Mouth Expressions: The Experience Left a Bad Taste in My Mouth

People use their mouths for many things. They eat, talk, shout and sing.  They smile and they kiss.  In the English language, there are many expressions using the word mouth. But some of them are not so nice.

For example, if you say bad things about a person, the person might protest and say “Do not bad mouth me.”

Sometimes, people say something to a friend or family member that they later regret because hurts that person’s feelings.  Or they tell the person something they were not supposed to tell.

The speaker might say: “I really put my foot in my mouth this time.” If this should happen, the speaker might feel down in the mouth. In other words, he might feel sad for saying the wrong thing.

Another situation is when someone falsely claims another person said something.  The other person might protest: “I did not say that.  Do not put words in my mouth.”

Information is often spread through word of mouth. This is general communication between people, like friends talking to each other.  “How did you hear about that new movie?” someone might ask. “Oh, by word of mouth.”   A more official way of getting information is through a company or government mouthpiece. This is an official spokesperson.  Government-run media could also be called a mouthpiece.

Sometimes when one person is speaking, he says the same thing that his friend was going to say. When this happens, the friend might say: “You took the words right out of my mouth!” Sometimes a person has a bad or unpleasant experience with another person.  He might say that experience “left a bad taste in my mouth.” Or the person might have had a very frightening experience, like being chased by an angry dog.  He might say: “I had my heart in my mouth.”

Some people have lots of money because they were born into a very rich family.  There is an expression for this, too. You might say such a person, “was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

This rich person is the opposite of a person who lives from hand to mouth. This person is very poor and only has enough money for the most important things in life, like food.

Parents might sometimes withhold sweet food from a child as a form of punishment for saying bad things. For example, if a child says things she should not say to her parents, she might be described as a mouthy child. The parents might even tell the child to stop mouthing off.

But enough of all this talk.  I have been running my mouth long enough.

He Took the Blame for Someone Else

Every week at this time, the Voice of America tells about popular words and expressions used in the United States. Some expressions have made a jump from sports events to everyday life. One such expression is fall guy. A fall guy is the person who someone decides will be the loser or victim.

The first fall guys were men who wrestled for money. At the end of the nineteenth century, wrestling was a very popular sport in the United States. Wrestling competitions were held not only in big cities, but also at country fairs and traveling shows. As the sport became more popular, it became less and less of a sport. Many of the matches were fixed. The wrestlers knew — before the match — which one of them would be the winner.

The goal in wrestling is to hold your opponent’s shoulders down against the floor. This is called a fall. Sometimes, one of the wrestlers would be paid before the match to take the fall.  He would agreed to be the loser…the fall guy.

Today, a fall guy is anyone who is tricked into taking the blame for the crime or wrongdoing of someone else. There are fall guys in many situations — people who publicly take the blame when something goes wrong.

A fall guy takes the rap for something wrong or illegal. He accepts responsibility and punishment for what someone else did.  The fall guy may have been involved in the situation, but was not the person who should be blamed.

The word rap has meant blame for several hundred years. The expression to take the rap first was used about one hundred years ago.

Another similar expression is bum rap.  A person receives a bum rap if he is found guilty of a crime…but is really innocent.

Sometimes, a fall guy may not realize he is the fall guy until he is the victim of a bum rap. In that case, he may feel that he has been framed.  To frame someone is to create false evidence to make an innocent person seem guilty.

Some word experts say the expression to frame someone comes from the way wood must be fitted closely around a painting or photograph to frame it. In the same way, evidence must be designed perfectly if it is to frame an innocent person to make him or her seem guilty.

What Does the Average Joe Think?

A person’s name is very important. Some names also have special meanings in popular American expressions.  To better understand what I mean, sit back and listen.  You might even want to get a cup of Joe, I mean, a cup of coffee.

One day, an average Joe was walking down the street.  An average Joe is a common person – either male or female.   This average Joe was lost.  He did not know Jack about where he was going.  By this, I mean he did not know anything about where to find things in the city.

So average Joe asked John Q. Public for directions to the nearest bank.  John Q. Public is also a common person – male or female.

“Jeez Louise,” said John Q. Public.  This is an expression of surprise.  “Jeez Louise, don’t you know that all banks are closed today?  It is Saturday.”

“For Pete’s sake,” said average Joe.  This is also an expression used to show a feeling like surprise or disappointment.

“For Pete’s sake.  I do not believe you,” said average Joe.  He was being a doubting Thomas, someone who does not believe anything he is told.

At that moment, Joe Blow was walking down the street with a woman.  Joe Blow is also an expression for a common man. Now this Joe Blow was NOT walking next to a plain Jane.  A plain Jane is a woman who is neither ugly nor pretty.  She is simply plain.  No, the woman with Joe Blow was a real Sheila – a beautiful woman.

Average Joe asked the woman if all banks were closed on Saturday.  “No way, Jose,” she answered.  This is a way of saying “no.”  “No way, Jose.  Many banks are open on Saturdays.”

Average Joe did not know either of these two people from Adam.  That is, he did not know them at all.  But he followed their directions to the nearest bank.

When he arrived, he walked to the desk of the chief bank employee.  Now this man was a true Jack of all trades.  He knew how to do everything.

“I am here to withdraw some money so I can pay my taxes to Uncle Sam,” said average Joe.  Uncle Sam represents the United States government.  The banker produced some papers and told average Joe to sign his John Hancock at the bottom.   A John Hancock is a person’s signed name – a signature.  Historically, John Hancock was one of the signers of the United States Declaration of Independence.  Hancock had a beautiful signature and signed his name larger than all the others.

As average Joe left the bank he began to sing.  But sadly, average Joe was not a good singer.  He was a Johnny One Note.   He could only sing one note.

If a Student’s Grades Hit Bottom, It Is Time to Hit the Books

VOA Special English Program မွ Words and Their Stories ဟာ စကားလံုးေတြကို တကယ့္ျဖစ္ရပ္မွန္ေတြ၊ အျဖစ္အျပက္ဇာတ္လမ္းေလးေတြကတစ္ဆင့္ အဂၤလိပ္စာကို အေကာင္းဆံုးေလ့လာနိုင္တဲ့ အစီအစဥ္ေကာင္းတစ္ခုျဖစ္ပါတယ္၊၊ ေခတ္ေပၚစကားလံုး အသံုးအႏွူံး ေတြကို လည္းေလ့လာနိုင္ပါတယ္၊၊

ဒီတစ္ပတ္ “Hit” နဲ ့ပတ္သက္တာေတြကိုတင္ျပထားပါတယ္၊၊

Hit is a small word but it has a lot of power.  Baseball players hit the ball.  Missiles hit an airplane.  A car hits a tree.

Hit also joins with other words to create many colorful expressions.  One is hit the road. It means to travel or to leave a place, as suggested in this song, “Hit the Road.”

Dragons and Princesses

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

I was in Tokyo last spring, walking beneath neon signs and cherry blossoms with my dear friend Kirsten. Right about the time the sun was setting, we heard the sound of a jazz band coming from an alley. Turns out it was a group of four very hip Japanese college students playing their hearts out for anyone who would listen.