Stop short, a stretch

Stop short

Let’s start with stop short. You say “stop short” when you want to say you didn’t quite do something completely, or you didn’t take the final step in a process. In the original context, I said that Catalan President Carles Puigdemont stopped short of declaring independence for Catalonia. What I meant by that is, he didn’t actually declare independence, but he did do a lot of other things along the path to declaring independence. For example, he did call a referendum on independence. He did say that if the people voted in favor, then Catalonia would seek independence. The vote did come in favor, and Puigdemont did say the vote confirms Catalonia’s desire to be independent. But he didn’t take that one final step of actually declaring Catalonia an independent country. He stopped short of declaring independence.

Just now, I said I stopped short of watching until the very end of every game of the World Series. By now you can probably guess what that means. I watched a lot of these games, and I stayed up very late, but I didn’t watch the whole game every time. Sometimes I fell asleep before the end. I stopped short of watching every inning, but I came close. A lot of people thought this World Series was one of the best they had ever seen, but most experts stopped short of saying it was the very best. Many experts think a handful of other World Series (like the ones in 1991, 2001 or even 2016) were more exciting. So while they think this year was very exciting, they stopped short of saying it was the best World Series in recent memory.

A stretch

Ready for the second phrase? When Sports Illustrated predicted in 2014 that the Astros would win the World Series in 2017, many people, including me, thought that prediction was a stretch. We thought that it was unlikely. When you think that a prediction or a goal is too optimistic, or not likely to come true, you can say it’s a stretch. Let me give you a couple of other predictions or goals that might be a stretch. This week, I want to get up at 6:00 every morning and go to the gym before work. Now, you have to know that I am the king of the snooze alarm and I don’t like to get up right away. Knowing that, you probably agree that it’s a stretch to say that I’ll be up with the sun all five days this week. Here’s another one. Some people in Spain are hoping that the independence movement dies down now that the leaders have been removed from office. I would say that’s a stretch, since although the leaders may not be in office, there is still a strong desire for either independence or at least additional powers for the Catalonia region. Here’s one more. The Astros were a great team in 2017 and I’m sure in Houston they’re already predicting they’ll win again in 2018. However, I think that’s a stretch because no team has won two World Series in a row since the Yankees did it eighteen years ago.

That’s all this week – thanks so much for listening. If you’re listening on your phone, don’t forget to visit the web site, PlainEnglish.com to read a word-for-word transcript of the entire program. It makes it easier to follow the program when you know you’re going to catch every word. If you’d like to be in touch, look us up on Twitter and Facebook under the name PlainEnglishPod. We’ll be back in two weeks with another episode; see you then.