All the rage
Beards were all the rage in the 2000s. What does “all the rage” mean? It’s a trend or a product that’s extremely popular. Not always, but it’s usually something new. Remember that in the 1990s, people were mostly clean-shaven, or they had goatees. But then beards started to be cool again in the early 2000s. It became synonymous with Brooklyn hipsters—but then the trend spread and became more mainstream. It’s been all the rage, it’s been extremely popular, to have a beard.
Oh, how can we forget? The Impossible Burger is all the rage these days, especially after Burger King introduced the Impossible Whopper. I mentioned Katy Perry dressed up as an Impossible Burger. She joins tennis star Serena Williams, Jay-Z, and television host Trevor Noah as investors in the white-hot meatless startup. The Impossible Burger is truly all the rage.
I saw a headline, “5G is all the rage.” Is it? I don’t know. Not too many people have a 5G phone and the service is only available in small sections of the largest cities. I see billboards advertising it here in Chicago, but I’ve never talked to anyone about it. I don’t quite think 5G is all the rage yet, so I don’t agree with that headline. If something is going to be “all the rage,” it needs to be popular and a frequent topic of conversation.
Ah, here we go. We are so trendy here. If you want to know what’s all the rage, just keep listening to this program. Here, in no particular order, are things that are all the rage that you heard about right here. Juul, vaping. Remember? We talked about e-cigarettes in episode 56. Lightweight electric scooters like Lime and Bird were our main topic all the way back in episode 47, and they are now popular here, too, by the way. Marie Kondo? I don’t know, what do you think? Is she and her minimalist style all the rage? That’s borderline, but you can listen all about her in episode 56. Dry January is all the rage. Not now, but, you know, in January. That one: if you’ve listened to that episode, you have delved deep, deep into the Plain English archives. That was episode 12. These are examples of things that are all the rage—really popular, topics of conversation.
What lesson can we draw from this? I think we can conclude that if you want to know what’s going to be all the rage tomorrow, just listen to Plain English today!
JR’s song of the week
Time for the song of the week, selected by JR, the producer. It is, “Set Fire to the Rain” by Adele. It is from her second album, called 21, and was the third consecutive number-one hit from that album. It talks about the contradictions of a relationship that was probably not right for her. The key line in the song is this one: “You and me together, nothing gets better / But there’s a side to you that I never knew.” It’s a really good song, powerful, strong vocals. She has an amazing voice, and there was a good live version of this song too. “Set Fire to the Rain” by Adele is JR’s song of the week. If you’d like to nominate a song, feel free to email [email protected].
That’s all for today. Thanks for being with us. It never gets old for me, and I just love hearing from all of you. Don’t be shy. Send me a note to [email protected] and you can also connect on WhatsApp by going to PlainEnglish.com/WhatsApp from your phone and it will pull the number right up. We’ll be right back here on Monday, thanks again for being with us.
Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
