With a straight face
Today’s expression is “with a straight face.” This is not very common, but it’s a good one to know.
A “straight face” means, you don’t show the expected reaction to something on your face. Typically, we use this when someone appears serious when you would otherwise think they were joking, lying, or making an outrageous statement.
Imagine you’re planning a surprise party for your friend; it’s tomorrow afternoon. Your friend asks you today, what are you doing tomorrow? And you say, oh, I got called into work all day. I hope you say that with a straight face! You don’t want to show any reaction; you don’t want to smile; you don’t want to give away the secret. That’s a straight face.
You’ll sometimes use “with a straight face” to describe someone who says something outrageous, but they appear to be serious. They don’t give any indication that they’re saying something outrageous; they act as if this crazy statement were totally normal. In this case, we’re not literally talking about their face; but we’re saying, they made this statement without acknowledging how absurd or unrealistic it is.
Adam Neumann was the eccentric CEO of WeWork . We talked about that in Lesson 203. When he was CEO, Neumann routinely said he wanted to live forever and wanted to be the world’s first trillionaire—a person with a net worth of $1 trillion.
He said all this with a straight face. You might expect a person saying this—I want to live forever; I want to have a trillion dollars—you might think that person might crack a smile and admit that it’s a joke or give some indication that it’s far-fetched. But Adam Neumann said it with a straight face. Either he was serious or he was good at acting. He got an absurd payout when he quit WeWork, so he has plenty of money. But it’s a long way from a trillion dollars.
Elon Musk wants humans to live on Mars. He says that with a straight face. I didn’t see his face when he verbalized this. But from all his writing and action, there is no indication that he believes he’s joking or that he’s not quite serious in any way. For that reason, we can say that Elon Musk said he wants to colonize Mars, and he said it with a straight face.
American lawmakers are a little obsessed with TikTok . Many state and local governments have banned TikTok from government-owned devices. This means that city and state employees can’t have TikTok on the phones that the government owns. Now, the U.S. Congress is holding hearings and considering various actions against ByteDance, the Beijing-based owner of TikTok. One option is to require ByteDance to sell TikTok to another company. One option is to ban TikTok entirely in the U.S. India has already done that.
China has responded by saying such a move would be an abuse of state power, and they said this with a straight face. Why do I say that China said this with a straight face? Listen: China bans whatever it wants! And they don’t hold public hearings before doin g so. TikTok is based in Beijing and even that is not available in China! Google is banned; YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter; Pinterest is banned in China!
So maybe what the U.S. Congress is considering is an abuse of state power. I don’t know. However, it is an outrageous statement for China to call this an abuse of state power when they invented the practice.
Here’s another example where, I’m not talking about anyone’s actual face. I’m just saying, they made the statement without any apparent sense of irony; without appearing to recognize the absurdity of the statement.
JR’s song of the week
Today’s song of the week is “Hands of Time” by Groove Armada. JR picked a sad one today. It’s about someone trying to get over a lost love. “Hearing your name, I’ve never felt quite the same” is one of the lines. “Hands of Time” by Groove Armada is the song of the week today.
See you next time!
And that’s all for today’s Plain English. Congratulations on making it to the end. I always like revisiting these old topics. I see articles and posts and I think of all of you and I want to share the latest with you—so I save them for these lessons. I hope you enjoyed it—and if you’re new to Plain English, this is a good overview of the kinds of things we talk about every Monday and Thursday.
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