Turn down

Turn down

We have a phrasal verb to share today, and that is to turn someone or something down. When you turn someone down, you decline an offer that person has made to you. Here’s how you first heard it. Whitney Houston died in 2012. Ever since then, lots of companies have approached her estate, proposing many types of business deals. But Pat Houston, the late singer’s sister-in-law and former manager, turned them all down. She turned down all those offers—she declined the offers. When you decline an offer, you don’t accept it. You don’t do what was proposed. The estate had many offers, but it turned them all down.

When you turn something or someone down, it’s less harsh than saying you reject a person or an offer. When you reject something, you say, “No, and I don’t want it.” Or, “no, and I don’t like it.” I’ll give you an example. I routinely get emails from people about the Plain English web site telling me they found lots of errors and if I only sign up with their service, they’ll fix everything on my web site. I reject those offers. I say no—I didn’t ask you for the proposal, and I don’t want it. Go away, basically. That’s like a strong “no.”

But there are other times where listeners will propose things that I turn down—not because it isn’t a good idea, not because I don’t want to do it, but it just doesn’t fit in the strategy that I have for the program right now, or I don’t think it would serve the whole audience, so I politely turn them down, I politely say no. Sometimes people will say, “I’m an importer of rare Persian carpets. I think you should do an episode about rare Persian carpets.” I will turn that down. I don’t mind the suggestion, but it doesn’t quite have the broad appeal that I’m looking for in episode topics, so I’ll turn that down. I’ll say “no” gently.

You might ask someone on a date, and that person might either say “yes” or that person might turn you down. That person might say “no.” If you’re applying to a prestigious university, and you have not paid a large bribe to a sports coach, you might be turned down. You might be accepted, or you might be turned down—not accepted.

Do you know who Emilia Clark is? She starred in HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” and there were some nude scenes for her character in the early seasons. She thought that those scenes attracted all the attention and distracted from the rest of her work. So when producers of the movie “Fifty Shades of Grey” approached her to play Anastasia Steele in that movie, she turned them down. She said no—she wasn’t comfortable playing a role that would have, shall we say, more than a little bit of nudity in it. So she turned down that role.

Quote of the week

It’s Monday, so we have a quote. I was reflecting on Thursday’s episode and thought I’d try to find something from Sir Edmund Hillary. Sir Edmund Hillary was a mountaineer and explorer from New Zealand and he became the first man to reach the summit of Mt. Everest back in 1953. The quote I have for you from Sir Edmund Hillary is about reaching challenges. Here it is: “You don’t have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things—to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.” I like that. You don’t have to be a fantastic hero, just an “ordinary chap.” Chap is like a very British way of saying, “person” or “guy.”

So with that, we will wrap up today. Just a quick reminder that we offer so much more than just the program via our e-mail list. If you’d like to get the episode summaries with extra vocabulary words and links to English articles I used to prepare the show, then come join about 3,000 of your fellow listeners on our e-mail list. You can do that by visiting PlainEnglish.com/mail . Just enter your details there, and you’ll get the episode summaries. Now, one more thing. I’ve been dropping hints for quite some time about changes, improvements, to the program. They’re real and they’re coming and you’re going to love it. The people who are going to know about this first are the ones on the e-mail list. So if you want to be among the first to know about the improvements and expansions that JR and I have planned, you will want to be on the email list. PlainEnglish.com/mail . That’s all I’m authorized to say for right now. You will want to be on that list. Okay, that’s all for now. Have a great rest of your Monday and we will see you right back here on Thursday.