Make a splash, take refuge

Make a splash

Let’s start with make a splash. I said that the Las Vegas Golden Knights made a splash in their first game, winning two goals to one. This means they attracted a lot of attention for something good. When you’re doing something important that you want other people to notice, you want to make a splash. The team made a splash by winning its first game, but the NHL made a splash by choosing Las Vegas for its newest team. The league attracted attention by being the first major sports league to go to Las Vegas; it was an important decision, and it really made a splash. The star player, James Neal, made a splash in the first game because he scored both of the team’s goals. The general managers of sports teams might make a splash by making a big trade—for example, the Cleveland Cavaliers made a splash this offseason by acquiring Dwayne Wade and reuniting him with LeBron James.

All the contestants on American Idol and other singing and performance shows want to make a splash in their first performances: they want to impress the judges and stand out from the other contestants. I would say make a splash is most-often used in sports and entertainment—in the entertainment industry, after all, the whole point is to attract attention. But it can also be used in business or even in your personal life. If you listened last time, you heard about the new iPhone X; you could say Apple made a splash with its facial recognition software. That’s a good example because so much about the iPhone X was known ahead of time, but the facial recognition was the big surprise of the day; that’s the part about the new iPhone announcement that really made a splash, not the other features that we all knew were coming.

Take refuge

Let’s talk about one more phrase you heard earlier: Take refuge. Here’s the original context: As a kid, Tom Petty took refuge in his music. This is a really good expression to know, but it’s a little complicated. Imagine you’re in a bad situation and you’re looking for safety or comfort. Tom Petty often said he had a difficult childhood, but he turned to music for comfort and a way to escape his difficult life at home and in school. He took refuge in his music—by becoming a musician, he was able to escape the other more difficult parts of his life. Modern life can be complicated, difficult and painful, so many people say they take refuge in their religion; others take refuge in meditation or yoga. In this way, take refuge is an emotional thing. But it can also be taken literally. If you’re outside walking around in very hot weather, you might want to take refuge from the heat by going into an air-conditioned shop or restaurant. If it’s raining hard, you might take refuge from the storm by stopping under a bridge. Here’s one last tip on take refuge. You take refuge in something good, but from something bad. You take refuge in music, in religion, in meditation; but you take refuge from the heat, or from the storm.

That’ll do it for this week’s episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Don’t forget to search for some Tom Petty songs on Spotify or YouTube this week. And if you’d like to connect with the show, connect with us on Twitter or Facebook; the show’s name on both is PlainEnglishPod. If you haven’t yet been on the web site, you can check out the interactive transcripts with translations of key phrases into Spanish. The web site is PlainEnglish.com. We’ll be back in two weeks with another episode of Plain English; thanks for listening.