verb seize, to take someone or to take something with sudden force. And we had the noun commotion. A sudden and short period of noise and confusion and movement."What's going on?" OK, it's time for a little pronunciation. Please repeat after me. In the firing line. In the firing line. Dreadful. Dreadful. Emanate. Emanate. Seize. Seize. Commotion. Commotion. Very good. Alright, let's try to test your memory now. The other day at work I was walking down the corridor when I heard a strange sound coming from one of the storerooms. What word could I use instead of to say coming out of? What verb could I replace that with? Emanate. Yes, I was walking down the corridor at work and there was a strange noise emanating from one of the storerooms. And as I got closer, I realised it was music. Someone was in the storeroom playing music. This is not allowed. Besides which it was very unpleasant music. Not my taste at all. Very unpleasant. What adjective could we use to replace unpleasant. Dreadful. Yes. There was some dreadful music emanating from the storeroom at work. So, I went in and I found one of our employees sitting there with his little CD player playing music when he should have been working. So, I quickly took his CD player and his CDs using a lot of force. And I said,"This is not allowed. I'm confiscating this." What verb could I use to describe this taking of his CD player? Seized. Yes, I seized his CD player and all of his music because he's not allowed to be taking a break without asking and he's certainly not allowed to sit in the storeroom playing music. While this was going on in the storeroom, I heard suddenly a disturbance in the hallway. Something was going on. There was lots of noise and banging around and shouting. What noun could I use to describe this sudden noise and disturbance? Commotion. Commotion. Yes, there was a commotion in the hallway. So, I popped my head out to see what was going on and saw one of our patients making a run for it, trying to escape the facility."Oh no, please stop him!" If we don't stop him and he escapes the facility when we're supposed to be responsible for his care, then I, as the manager, I'm going to be subject to a lot of criticism about how we look after our patients. What idiom could we use to describe this situation where someone is subject to criticism? I'll be in the firing line. Absolutely. Luckily we managed to stop the man before he escaped and I was relieved. So, let me just reiterate what happened. I was walking down the corridor and I heard a dreadful noise emanating from the storeroom. I found one of our employees skiving off, listening to his CDs on his little CD player. So, I seized the CD player and the CDs. And while doing that, I heard a commotion in the corridor. Noticed one of our patients was trying to escape the facility. And luckily we stopped him. Had we not stopped him, then I would have been in the firing line. So, I am relieved. Okay, we're going to bring those pieces together one last time in story time. As I stood in the firing line, my heart was racing with dread. I knew what was about to happen and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It was a dreadful feeling, being at the mercy of someone else's decisions. But I had no choice, I had to face the consequences of my actions. I'm a young and ambitious lawyer. I'm always chasing after the next big case. But in my quest for success, I had made a grave mistake. I had crossed a powerful and influential man, and now I was paying the price. The case against me was weak, but with his influence, he could twist the truth in his favour. And as a result, I was about to lose everything. Everything I had worked so hard for. As the court proceedings began, I could feel the tension in the air. There was a lot of commotion among the jury and spectators as they sat down to listen to this highly publicised case. The judge's stern gaze made me shiver, and I knew the verdict was not going to be in my favour. My mind was in a state of chaos, trying to come up with a last-minute defence. But it was too late, the damage had already been done. In that moment of despair, I looked around the courtroom desperate to find a glimmer of hope. And that's when I saw him, my husband, sitting in the front row, his eyes filled with worry and fear. It was then that I realised, I couldn't let him down. I couldn't let this one mistake ruin our lives. With a newfound determination, I stood up and addressed the court. I spoke from my heart, and my words seemed to emanate with a sense of honesty and sincerity. As I finished my speech, I could see the judge's expression soften, and in a surprising turn of events, he announced that I was not guilty. Tears of relief and joy streamed down my face as I hugged my husband. It was a moment I will never forget. That dreadful experience would always linger in my mind. But I'd learned to never let my ambition blind me from the things that truly matter. And in that moment, I knew I had seized a second chance at life. And that brings us to the end of today's episode and the end of Week 23. If you have enjoyed this week, then please remember to leave a like, a rating or a review, and don't forget to recommend English Like a Native to all of your English language-learning friends. I look forward to tickling your eardrums either tomorrow or next week. Until then, take very good care and goodbye.