In the wake of

In the wake of

When I started this podcast back in October last year, I was a little worried that I wouldn’t have any new words and phrases to define after a while. But one thing I’m starting to learn about English—something I’m sure you know all too well—is that there are lots and lots of phrases, phrasal verbs, expressions. I’m in no danger of running out. There were a couple of good phrases today, but the one I picked is “in the wake of.”

In the wake of, means, “in the aftermath” of something. A wake is the choppy water behind a boat. If you’re in a boat with any kind of a propeller or motor, look behind you as you’re moving and you see the wake. That’s the white, choppy water behind you. That’s where this expression comes from—in the wake of something means in the aftermath, or in the time after something happens.

In the wake of a big storm—right after a big storm—restaurants, grocery stores, and gas stations struggle to re-open to serve the community. That means right after the storm, everyone is still feeling the effects of the storm. Things are still a little unstable. In the wake of a storm, Waffle House tries to open as quickly as possible.

You usually use this phrase when you’re talking about something disruptive. Like a speedboat going through a calm lake—its disruptive and causes the water behind to be unstable, choppy. We just passed the seventeenth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. The world changed a lot in the wake of those attacks, right?

We also just passed the tenth anniversary of the global financial crisis of 2008. In the wake of the financial crisis, governments had to respond to the threat of bank failures and overall panic in the markets. In the wake of the financial crisis, my company was in trouble, so I had to look for a new job. I was relatively fortunate in those times, but many people lost their homes to foreclosure in the wake of the financial crisis. For many individual families, losing a home is very disruptive, it’s a disaster to that family. People had to figure out what to do with their personal finances in the wake of a foreclosure or a job loss—in the disruptive, changing aftermath of that one negative event.

I actually used “in the wake of” in the last episode too. In the wake of the museum fire in Brazil, Wikipedia has been asking for photographs of the collection from the public.

Thanks for listening to Plain English this week. It’s a pleasure for JR and I to be with you each and every Monday and Thursday. We have a lot of new listeners on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, so thank you for joining us, welcome to this great and exciting world of learning English. Keep up the good work, and remember to sign up for the show summary emails at PlainEnglish.com/mail. That way, you’ll never miss an episode.

We’ll be back on Monday. The topic for Monday’s episode will be what to do with the remains of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. The Spanish parliament recently voted to dig up his remains; now they need to decide what to do with them.