Have the luxury

To have the luxury

Today’s expression is “to have the luxury of.” Normally, when we think about the word “luxury,” we think about items that are expensive treats. We think of expensive handbags for women, hand-made Italian suits for men. We think about expensive perfumes and colognes. Luxury hotels feature the highest quality materials, beautiful furniture, the most advanced electronics. Luxury apartments have the finest appliances, beautiful views, chefs’ kitchens.

That’s not always the way we use the word luxury, however. When we say someone “has the luxury of” something, we’re describing an advantage one person has that other people don’t have. During the pandemic, many of you had the luxury of working from home.

Now, it may not have seemed like a luxury experience, crammed on your sofa, kids making noise in the background, laundry piling up just out of your computer’s camera view. But compared to being a bus driver, compared to being a nurse, compared to working in a high traffic area, all during a pandemic…working from home absolutely is a luxury, even if it doesn’t feel like it to you. You have the luxury of working from home: you have an advantage that others don’t have.

And that’s exactly how I used the phrase earlier today. We were talking about charging electric vehicles . Many EV owners charge their electric cars at home. They can do that because they have an enclosed garage or, at least, a driveway. They have the luxury of charging their electric vehicles at home. Why do we say that’s a luxury? Because not everyone has that advantage. Think of all the apartment-dwellers who have to park on the street. They don’t have the luxury of charging their cars overnight because they don’t have a garage.

So in this sense, some people have the luxury of charging their cars at home. Their garages might be dirty and cluttered. There may be lawn-mower parts strewn about, empty boxes, broken toys everywhere, grease on the floor, a pile of leaves from last fall…the garage doesn’t have to be luxurious because just having one is still an advantage that others don’t have.

Today’s labor market is tight . Many companies are desperate for workers. To get them, some employers are removing some job requirements that they used to have. To “waive” a requirement is to temporarily not require something. So some companies ordinarily require new employees to pass a criminal background check; some companies are now waiving that requirement, meaning that they are skipping the background check.

Not all employers have the luxury of waiving background checks. If you run a childcare agency, for example, you don’t have the luxury of cutting corners on background checks. First of all, it’s the law; second, it’s probably the right thing to do for the kids in your care.

We say that childcare centers don’t have the luxury of waiving background checks because they don’t have that option or that advantage, like other employers might. Again, in this case, a luxury is not about something expensive or even desirable, it’s just about an advantage.

One great way to eat healthy is to prepare your own meals using real ingredients at home. Frozen dinners and meals that come in a box are typically less healthy. However, not everyone has the luxury of cooking family meals from scratch every day. It’s hard for me to prepare all my own meals; I can’t imagine doing it for a family of four. So while I know it’s much better to prepare meals from scratch, I certainly understand that not every family has the luxury of doing that.

Sometimes, though, we can use “to have the luxury of” with things that are, well, luxuries in the traditional sense of the word. Here in the U.S., most office workers would get about three weeks of vacation per year, plus holidays. In Latin America, you’re drooling. Many of you don’t have the luxury of taking multiple weeks off at a time. However, that’s exactly how we feel when we talk to people from Europe or Australia. Before the pandemic, it was common to meet travelers from Australia who were spending a month in America on vacation. We’d say to them, it’s hard for us to travel as far away as Australia because we don’t have the luxury of spending a month at a time on vacation.

Quote of the Week

Today’s quote of the week is from Tom Freston, who co-founded the television network MTV. Here’s what he says: “Innovation is taking two things that exist and putting them together in a new way.”

A lot of times people think innovation is having a totally original idea strike you like a lightning bolt. But really, as Tom Freston says, it’s more pedestrian than that. He says, “Innovation is taking two things that exist and putting them together in a new way.”

See you next time!

And that’s all for today’s Plain English. Congratulations on making it to the end of another episode, the very first of 2022. We have a lot of great things planned for the year, so stay tuned here to Plain English, join as a free member at PlainEnglish.com, and you’ll be up to date on all the exciting developments we have in store for you this year. We’ll be back with lesson number 431 on Thursday. See you then!