Resort to
Today’s expression is “resort to.” Some of you know the word “resort;” it’s like a hotel with a lot of amenities. That’s not what we mean here. We’re talking about desperate measures, when you do something you don’t want to do, but you have to do it anyway because you’re desperate.
Here’s how you heard it: some freezing residents of Texas resorted to unsafe practices to stay warm. They built fires in their homes, they sat in their cars in the garage to stay warm, and they turned their ovens on full blast and opened the oven door. These are all dangerous ideas. The people doing these things, however, were desperate. Texas is not prepared for these kinds of temperatures. The homes are not well-insulated. People don’t have backup generators. Many don’t have the blankets they would need to stay warm at night. Imagine having to sit at home with no hot water, no power, indoor temperatures around freezing. They were desperate. They didn’t want to try to warm up with the oven, but they thought they had to. This is the kind of situation we use “resort to.”
We say “resort to” plus the behavior, usually with an -ing verb. Some people resorted to turning their ovens on to warm up. Other people resorted to starting a fire inside their homes. Still others resorted to warming up in their cars in the garage. Resort to plus an -ing verb.
In the early days of COVID, they were having a hard time getting medical N95 masks in the Boston area. The local government resorted to sending a private plane to China to pick up N95 masks. This was pretty desperate. Hospitals should be able to place orders through normal channels or rely on government purchases to get the equipment they need. But there just wasn’t enough. So the owner of the local football team resorted to sending his team’s plane to China to bring masks back to Massachusetts.
These were examples where people were truly at risk and desperate. But it can apply to situations where you’re forced into doing something you don’t want to do.
The grocery business is competitive. When people shop for their favorite foods, they watch the prices carefully. This can make it hard for food manufacturers to raise prices if their costs go up. So some companies resort to playing tricks on consumers: they reduce the size of the package and keep the price the same. Or they increase the size of the package a little, and increase the price even more. The companies would probably rather just adjust prices up and down, but they can’t do that without risking a customer backlash. So they resort to these kinds of tricks with pricing and packaging.
When GameStop’s stock was on its wild ride , several popular stock-trading apps resorted to imposing trading restrictions on their customers. It’s too complicated to explain here, but the brokers simply couldn’t process more trades. They didn’t want to cut their customers off from trading, but they had no choice. They resorted to imposing curbs on trading GameStop’s stock.
Believe me when I say there was nothing the Robinhood app wanted less than to block their customers from trading in GameStop’s stock, but they had to do it. Their customers were furious, many of them. The CEO had to explain himself in front of Congress. But because of the plumbing behind stock trades, they needed to slow down the volume of trades. So it was a situation where they didn’t have a choice. This was a bad option, but it was their only option. So we say they resorted to restricting trades by customers.
JR’s song of the week
Today’s song of the week is Driver’s License by Olivia Rodrigo. It’s a brand-new song; it came out just in January. JR like the classics, but he also has his finger on the pulse of pop culture, at all times. I’m not sure how it is in other countries, but getting your driver’s license at age 16 or 17 is one of the biggest moments in a teenager’s life. I will never forget my driver’s test, I will never forget going to get the license, I will never forget the feeling I had the first time I drove in a car by myself.
This song is about a girl who drives around suburbia by herself shortly after getting her driver’s license. She has split up with a boy—and the boy was the one who encouraged her to get her license.
“Driver’s License” by Olivia Rodrigo is the song of the week, and broke all kinds of records. Olivia Rodrigo is eighteen years old is the youngest artist to have a Billboard number-one hit in the United States. Her song set the record for the most single-day streams on Spotify, too. Congratulations to her and thanks JR for selecting “Driver’s License” as the song of this week.
See you next time!
And that brings us to the end of today’s lesson. Thanks again for spending part of you week with us. It is such a privilege to be part of your English journey, I mean that. Remember we have even more to explore at PlainEnglish.com/345 and we’ll be right back here on Monday.
Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
