Name: English Tutor Nick P Word Origins (63) Lame Duck
Uploaded: 2019-08-12T00:51:17.000Z
Duration: 3 min 44 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origin 63. The word origin today is

Basic passive voice

lame-duck. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If someone is described as a

lame-duck,  the speaker is being critical of that

person. So they're criticizing them. They might be mocking them or making fun of

them. Of that person because he or she is no longer successful or basically he's

lost a lot of power. Nowadays,  it is used with politicians who have little real

power left because he or she is at the end of their term. Okay,  and will not be

returning. Other  politicians or adversaries realize there is no point to

deal with him or her anymore because someone new will take their position or

their power very soon and any new deal may not even be honored by the new

person or maybe it'll be totally cancelled by them.  Yeah. The new person. The

origin of this phrase actually comes from the stock market. Believe it or not.

Yes and was used to refer to investors who could not pay their debts. Yeah. There

was a time in the stock market where they allowed investors to buy stocks on

credit. So if they really ran into trouble and they bought too many stocks

and they couldn't cover them. They got wiped out and they they couldn't honor

you know what they was supposedly bought anymore. So they couldn't honor you know,

their debts and it just came down to that. So those,  those investors referred

to as lame ducks. Okay.  All right.  Lame duck was another term often used.

Yeah. Because you know,  we use we still today use bull and bear. But all three

used to be used at one time.  The reason why someone with no money or

assets was called a lame duck is related to the British game of cricket. Okay. You

know,  crickets a little bit like baseball. There is a batter or in,  in

cricket they call him a batsman and he tries to hit the ball and maybe he could

run between it's really just like two two areas and then he could score runs

just like in baseball too. So there are a lot of similarities,  but there's still

very different games. But anyway. Let's continue. So if a batsman didn't score

any runs in you know,  when he was up,  his score of zero was thought to resemble a

duck's egg. So it looked a little bit oval so it looked like a duck's egg. So

that's why they started calling these investors lamb ducks. Because they didn't ...

they didn't have anything anymore. They had zero left. Okay and so that's

basically it. So it's strange. That's where we get lame duck from. First it

was from the idea of the stock market and from the stock market it came from

the idea of the British game cricket.  Anyway,  so let's give one example here.  He

can no longer get any of his policies passed from his agenda because he has

become a lame duck after losing his re-election bid. Okay. Anyway,  I hope you

got it. I hope it was clear. I hope it was informative.  Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.