Dive in
Are you ready to dive into the next section of the podcast? If you are, that means you’re ready to begin this section with enthusiasm. You’re ready to devote all your energy to it. This is the section where we review two expressions you heard earlier. And, as you may have guessed, one of those this week is “dive in” and the other one is “wind up.”
In the story about the new movie theaters coming to Saudi Arabia, I said that the movie theater chains like AMC are ready to dive into a brand new market. That means they’re ready to put a lot of energy into building new theaters to serve the Saudi public. They don’t have any reservations, or doubts, about doing so; they’re ready to go and they’re going to commit to it.
To understand this phrase, I want you to picture someone diving into the water, into a swimming pool. When you dive into the water, you can’t be half-in and half-out, right? You have to be 100% in and 100% committed to dive into a swimming pool. And so it is for the movie theater chains and their new opportunity.
Here are a few other examples with “dive in.” When faced with a new project at work or in school, some people like to dive right in—they like to get started working hard right away—while other people like to think about it for a while, plan it out, and start with small first steps. Those people are definitely not comfortable diving in right away. Here in the United States, we have our Thanksgiving holiday at the end of November. And right after Thanksgiving is when many people begin to think about Christmas—decorating their homes, buying gifts, things like that. Some people like to dive right into the Christmas season; they get started as early as possible and decorate their homes right away. Other people, like me, tend to take it a little slower. I don’t dive in; I like to take my time. The American football season ends in early February with the Super Bowl. And after the Super Bowl, many sports fans forget football and dive into basketball, since the college basketball tournament takes place in March and April.
Wind up
The second phrase this week is “wind up.” In almost every case, “wind up” is synonymous with “end up.”
Facebook users who scroll through posts and click links may wind up feeling worse afterward. This means they may feel worse as a result. Wind up, and its close cousin end up, are interesting phrases because they don’t have a very strong or clear meaning by themselves; we tend to use these phrases to highlight that one thing causes another.
Let me illustrate what I mean by that. Let’s take the sentence, “If you break the law, you might go to jail.” That’s a clear, simple sentence. But we can enhance it a little with “wind up” to emphasize that one thing (breaking the law) causes the other (you going to jail). If you break the law, you might wind up in jail. That slight change emphasizes that you could go to jail because you broke the law.
I’m going to give you five more examples with wind up. And as you listen to them, think about how in each case, one thing causes the other. Here we go. If you don’t take care of your health, you might wind up in the hospital. If you don’t pay your bills, you could wind up in bankruptcy court. If you’re always late to work, you could wind up getting fired. If you drink too much tonight, you could wind up being sick tomorrow morning. If you look at a screen for too long, you could wind up with a headache.
And like I said before, you can use the phrase “end up” in each of these cases. If you don’t take care of your health, you could end up in the hospital. Like that.
That brings us to the end of this week’s episode. I hope you’re enjoying listening to Plain English every week. If you are, consider giving the show a rating or a review wherever you listen, whether that’s Spotify or iHeartRadio or another platform. The ratings will help new listeners like you discover the program for the first time. And of course I’d love to connect with you on Twitter or Facebook, under the user name PlainEnglishPod on both. By the way, connecting with Plain English on Twitter or Facebook, and especially sending me a message on either platform, would be an example of a good use of social media, not a bad use, especially if you want to practice using either wind up or dive in.
That’s all for this week—I’ll see you again next Thursday with another episode of Plain English
Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
