Slip up
To slip up is to make a small mistake. Usually, you say “slip up” if the mistake is from carelessness or not paying close attention.
Pat Sajak has been the host of Wheel of Fortune for four decades. And I am convinced that his supreme talent is his ability to make general, light chitchat with people from all walks of life . The contestants come on and Pat lets them say a few things about themselves and their lives. He makes a lighthearted, positive comment and moves on. After the show, he exchanges a few words with Vanna White. None of these interactions is substantive. It’s always just friendly, light, polite, general chitchat. I could never do that. I just don’t have those talents.
Nobody is perfect, and Pat Sajak has slipped up a few times. What does that mean? One time, when doing his idle chitchat with Vanna White, he made a comment that some people online thought was a little inappropriate, a little too suggestive. Vanna gave him an awkward laugh and the moment passed. It wasn’t a big deal. I won’t repeat what he said—it was just awkward and uncomfortable, but it wasn’t too bad.
He slipped up. He made a small, careless error. In one of the thousands of tiny little interactions, he said something that was maybe not quite fully appropriate. He slipped up. He made a small mistake.
And it is important, when you use “slip up”—this is a small mistake. You know that when I create these lessons, I write them out first, to make sure they’re correct, or mostly correct, and then I read them later. Sometimes when I record I slip up. I pronounce a word incorrectly or I get a little tongue-tied. In this very recording, I slipped up once—when I was supposed to say “washing dishes” before I accidentally said “watching dishes.” When I slip up like that, I just re-record the sentence and JR edits out the mistake.
When I slip up, the only people who know are JR and me. But some people live their lives in the spotlight. When pro sports players slip up—when they make small, careless mistakes—those mistakes are on TV and recorded for everyone to see, forever. So often, teams watch game tape. They watch tape of themselves. And if they slip up, they can see exactly what happened and when. They can study what happened and hopefully avoid slipping up in the same way in the future.
Just remember when you use “slip up,” it’s not about a big mistake or an important mistake or anything that would get you in serious trouble. It’s a small mistake, usually as a result of being careless.
Real quick, the way we’ve used it so far is as a phrasal verb. Pat Sajak slipped up. I sometimes slip up. But you can also refer to the mistake as “a slip-up.” For example, Pat Sajak never made any big mistakes on the air. The handful of times he’s been criticized, it has been for minor slip-ups, for minor mistakes.
See you next time!
And that is all for today’s Plain English. Special thanks to JR for editing out the minor slip-ups in the recording—he does that every week so that you all at home can hear a nice, polished version of Plain English. Or a nice polished two versions, if you listen to the fast and slow versions together each week.
Remember this was lesson 593, so the transcript of the lesson is at PlainEnglish.com/593. We’ll be back on Monday with a new topic. See you then.
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