Measure up

Measure up

The phrasal verb I’m going to share with you today is “measure up.” In Crazy Rich Asians, Nick’s mother tells Rachel that she will never measure up. That means, Rachel will never be good enough to marry her son. There’s some irony in that, because, as we find out , Nick’s mother, when she married Nick’s father—she herself wasn’t considered good enough to marry into the family. She herself spent her life trying to measure up to the family’s expectations . She spent her life trying to be good enough, to be worthy of being in the family.

This is a very powerful word, and it goes our sense of self-worth. If you say someone doesn’t measure up to a challenge or to a set of expectations, you’re saying that person isn’t good enough.

I was rooting for the Los Angeles Rams in the Super Bowl this year. But it was clear that the young quarterback Jared Goff and the LA Rams just could not measure up to the experience and relentlessness of Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. The Rams were not as good as the Patriots, and they lost a snoozer of a game 13-3.

Some of you might be listening to this program on a new Google Pixel 3. These new versions of Google’s smartphone are said to be the best yet. According to reviews, these measure up well to the very best smartphones on the market. They measure up well to the best phones on the market—that means they are just as good as, or almost as good as, the very best out there.

That’s about it for today. If you haven’t checked out MosaLingua yet, make sure to do that at PlainEnglish.com/learn. And to get a free email summary of every Plain English episode, with bonus vocabulary words and links to English articles, then please subscribe to our list at PlainEnglish.com/mail. I don’t want anyone to miss out on all the great content included in the episode emails. PlainEnglish.com/mail.

One more thing—you’re sick of me talking about this, I’m sure—Kina Grannis has a great cover of the Paul Simon song “Graceland.” Okay that’s enough. See you Thursday.