Long shot
What are we going to pick today for the expression to review? There were a couple of repeats in there. “Wear and tear,” we talked about that one in Episode 99. You heard, “on the line,” which we talked about in Episode 148, just a couple of weeks ago. What else? Oh, how about “long shot”? I just asked JR by WhatsApp if he knew what long-shot meant and he said no, so that’s how I know it’s a good one to talk about.
Country House was a long shot. The odds were 65-to-1 against him. That means that if you bet one dollar on Country House, you would have won $65 dollars in that bet. That’s a pretty lopsided bet. People did not think Country House would win that race. He was really not expected to win, so he was a long shot.
When something has a very small probability of happening, you say that thing is a long shot. If you thought back to when Tiger Woods was ranked 1,199th in golf, you would have said that yeah, maybe he can win another major championship—but it’s a long shot. Like, yes, it’s possible, but highly unlikely. It’s a long shot. And look what happened, right? A small probability doesn’t mean impossible. Part of the fun of watching sports is watching long-shots succeed.
There are 22 Democrats officially running for president. They all want the chance to run against Donald Trump in 2020. Among them, the leader right now in the polls is Joe Biden, the former vice president. Twenty-one other people are running; by the time you hear this, there might even be a few more. They’re mostly senators, congressmen, ex-congressmen, a couple of ex-mayors of cities. An author of spiritual books is in the mix. Most of them are long shots. A handful of them either have good experience or ideas that resonate with voters, but most of them are long shots: voters have never heard of them and they don’t have a unique message.
A lot of people are wondering whether Britain will have another vote and decide to stay in the EU after all. I think it’s a long shot, but it’s possible.
Sometimes you can say, “it’s a long shot, but it’s worth trying”—like if you want to buy a car and the asking price is, let’s say, higher than your budget. You can offer a much lower price, just to see if the seller would give it to you. It’s a long shot, but why not? You don’t have anything to lose making the offer. If you want to leave early on Friday, try to beat the traffic, you can ask your boss if you can leave around 3:00. It’s a long shot, but you may as well, try, right?
Quote of the week
I mentioned before that I don’t really follow horse racing, but as I was preparing for this episode, I went down an Internet vortex of article after article about the Kentucky Derby, then later about the deaths of horses at Santa Anita, and then finally landed on one about cheating in horse racing. It was by a journalist who had written about the sport for decades, John Swenson. Here’s one of the quotes from his article in Vice from a few years ago. He says, “Cheating is deeply woven into the fabric of horse racing. The sport is such a magnet for shady characters and below-the-table dealings.”
That quote stuck with me, and that’s part of the reason why I’ve never really cared for horse racing too much, personally. The animals are big and beautiful and I think they just deserve more than to be at the center of such a shady business.
Okay, that’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed today’s program. A lot of new words in there, which is a great thing. Listen, if you’d like to continue building your vocabulary with Plain English, make sure you get on the list to get my emails. Every time there’s a new episode, I send out an email with a written explanation of one additional word or phrase from the episode. Over the course of a year, that’s 104 additional words you could be learning. Make sure you get on that list: right now’s a good time to do it. Just go to PlainEnglish.com/mail and enter your details. You’ll also get a couple of welcome messages from me with some good English learning resources. PlainEnglish.com/mail.
JR and I will be back on Thursday with a new episode. Thanks so much for being with us and we will see you then.
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