Blend in
This is a such a good phrasal verb—I’m so excited to do this one. Blend in. I have no idea why I’m excited to tell you about this one. I just think this is a great one to know.
If you blend in with your surroundings, you look like the things nearby. Earlier in this lesson, I said that even an elephant can blend in with its natural surroundings. That means you might be scanning the horizon, looking for wildlife, and you might even miss an elephant because it blends in with its natural surroundings.
The elephants aren’t the only things that blend in with their surroundings in Kruger National Park. The big cats can blend in with the tall grass. Think about it: the tall grass is light brown and green; the lions are also light brown. They can easily blend in with the tall grass around them. That’s how they take their prey by surprise—and that’s probably why humans aren’t allowed out of their cars, except at specific areas! To blend in, therefore, has a purpose in nature: to camouflage an animal, to keep it from being visible to other animals.
Animals are great at blending in with their surroundings—that’s evolution at work, right? A grasshopper is green, so it blends in with the grass. A polar bear is white, so he blends in with his snowy surroundings. An owl is light brown; he blends in with the trees. These animals all look like their surroundings, so from a distance, it can be hard to tell they are there.
People can blend in; in fact, people like to blend in. A common complaint goes like this: I’m having a hard time blending in. That means, you’re having a hard time feeling like you belong in a new group; you’re having a hard time feeling at home in a place.
If you ever find yourself in a big crowd, and you are the only one that’s different, you say you aren’t blending in. You might move to a different region even within your own country. But if your culture, pastimes, accent, and tastes are different, you might have a hard time blending in. You might always feel a little different.
Some people are comfortable not blending in. They want to stand out from the crowd: they want to be different and are proud of being different. They might like getting the attention that comes from standing out from the crowd. I can’t say this for sure, but I think they are probably the exception. I think many people want to blend in with the others around them. That doesn’t mean they want to be invisible, but I do think most people derive some comfort from feeling similar to the others around them.
Remember that with animals, we use “blend in” to describe physical appearances. The polar bear blends in with the snowy surroundings. You can use it in the same way with people, though it’s less common. You might want to be a little careful using it to describe people’s physical appearances, but I’ll give you a few safe examples.
I once had an assignment in Hawaii for work. My job was to work at a bank for a few weeks. Before I went, my boss told me that I had to wear a Hawaiian shirt to the office: that was what I was expected to wear. I was in disbelief: Was I really expected to wear a Hawaiian shirt to the office of a bank? And he said yes, when you get to Hawaii, he told me, go to a store called Reyn Spooner’s and buy some Hawaiian shirts and wear them to the office.
So I did it. I bought three Hawaiian shirts to wear to work. I felt really strange wearing them, but I just wanted to blend in. Guess what? At the office, everyone was wearing Hawaiian shirts. That’s business dress in Honolulu. They’re professional shirts—if you think of Hawaiian shirts from movies or tourist shops, you think of drawings of women in bikinis and cocktails and vacation imagery. It wasn’t like that. They were lightweight, short sleeve, button-down shirts with nice colors and drawings, nothing outrageous: palm trees and leaves and boats and patterns and such. I, luckily, got the right style of shirt and I was able to blend in in Honolulu.
Now on the very hottest days, I’ll wear those shirts to work here in Chicago. When I do that, I don’t blend in, but on the hottest summer days, nobody really cares!
Other times, I’ve been assigned to tour factories and farms and places like that. Let me tell you, I don’t blend in on a factory floor. Everyone takes one look at me and they know I’m from an office somewhere!
A person’s physical features might cause him or her not to blend in—this is where you want to be sensitive to people’s feelings because, as I mentioned, a lot of people do want to blend in. The only man in a crowd of women; the only woman in a crowd of men—both cases where someone might not blend in. The only older person in a crowd of younger people, too, or vice-versa.
A really tall person might have a hard time blending in, if he’s walking around people of average height like me. My job has taken me to India a few times; I can confidently say that I did not blend in as I was riding the crowded Delhi metro.
Here’s a funny story. The first car in the train of the Delhi metro is reserved for women only. I had never heard of that before, so you can imagine my embarrassment when I noticed everyone was looking my way and smiling in the first car of the train. One brave person approached me and informed me that I was in “the ladies’ compartment.” I think people were more amused than bothered. But after that, I quickly switched cars and tried to blend in with the crowd and not attract any more notice.
JR’s song of the week
It’s the first Thursday of the new year, so I’ll get us started with a song of the week. JR will resume selection duties next week. Today’s song is going to be, “Midnight Train to Georgia” by Gladys Knight. This is among my favorite songs of all time. It’s about two people, man and a woman, who are together in Los Angeles. The woman is from the city; the man is from Georgia, the country. He decides city life is not for him, so he goes back to Georgia and she follows him. The famous line is, “I’d rather be with him in his world than without him in mine.”
I just absolutely love that song. “Midnight Train to Georgia” performed by Gladys Knight from 1973. It won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance the following year.
See you next time!
That’s all today. Reyn Spooner—that’s the name of the shop I went to in Hawaii. If you want to see what people wear to the office in Hawaii, just Google that clothing shop and you’ll see it.
Hey, get your 2021 off to a good start with Plain English Plus—a longtime member just sent me a note saying he loves it and it’s the very best English course he’s ever taken. So if you’re ready to take the next step in English, come take it with us. You can see what it’s all about at PlainEnglish.com/Plus.
Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
