Bursting at the seams
Now onto today’s English phrase—a really good one. Bursting at the seams. A seam is when you sew two pieces of fabric together, that part where they meet, that’s the seam. Look at your shirt, probably around your shoulder, where your sleeve meets the main part of your shirt. You probably have a seam there, where two pieces of fabric come together. And bursting means like, exploding. So this phrase “bursting at the seams” means something is expanding so fast it doesn’t fit in its container any more.
The airport in Mexico City is bursting at the seams. It carries 50 percent more passengers than it was designed to carry. They just don’t have any more room for additional planes, and more and more passengers want to come every year. It’s bursting at the seams; it cannot contain any more passengers.
When I was kid, the middle school I went to was bursting at the seams. In the United States, you go to middle school when you’re about ten or eleven until you’re about thirteen years old. So that middle school was bursting at the seams—there were too many students crowded in the classrooms. They finally brought in these temporary trailers that we used, and then in my last year they completed an addition to the building. But before the addition, our school was bursting at the seams: it could not take any more kids, and the addition opened up just in time.
How about the path to Machuu Pichuu? We talked about that a few episodes ago when we discussed the problem of over-tourism. I think we said there were triple the number of visitors last year than there were about ten years ago; there are too many people on those paths and it’s just getting too crowded. It’s bursting at the seams. Remember what Venice does? They just close the gates to the historic center when it’s bursting at the seams. Then they don’t let anyone else in.
That’s all for today. Thanks for being with us on episode 101. A lot of you have tried out Audible and I hope you’re liking it so far. All Plain English listeners can get a free audiobook to practice your listening by visiting PlainEnglish.com/book and you will see all the details of the offer there. Basically if you sign up for a free trial membership, you’ll get your pick of any audiobook for free—which you can keep forever even if you cancel your membership before you have to pay. It’s not a bad way to try something new if you’re up for a challenge. All the details are at PlainEnglish.com/book.
JR and I will be right back here next week, starting on Monday, as always. Just hit “follow” in Spotify or “subscribe” in your favorite podcast app and you’ll get all the latest episodes delivered automatically to your phone. Not a bad deal right? And it’s always free, every Monday and Thursday. Have a great weekend and we will be back together in just a couple of days. So long!
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