Caught up in

Caught up in

Now I’m going to show you how to use the English expression “caught up in.” We say that someone—a person—is caught up in something else.

And we use this when a person becomes involved in something , usually something bad, and usually by accident or without fully understanding the situation.

This can happen when someone gets a little bit involved in something bad or something they didn’t mean to get involved in. Let’s imagine that a teenager makes some new friends. And the boy wants to make a good impression on his new friends and fit in with the group. But imagine the group is involved in selling illegal drugs in school. This new friend might get caught up in selling drugs in school—not because he wanted to do so, but because he was responding to pressure from his new friends. He got caught up in something bad.

So you can see from this example, when we say someone is “caught up in” something, we don’t fully assign blame to that person—but we don’t fully absolve the person either. The teenager who was selling drugs at school: we can understand his motivations . We can see how he didn’t want to start doing that; it wasn’t his idea; he wasn’t the leader. But he should have known better.

FTX —remember that? A lot of people at FTX didn’t have any idea that the company’s leaders were committing fraud . But a few people at the top did get caught up in the scandal. They got caught up in the scandal: it wasn’t their idea, but they eventually found out about it and participated in it—or at least didn’t stop it.

You’ll remember Sam Bankman-Fried was the founder of FTX and he was convicted of fraud . But other company leaders pleaded guilty to fraud too. They weren’t the masterminds ; they weren’t the leaders. But they weren’t totally innocent either. They were caught up in the scandal.

Georgio Armani is a luxury-goods company. Armani is caught up in a scandal now about working conditions . An investigation alleges that an Armani supplier —not Armani the company—a supplier hired workers illegally and treated them poorly .

The investigation is not over, but some would say Armani is caught up in the scandal. The scandal is not about actions the company directly took, but instead about actions its suppliers took. Companies are generally responsible for making sure their suppliers behave properly . So if you say Armani is caught up in the scandal, you imply that Armani isn’t 100 percent innocent and isn’t 100 percent guilty. It’s not their actions directly, but they should have investigated their suppliers in more detail.

You can be caught up in something even if you didn’t do anything wrong. If you go out for a peaceful walk, but then a huge protest march comes by and you can’t find a way out, and you’re stuck in the protest—you can say you got caught up in the protest. That doesn’t mean you joined it; it doesn’t mean you (or anyone else) did anything wrong. You were just involved in it without wanting to be .

Shohei Ohtani is a baseball star. He started his career in Japan; he’s now in the United States. And last month, a sensational story broke : his translator had paid millions of dollars to settle gambling debts . And when the story first came out, people wondered : is Ohtani himself caught up in the scandal? People asked: is he involved somehow? Did he agree to pay his translator’s bets? If so, that would have been bad—not as bad as the betting, but it would have been bad.

That’s not what happened, though. It appears now, from the evidence released so far, that Ohtani was the victim, not a participant in the crime. And in that sense he was caught up in the scandal. He became involved in it, even when he didn’t want to be. He didn’t do anything wrong, but he was involved as the victim.

See you next time!

What a crazy story that was. Is! The charges were only fully detailed a few weeks ago; there hasn’t been a trial yet. We’ll see if the translator pleads guilty or not. His lawyer’s statements certainly made it seem like he would admit his guilt. And the text messages don’t look good for him. We’ll have to keep watching and see what happens.

Now listen. Twice a year here at Plain English, I give you updates on previous stories. But there are lots of small updates that I can’t include in those special update lessons. But I can include them in our emails.

For those of you who don’t know, JR sends out an email every Monday and Thursday. A bunch of us here at Plain English work on those emails: JR, me, and our colleague Melissa. And in those emails, we often put links to articles about past topics.

One of the great things about learning English with us is that you learn about the world, what’s going on. You’re up to date on the latest stories. The emails that JR sends on Mondays and Thursdays are a great way to continue learning. So yes, we tell you about the new story and expression that came out that day. But we also tell you about the latest news on previous stories we’ve talked about.

So if you like listening to the stories, if you like being up to date on what’s going on in the world, and if you like doing that in English, then make sure to sign up for JR’s emails, if you’re not getting them already.

The way to do that is to go to PlainEnglish.com/mail. And if you do that, you’ll start getting JR’s emails twice each week.

That brings us to the end of today’s lesson. We’ll be back here on Monday with a new topic. See you then.