Come to light

Come to light

Today’s expression is “to come to light.” What does it mean, in English, for something to “come to light”? It means, something becomes known. Something that was secret, something that was hidden before, has become known.

This is often, but not always, used in the context of some type of wrongdoing. “New evidence has come to light” is a popular expression. It means, new evidence has recently been discovered. It had been hidden before, it had been unknown before, but now it is known. Now it has been discovered.

Here’s a recent headline: “More and more explosive details about Wirecard come to light.” Wirecard was a financial technology firm in Germany. A huge hole in its finances came to light after an auditors’ report this spring. The company said they had $2 billion in bank accounts, but in fact they did not. This discrepancy came to light via the auditors’ report. It had been hidden before; the managers of the business were saying they had a lot of money that they did not have. Their deception came to light after a report could not verify the existence of that money.

After the explosion in Beirut, several letters from the customs director at the port came to light. The letters expressed worry and concern about so much ammonium nitrate being stored in a warehouse. The letters had not been public before the explosion, but they came to light afterward. They became known—and it was embarrassing that the government had advance warning and failed to act on it.

Have you ever seen Ellen DeGeneres on TV? She’s a popular talk show host and actress. In public, she has a friendly, likeable, approachable public image. Her motto is, “be kind.” But several accusations of mistreatment and abuse came to light. One after another, people who worked for her—security guards, assistants on her TV set, and other employees—they said they faced abuse, fear, intimidation, and discrimination. These allegations came to light in a series of detailed articles in BuzzFeed. They became known in those BuzzFeed articles.

It doesn’t have to be wrongdoing, it can just be clues to a mystery. At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, the typical symptoms were well-known. But after several months, additional symptoms came to light. Some people experienced body aches; others discovered their sense of smell or taste was affected. These additional symptoms came to light after several months of the pandemic.

Mistakes can come to light. It’s common for large data sets to have mistakes in them, and for those mistakes to only be found later. That was true in some cases of coronavirus reporting. Mistakes in the database came to light after further analysis.

Let’s say you manage a business and your company produces something: it might be a product or a service. There are many steps in the process. You might decide to investigate to see if there are any inefficiencies in the way things are done. As a result of your inquiry, several inefficiencies come to light. Whereas before, nobody really knew about the inefficiencies, now you know and you can correct them.

JR’s song of the week

Time for JR’s Song of the Week. It is “My All” by Mariah Carey. One of the lines is, “I’d give my all to have just one more night with you.” That means, I’d give everything I could. I’d give my all; all my effort. Today’s song was nominated by Birgül from Turkey, a Plain English Plus+ member. Thanks, Birgül and thanks JR for making the selection. Remember, members of all levels—Free, Starter and Plus—can find the song of the week right from your member dashboard.

See you next time!

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