This is an All Ears English Podcast, Episode 2316.
Learn this English vocabulary to the nth degree.
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We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection with your American host, Aubrey Carter, the IELTS Whiz and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.
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Are you listening to All Ears English again today for the nth time?
If so, that is amazing.
And today you'll get one key way to exaggerate in American English.
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Hey Aubrey, what are you up to today?
I need to fix my daughter's bike for the nth time.
The chain keeps falling off when she tries to write it.
Oh my gosh. So you've been fixing it quite a bit, quite frequently.
Yes. This happened so many times.
We probably just need to buy her a new bike at this point.
Maybe Christmas, good Christmas gift idea.
There you go. So what are we talking about today?
This term nth time, I'm not sure if it's even a word, right?
I mean, what is it?
It's so weird to see it spelled, right?
It came up in a recent episode, 2306, you and Michelle were talking about the word attagirl in English.
And one of you said for the nth time and I saw it written in the transcripts and I was like, I've never, I don't think I've ever seen it written.
I hear people say it, but to have it written just N T H, I'm like, I guess that is how you spell it.
It's kind of slang, right?
Interesting. Okay. Interesting.
So we're talking about it today because we use it two different ways in English that actually have different meanings.
So that could be sort of confusing.
Yes. Guys, we're going to get into this today and make sure it's clear because this is very high level English, right?
This is approaching the B2C1 level, which is where we're all headed.
So guys, hit the follow button now to make sure you get five episodes a week of all ears English will drop right into your queue.
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All right. Good. Let's dive in here.
The first way we use this is the nth time.
We'll often say for the nth time.
So this means like the most recent time something has happened in a long series.
It definitely implies that something has happened many times, like me having to replace the chain on my daughter's bike for the nth time.
Oh, that's the worst.
Cause then your hands get all greasy, right?
And maybe you get grease on your jeans or something.
It's the worst. It is the worst.
I hate doing it. And it's especially tricky because it'll come off when she's like by the school or like she won't know.
So then I have to go find, get her, load up the bike or fix it there.
It's the worst. She's so much work, so much work.
All right. So let's give our listeners some examples so they can really wrap their heads around this.
So here's the first one for the nth time, please stop leaving your dirty socks on the floor.
Yeah. This I think is so typical, right?
It's when you've asked someone to do something a bunch of times and you might say this for the nth time, please stop doing this.
Yeah. And I think we can all help ourselves remember the meaning here by envisioning people we live with and what we would say to them.
Yes. Right. What is that thing?
We're always saying to them.
We can start using this in that context right away.
Yes. For sure. Or this is the nth time I've burned dinner this month.
I need to start setting timers.
This happens to me quite a bit because if I walk away from whatever I'm cooking, I burned toast and like grilled cheese sandwiches all the time.
It's crazy. Our grilled cheese is so good.
I don't know about, but maybe it could be good burnt.
Who knows? No, no, it's not.
We have to like scrape the black into the trash.
Oh no, not good. Not good.
Anything else we need to know about this one, Aubrey?
Yeah. So we have a lot of things in English that mean the same thing.
And this will help you remember what it means, right?
To say the thousandth time or for the millionth time means the same thing.
And that's where we're getting it from, right?
The end of those words is so we're sort of removing thousand and million and just saying for the nth time and we exaggerate by, you know, maybe was the 20th time you did this, we'll say for the millionth time, please stop.
I'm going to have laundry on the floor, right?
It just becomes more interesting.
Instead of saying the millionth time, we just say the nth time, right?
It just becomes more high level.
Yeah. Yeah. And so I mean, all of these are options.
You don't have to say for the nth time all the time.
We love to exaggerate.
You can say this for the thousandth time for the millionth time.
And there are some other interesting options in English, the bajillionth time, the umpteenth time.
Oh, I actually taught this on a previous episode.
So stay until the end and we'll share what episode that was so you can get some more options.
Yeah. There's lots of ways because I think in English, we, especially American English, we are big exaggerators.
We love hyperbole. We like to exaggerate.
We like to say things in a big way.
So this fits in really well in American English, I think.
Exactly. I agree. It just makes it more interesting what we're saying.
We love to, I don't want to say for the 10th time.
That doesn't sound very exciting.
That's so boring. It's boring.
Different countries that speak English might be less into that kind of those big statements.
Understatement is a little more praised, I think, for example, in British English from what I've heard.
Yeah. That's a good point, right?
It is pretty cultural.
This is very common in the U .S.
But in other English speaking countries, that might not be the case as much.
Right. Okay. There's a second way that we use this Aubrey and it is to the nth degree.
So when would we use this?
Yeah. So this means as much as possible or to an extreme level.
So we're still using that word nth, but it has a little bit of a different meaning.
So for example, I'm training to the nth degree for a marathon.
I ran 25 miles today.
Wow. Yeah. So it means the same as, as much as possible, right?
I'm, I'm being very extreme about this and it's this whole chunk to the nth degree.
And then what's another sample sentence?
I might say my friend customized his car to the nth degree, custom rims, vinyl wrapping the works.
Nice. Excellent. All right.
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Okay, Aubrey, we are back for a role play here.
So here we're discussing our friend's car.
All right. Let's do it.
I'll start us. Okay.
Wow. Jordan really customized his car to the nth degree.
Yeah. I saw that it looks amazing.
I think he put some kind of turbo boosters on it too.
That might not have been the best idea, actually.
Oh no, what happened?
He got a speeding ticket last night for the nth time.
Ah, that's actually, that's definitely, I've heard that red cars get tend to get stopped the most for speeding, whether they are.
Maybe they speed more or maybe they just get stopped more.
Right? Right. That makes sense.
And it's interesting because you know, when someone's putting these custom like to put turbo booster or something that's going to make your car so much faster.
Like what is your goal here?
Like there are speed limits for a reason.
I remember in high school, it was so trendy.
All the kids had these big sub woofers in the back of their, did you have this in high school?
Kids would always install sub woofers and I would be at my friend's house and my brother would come home and he'd be driving down the street and the house was far away from the road.
Okay. Kind of far off setback, a colonial house.
And you could see my friend's shelves moving when my brother drove down the road.
That's extreme. Right.
The music was so loud.
The bass was making the car vibrate to that point that music to the nth degree.
Yes. Right. Love it.
Okay. What did we do here?
So yeah. So first I said, wow, Jordan really customized his car to the nth degree.
And this has the same meaning as, or a couple of phrases in English to the max and to the utmost or other ways that we say that.
And it just means to the most extreme level possible.
I think to the utmost is really interesting language, you know?
Yeah, I agree. I hear that one as well.
That might be a little more sophisticated sounding.
Maybe you use that at work.
Yeah. Do something to the utmost.
And I also feel like when we use this to compliment someone, to say someone does something to the utmost sounds a very complimentary, very positive.
Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Very high skills or the person does a really good job at what they do.
Yeah. Exactly. All right.
And then, you know, I said, Oh no, what happened?
And he said, he got a speeding ticket last night for the nth time.
Right. So it's not the first time.
It's not the second time it's, we don't know, but it's been many times.
Right. All we know is he's gotten a bunch of speeding tickets.
So I could have said for the millionth time, the s thousandth time often we'll use nth or these other ways, not only to exaggerate, but because we don't know the number, right?
We, we know he's gotten a bunch of tickets.
We don't know how many, and it would be kind of weird to be like, for what three times, four times, suddenly the conversation has become boring.
Instead, we just use these phrases to exaggerate, to be like a bunch of times.
Yeah. The key is to know in English, when is the conversation likely to become boring and pivot away from that?
Right? And that's an art to know that.
Absolutely. Right. These subtle things we do to exaggerate, to use general phrases instead of trying to get too much into the nitty gritty details that nobody cares about.
Yes. Details are where you can get into trouble.
Right? Good. All right.
So Aubrey, what is another episode?
What is that other episode we mentioned before?
We promised this was a little while ago.
It was called don't say a lot, say bajillion.
And we answered a great question about the phrase for the umpteenth time.
And it's all about how we exaggerate numbers and really interesting vocabulary for that.
So the best place to find this is to go to our blog, allersenglish .com and search that episode number.
Otherwise you would be scrolling back quite a ways in your podcast player.
It might be impossible to get that far down our feed.
So yeah, definitely come back to allersenglish .com type it 1282 into the search bar in the top right corner, and we should be able to get you to that episode.
Aubrey, where should we leave our listeners today?
I mean, exaggeration is a big part of American English, first of all.
Yes. Right. If you work or live or have friends in the US, you should be exaggerating.
Right. It makes conversation fun.
You're going to fit in more with the people you're chatting with.
We love to use extremes to exaggerate in English, but I love what you pointed out, Lindsay, that this may be different if you live in Australia, New Zealand, the UK.
So you want to listen to how people are talking, where you live, and if they love to exaggerate, then you should too.
Yeah. And I don't mean that they may exaggerate about this particular topic, right?
If you're trying to capture, something's happened a lot.
Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but there could be other contexts in which they prefer to be understated, right?
To downplay things.
And so just look out for that because that is out there.
There are those real differences and they're super linked to culture, history, society.
It's fascinating. It is fascinating.
It's just interesting to be observant, right?
Be curious about the world, be observant about language and culture because the more you start realizing about wherever you live or maybe where you're immigrating to, I think you're going to get a bigger love for the people and the language if you're more observant.
Yes. I love that. The importance of understanding people in context, right?
Not from our lenses, but from their lenses.
I love that idea. I think that's a great way to finish today, Aubrey.
That's the source of connection.
That's where it comes from.
I agree. Love it, Lindsay.
Thanks. This was a fun one.
All right. Talk to you, Aubrey.
Take care. Bye. Bye.
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