Name: English Tutor Nick P Idioms (249) Go Belly Up
Uploaded: 2019-06-19T15:18:45.000Z
Duration: 3 min 26 s
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Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Idioms 249. The idiom today is to go belly up.

Okay.  Let's take a look at the note here. We

Adverbs of manner

actually have  three different definitions. The first one is to fail or

go bankrupt. Yeah. We often use it for businesses going bankrupt or going out

of business. We say that they've gone belly-up. All right. It could be

breakdown,  malfunction, die or fall apart.  So it could be you know.  machines or some

building. So any one of them could be breaking down, malfunctioning,  dying or

falling apart. We could also say that that machine or that car went belly-up.

You could use it in that situation.  Number three here. To have a disastrous

or undesirable outcome. So a bad result very , very bad result. All right. Let's

continue here. The idea of this ...of this idiom comes from the idea of a dead

animal found lying on its back with its stomach or belly facing upwards or the

way a dead fish floats in the water. Yeah I'm sure you've seen some bugs like this,

especially if you put down some poison or you might have seen this with

cockroaches.  I think if you put down some baking soda or something and they eat

the baking soda that happens to them or or some other bugs where you know,  they

died they turned around and they're lying belly-up. So that's the... that's

where the idea of this idiom actually comes from. All right. Let's continue here.

Let's give several examples. So example number one. After the dot-com bubble

burst you know,  that was around the early 2000s, many early Internet companies went

belly-up.  So they went out of business or they

went bankrupt. They failed. That's what we would mean. All right number two.  His

dream of being a singer went belly-up when he got eliminated in the first

round of that American Idol contest. Yeah.  Again maybe this was somebody who

thought they had some talent. They realized they didn't. So it was a bad

outcome or an undesirable outcome for him.  Maybe it kind of crushed his dream. All

right number three. Many record stores went belly-up after it became popular to

download songs from the Internet. It didn't all happen in a day,  but really in

about five years or six years many of them more already starting to go very...

just go out of business. So just go bankrupt. Just,  just closed up. It  wasn't

worth it. They weren't making enough profit. So again they failed or they went

bankrupt. They went out. All right and the last one here. His goal of being a

professional football player went belly-up after he had a career-ending

injury. Yeah. This happens to a lot of these college players. Sometimes they

think they might have a career.  You know a good chance of making it

professional.  But it doesn't you know,  even if it in

college,  you could have a career-ending injury. If you know you fell the wrong

way or you ended up at the bottom of a pile of football players on top of you.

You never know or just hit the wrong way.  You can have a career-ending injury and

that's it your your dream is gone. Okay.  Anyway I hope you got it. I hope it was clear.