Hop on

Hop on

We have a great phrasal verb today, and that is “hop on.” To hop is just a quick little jump. When I was describing the autorickshaws that are all over the streets of India, I said that they can hop onto the sidewalk, too, if necessary to make it through traffic. That’s kind of a joke about India, since traffic there is a free-for-all. But it is super common to see these little vehicles hop up on the sidewalk. Just a quick little jump.

Moms and dads might say to their kids, “hop on my lap.” Your cat might start on the floor and hop onto your kitchen countertops. Have you ever taken one of those tourist buses around a big city? Oftentimes, they have a big advertisement that says “hop-on/hop-off.” What does that mean? It means you pay once for the day. If the bus stops somewhere you want to explore a bit more, just hop off. No worries; you can hop on the next bus that comes. Just kind of jump off, and then jump on the next one.

I was in London in college, actually, for a few months and London as you know has these famous red double-decker buses. For years, they had this design where the back of the bus was actually open. There was no door—it’s a weird design. But you could be on the sidewalk and just hop on the back of the bus. Even if the bus started moving, you could run behind it and just hop onto it. Not the safest thing—I’m probably lucky that I’m not using the new prosthetic leg emoji, from hopping onto moving buses—but it was fun.

There’s a funny way of using this in the business world. It’s super common to say, “hop on a call.” That means for everyone to get on the phone together. You might be emailing about something and then someone says, “Can we just hop on a call and figure this out?” That means, can we all just get together by phone and talk about it, instead of emailing?

I’m going to hop on a plane this evening, another business trip out of town, so it’s time to wrap up this episode. But listen—I want to hear from you guys about your favorite emoji, so JR is going to collect all the responses. We will announce the most popular emojis from the Plain English audience next week. So to make your vote count, send an email to [email protected] . These are the new emojis, by the way, not the existing ones. Tell JR your favorite new emoji. [email protected].

Thanks so much for being with us once again. Time for us to sign off for today—but not to worry, we will be right back here together in just a few days. Monday morning, like clockwork, we will have a new episode. See you then.