Strike a deal

To "strike a deal" is to reach an agreement

Today's story: Brexit deal
Explore more: Lesson #105
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Strike a deal

Today’s episode is running a bit long, so I figured I’d choose a phrase that’s somewhat quick to explain. The phrase I chose is “strike a deal.” Strike a deal just means to make an agreement. You will usually use this phrase when an agreement is difficult to make, or when the negotiations are hard; when there is a lot at stake; when the agreement is especially important.

For example, you would NOT say, “I struck a deal to meet my friend for coffee at 10:00.” That doesn’t work since both of you are friends and the time to meet for a coffee is not exactly a difficult negotiation. In this episode, you heard that Britain and the EU have finally struck a deal on the UK’s exit from the EU. That came after months of hard negotiations, false starts, and delays. It was a very difficult negotiation, but the two sides finally struck a deal—they finally came to an agreement.

You may remember that the government of then-president Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia struck a deal with the FARC, a violent separatist movement. The FARC agreed to refrain from violence and the government agreed to lighter punishments for its leaders and agreed to let FARC members hold elective office. After long negotiations, the two sides struck a deal.

The workers at Canada Post, the mail delivery service in our friendly northern neighbor, are on strike. The union that represents the workers is negotiating with the postal service on a new contract. But as of the time I’m recording this episode, the two sides have not been able to strike a deal—and so the workers’ strike continues.


That’s all for today. Thanks so much for being with us. If you like listening, you’ll also like getting the episode e-mails each week, which have additional English phrases and words and links to the articles about the show’s main topic. To get those, just visit PlainEnglish.com/mail and enter your details.

Quick hello to a few listeners. Anne from Sao Paulo has been with us for four months and has started watching Netflix with only the English subtitles—great job Anne, and thanks for being with us! Vinicius from Rio; Ludwig from Germany; Salome from Charlotte, North Carolina; and finally Holger from Sweden. He learned about the program from his son, so we have multiple generations of listeners in one family in Sweden; that’s not the first time that has happened, either. So thanks to all of your for listening and for being such an important part of Plain English. If you’d like to get in touch with us, JR is [email protected] and I’m [email protected].

Yikes, this has been a long episode! Quickly once more, Happy Thanksgiving from JR and me. Don’t forget about MosaLingua at PlainEnglish.com/learn. See you Monday!

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Story: Brexit deal