Shape up

Shape up

The English phrasal verb I want to talk about today is shape up. There are two meanings to this one and I’ll share them both with you today. First, the way I used it first. This World Cup is shaping up to be a popular one. That means, this World Cup is developing into, or looks like it is becoming, a popular one. When you say shape up in this case, you mean, developing into, or becoming, something. If I said, today is shaping up to be another really hot day in Chicago, what I mean is that it’s starting to get warm and it looks like today will be another really hot day. If I said, this episode is shaping up to be one of the best ever in this history of Plain English—well, you might doubt it if you’re a fan of Portugal or Argentina—but if you’re in France or Uruguay you might think this is shaping up to be, or this is becoming, one of the best episodes you’ve ever heard. So that’s one way to use shape up.

The second way to use “shape up” is when you want to say someone improves him or herself. If you were kid in the United States, and I suspect in other English-speaking countries, then you are all too familiar with this phrasal verb. How many times have kids heard, “You need to shape up.” You need to shape up. That means, you need to improve. You need to turn things around. You need to get better—stop doing this bad behavior and shape up. If you get bad grades, Mom and Dad might say, you really need to shape up in school. If you’re on a sports team and you’re not concentrating or trying your best, your coach might tell you that you need to shape up or you’ll have to sit on the bench. I was a good kid; I didn’t hear that too much.

Hey, I have a question. By the way, that’s the end of the main content of today’s episode. But I have a half-serious, half-joking question. As you know I’m not a big soccer fan and every four years during the World Cup, I try to learn a little more about the game. So I have a question for the soccer fans out there. When you watch these games, you see the players screaming at the players on the other team. My question is, what language are they speaking? Like when Mexico plays South Korea. Are the Mexicans screaming at the Koreans in Spanish and vice-versa? I really don’t know. Or do the Mexicans get a crash course on some of the worst insults in Korean just before the game? Or do they speak the international language of English? I’m only half-joking—this isn’t essential to my understanding of soccer, but I really am curious. If you know, send me a note: [email protected].

That’s all for today. Remember that we have regular non-soccer episodes coming on this Wednesday and Friday. Wednesday’s episode will come out on July 4, Independence Day here in the United States, and will be about how we celebrate the Fourth of July here in the US. And on Friday we’ll talk about the current, unfortunate situation in Venezuela. I hope you’ll listen to those two upcoming episodes. If you click “follow” in Spotify or “subscribe” in your podcast app, you’ll always have the latest Plain English available right on your phone.

Thanks for being with us today, JR’s crossing his fingers for this morning’s game—we’ll have another World Cup episode next Monday. By then we’ll know more about how the finals might shape up.
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