Slow to a crawl
I’m going to give you a little bit of a break this week with an easy expression. I think I’ve been giving you hard ones lately. This one is just a good one to know, and that is to “slow to a crawl.” First of all, let’s define the word “crawl.” The easiest way to describe this word is to say, this is what a baby does before he or she can walk. You have to crawl before you can walk—that’s another good English expression.
When something slows to a crawl, it slows down a lot. And we almost always use this with something that is normally fast. And of course, how did you hear it in today’s main lesson? You heard that internet service in sub-Saharan Africa slowed to a crawl after the undersea cables connecting Africa to Europe were broken. The internet, which is usually fast, slowed to a crawl. They slowed down dramatically. They were much, much slower after the cable break than before.
Another very, very common way to use this expression is when you’re talking about traffic on the highway. Remember, you use this when something is normally fast. So if you live on a quiet street, you would never say that traffic “slowed to a crawl” on your street—because traffic doesn’t go that fast to begin with. Instead, we say that traffic on major highways slows to a crawl. For example, “Traffic on I-90 slowed to a crawl after a three-car pileup closed the right two lanes.” Normally traffic on that road goes about 60 miles per hour, or about 100 kilometers per hour. But after a three-car pileup—after a crash involving three cars—the two right lanes were closed, and all the traffic had to fit in just one remaining lane. That meant that traffic, normally around 60 miles per hour, was down to only 15 miles per hour for a few miles. Ouch! Traffic slowed to a crawl. It was fast, and then it was much slower.
Another thing that can slow to a crawl is progress. Our progress slowed to a crawl after half the team got sick and missed work. Let’s hope that’s not true this flu season. What’s another example with progress? How about negotiations? I don’t know how it is where you live, but here in the US, some industries, like auto manufacturing, professional sports teams, and hotels, have labor unions. And the unions negotiate a contract for all their workers.
When contract is about to expire, they start to negotiate on a new contract. Sometimes those are easy; sometimes, not so much. If both sides have made a lot of progress—if things are looking good—but then there’s one sticking point in the negotiations that causes progress to slow down, you might say that negotiations have slowed to a crawl. Here’s what you might say: We made fast progress on a number of important issues, but negotiations slowed to a crawl when we began talking about health care benefits. That means that when they got to the topic of health care benefits, the two sides could not make progress like they could on all the other topics. Negotiations slowed to a crawl.
Trade between two countries can slow to a crawl. Trade between China and the rest of the world has slowed to a crawl recently, as the country deals with the aftermath of the coronavirus. In Great Britain, they were worried that trade with the EU would slow to a crawl after Brexit. That didn’t happen, since they have an interim trade agreement that lasts a year—but in a year’s time, trade still may slow to a crawl if they don’t negotiate a more permanent trade agreement.
JR’s song of the week
The song of the week is “Running Up That Hill” by Meg Myers. It’s a cover of a song originally out in 1985. According to Meg, it’s a song about two people who are in love, but, she says, “The power of love is almost too big for them. It leaves them very insecure and in fear of losing each other.” The song of the week is “Running Up That Hill” by Meg Myers. And if you’d like to nominate a song of the week, just email [email protected].
That’s all for today’s episode. It’s great to have you here as always. Coming up on Monday: it’s the return of a popular episode type, the destination in the English-speaking world. We pick one popular destination and tell you all about it. In past episodes, we talked about Toronto; we talked about Mumbai. And for the third installment in this popular series, we’ll talk about a popular destination in the United States.
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Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
