Brand new

Brand-new

Today’s English expression is “brand new.” This is going to be a short one—but I don’t want to hear any complaining because I already taught you “as the crow flies” in the main lesson.

You’re going to use “brand-new” when you want to emphasize that something is very new. There’s no time limit on “brand-new”; it’s all about your judgment and how new something seems.

In today’s lesson about Google Maps , I was telling you about the feature that lets you go back in time on street view. You can see photos from the street at various points in the past— whenever Google took a new street view photo of that building. And to illustrate that, I suggested you look at the Bank of America Tower in Chicago. This is a brand-new skyscraper . It opened in October 2020. Today, it’s May 2022, so it’s a year and a half old. But it barely got any use during COVID, so I think we can still say this building is brand new. It’s very new.

Don’t go outside in the rain if you’re wearing brand-new sneakers —you’ll get them wet and dirty . You know that new sneakers are perfect, no scratches , no stains , no creases , no spots , no nothing. They smell great, they fit well . You don’t want to wear brand-new sneakers outside in bad weather.

How old is a brand-new pair of sneakers? I would say a week, maybe a month tops . Sneakers might last—I don’t know—two or three years, so the first week, the first month really is new. But wait a minute. I just said that 110 North Wacker is a brand-new building, and it opened a year and a half ago! That’s because a skyscraper like that can last a hundred years or more, so the first year, first two years, maybe even the first three years, you can still call it a brand-new building. Year-old sneakers are most certainly not brand new.

Has this ever happened to you? You have a bottle of soda and you lose the cap , then you want to close the bottle and put it back in the fridge, but you don’t have the cap. No, I didn’t think so—this isn’t a problem for me either. But Coca-Cola is introducing a brand-new bottle design that keeps the cap attached to the bottle so you don’t lose it. The design is brand-new.

My first reaction to this was, talk about a solution in search of a problem ! But the real reason is not consumer convenience , but recycling . We often throw the cap in the trash and recycle the bottle, when in fact the cap is recyclable, too. This brand-new bottle design will make it more likely that the cap winds up in the recycling as well as the bottle.

JR’s song of the week

Now it’s time for JR’s song of the week. He has selected “ Hold My Hand ” by Hootie and the Blowfish. It came out in 1994 on the band’s most popular album ever, called “ Cracked Rear View .” Hootie & the Blowfish were really popular in the mid-90s , and this was their famous album with a number of hits on it. “Hold My Hand” is one of them; I saw one critic say that the song was a perfect symbol for the band’s good-time vibes . And I do agree with that. So thanks JR for this song of the week.

See you next time!

And that brings us to the end of today’s Plain English. This was lesson number 477, which you can find at PlainEnglish.com/477. And remember, to get the very most out of Plain English, do consider joining as a Plain English Plus+ member. That allows you to upgrade your English with step-by-step video tutorials, live conversation calls, personalized feedback, the fast version of the audio, translations, exercises, and much more. Check that out at PlainEnglish.com/Plus .