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Hi. My name is Rebecca. In this lesson, we'll focus on six business English idioms.
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Even though they are somewhat advanced, follow along with me because they are used quite
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often. All right? Let's get started.
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The first one: "You need to face the facts about the drop
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in sales." So the idiom here is: "to face the facts".
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So, "to face the facts" means to accept a difficult situation. To accept the
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reality. Okay? Accept the truth, to deal with the truth. That's what it means to face the
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facts. You're not going to say: "Face the facts", if you're talking about something
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good. But here, you see there was a drop in sales; sales went down, so you need to face
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the facts, means you have to accept the hard truth or the hard reality.
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Next one: "Mr. Brown heads our team in NY."
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So, the idiom here is: "to head the team". You'll see... Here we have "face", here we
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have "head", and in fact, all of these, you'll have some part of the body as part of the
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business idiom. It's just the way I chose them. All right, so, "to head the team" means
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to... What do you think it means? To lead a group. All right? So, Mr. Brown is the manager,
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or he's the leader, or the head of this team in New York. "To head a team", that's the idiom.
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Next one: "The marketing dept. is footing the bill."
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"The marketing department is footing the bill." Again, part of the body, the foot. All right?
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"To foot a bill", "to foot the bill" means to take responsibility for payment. All right?
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I know it doesn't always make sense, and that's why it's an idiom. Okay? The individual words
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don't reveal the meaning to you. You have to understand the entire expression, and that
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whole expression is called an idiom. So, "to foot the bill" means to take responsibility
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for paying for something.
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Next one: "Our HR manager" - our human resources manager
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- "has an eye for selecting good people." The expression here: "to have an eye for".
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I should say this. "To have an eye for something" means to have a talent for something, to have
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the ability to notice something. All right? So, our human resources manager has the ability
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to select good people. All right?
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Next one: "Who shouldered the blame for this disaster?"
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"Who shouldered the blame?" Expression: "to shoulder the blame". "To shoulder the blame"
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means to take responsibility for something that went wrong, for a bad situation, for
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a difficult situation. "To shoulder the blame." Again, you see a part of the body is mentioned
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in each of these idioms. All right?
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And the last one we have here is: "Jane was in over her head at work."
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"Jane was in over her head". "To be in over your head" means to have too much responsibility,
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to have... To have something which is too difficult for you. Maybe you took a course
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in university and it was just way beyond your ability in mathematics or something else,
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so you went in over your head; it was too hard for you, too difficult for you. Okay?
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So: "Jane was in over her head at work." All right?
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So, one of the things you need to do is you need to know what... How to complete these.
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Right? How we complete them. So, for example, let's look at them. Try not to look up here.
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So if I say: what's the expression or what's the idiom?
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"To face the facts", "To head the team", "To shoulder the blame", "To foot the bill", "To
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have an eye for" - all right, I already said that - and: "To be in over your head". All
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right? Let's review what they mean.
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So which one means that you have an ability to notice something? This one: "to have an
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eye for something". Good.
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Which one means that you take responsibility when something goes wrong or you took responsibility
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because something went wrong? What did you do? You "shouldered the blame". Good. Okay?
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Which one means to accept that something bad has happened or accept the hard truth? This
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one: "to face the facts". Very good.
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What does it mean when we say: "Someone is in over their head"? It means that they've
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taken on something that's too difficult for them or they have too much of it. Okay?
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Next one: which one means that you are paying for something? Here: "to foot the bill". Okay?
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So play with them like that. Sometimes try to guess how they finish, sometimes try to
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guess the meaning. And, best of all, try to write your own sentences using these business
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idioms. All right?
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If you'd like to do a quiz on this, please go to our website: www.engvid.com. All right?
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There you can also watch lots and lots of other videos. We have more than 500 videos
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at the moment. So you can improve your English in many ways. Actually, I'm wrong. It's not
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500. It's more than 600 videos. Okay? You could also subscribe to my YouTube channel
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to watch lots of other videos to help you improve your English. All the best with your
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English. Bye for now.