Crack down, Caught up

Crack down on

The first one is “crack down on.” Anyone who’s against cheating in international sporting competitions will probably be happy that the IOC is cracking down on cheating, meaning they are punishing those who cheat. To crack down on something means to punish or try to stop something that is wrong or not allowed. It’s often said that police are cracking down on drunk-driving; they are looking harder for people driving under the influence of alcohol. Police might also crack down on texting while driving—they’re looking harder, and if they catch you, you’ll get a fine. Hopefully, the IOC continues to crack down against cheating because this type of cheating harms the ideals of competition. Maybe their crackdown will include stricter testing or stronger punishments. In American football, they are cracking down against violent hits that can give players concussions. Don’t ask me where this expression comes from, since it has nothing to do with the word crack or the word down—but it is fairly common to say. Here are a few more examples. These days, companies are cracking down on employees who don’t treat women with respect in the workplace. Now that we’re heading for the Christmas shopping season, stores and shopping centers might be cracking down on shoplifting. YouTube is cracking down on users who post offensive content. In Honduras, the government ordered the police to crack down on protesters in the streets.

Caught up in

The other expression I wanted to highlight this week is “caught up in.” In the original context, I said that the Olympics were not the only sport to be caught up in a doping scandal. Baseball, football, soccer and especially cycling were also caught up in their own scandals. To be caught up in something means to be involved in something, especially if that something takes up a lot of your attention. It’s usually, but not always, something bad. Let’s take one good example and one bad example.

Let’s say I’m reading a great book right now—which is something that’s usually true, at least for me. And let’s say I was reading late into the night and forgot to meet friends for dinner, as I had planned. I might call them to apologize and say, I was so caught up in my book, I lost track of time. Had I not been caught up in my book, I would definitely have remembered our plans.

That’s a good, or neutral, example. You can be caught up in a movie or a book; you can even be caught up in a conversation—anything that takes a lot of your attention and distracts you from other things. Here’s an example where it’s more negative, where something bad takes your attention away from something good. The whole government of Brazil is currently caught up in a massive bribery scandal. It’s taking up almost all the government’s energy and the public’s attention. For a long time, cycling was caught up in a scandal that featured cheating by so many of the world’s top cyclists.

Actually, I just remembered one other “bad” use of caught up in. If you say someone is caught up in himself, it means that person thinks so much about himself that he can’t think about anything else or anyone else. It’s definitely not a compliment to say that someone is too caught up in himself or herself. By the way, just a quick warning: I’ve been talking about the meaning of “caught up in”, but to be caught up on something is an entirely different phrasal verb with an entirely different meaning; maybe we’ll cover that one in a future episode.

That brings us to the end of this week’s episode of Plain English. I’d love to know what you think of the show so far, so I’ve posted a listener survey on the web site, PlainEnglish.com, which you can take in either English or Spanish. And I’d love to get connected on either Twitter or Facebook. The show’s name on both of those platforms is PlainEnglishPod.

Thanks for listening to these early episodes of Plain English. We’ll be back next Thursday with another one. See you the