This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2486.
Don't sleep on this trendy new English slang.
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In today's episode you get three trendy new English slang phrases to sound fun and relevant in English and go for more connection.
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Hey there, Aubrey.
How's everything today?
I'm great, Lindsay.
How are you?
Good, Aubrey.
Any new shows you're watching lately?
Yes, i've been watching yellow jackets.
It's really good.
Have you seen it?
That one, i haven't.
I'm never up on what's new.
Okay, don't sleep on this show.
It is so good.
You should definitely check it out.
Okay, good to know, i will check it out.
I just finished this series.
Younger, did we talk about that?
I think i talked about it with michelle, maybe.
Yeah yeah, i haven't seen it yet.
Well, but that one came out in like 2015.
So I tend to find shows five years later.
So you've been sleeping on it for a while and now you finally.
Yes.
And I love I love that you're using this phrase sleeping on it.
Right.
Does it mean literally that I'm sleeping?
I mean.
Oh, right.
This is trendy new slang to mean like, don't miss out on it.
Be sure to check it out.
Don't sleep on it.
Really fun.
Yes.
So excited to get into that in this episode.
But first Aubrey, we need to make sure our listeners know what's happening in the next couple of weeks.
Aubrey, what's coming up soon?
Yes.
We are working hard on our professional English level two course and we are so excited for you guys to check it out.
It's probably our best course yet.
Yes, exactly.
So in the spring, we launched Professional English Level 1.
And this takes your learning to the next level.
This truly makes your skills more sophisticated.
We show you how to perform in English, with an understanding of culture, interpersonal skills, in these high stakes moments presentations, client negotiations, situations that our listeners find themselves in as they get better and better at English.
Aubrey, where can they go to opt in to be on the list to be notified when it's ready?
Yes.
Go to allearsenglish.com slash high stakes, H-I-G-H-S-T-A-K-E-S for those high stakes situations, right?
You can sign up and then we will let you know as soon as this course is ready.
All right.
We'll see you there at that list, everyone.
All right.
All right.
Today's episode is inspired by a question from Rowita from Sudan, right?
Yes.
Do you want to read it for us?
Okay.
I'll go for it.
Here we go.
I like your podcast.
It helps me to learn English, but I'm still learning.
I want to ask about the idiom sleep on it.
What does it mean?
Thanks, guys.
Love you.
Oh, that's so nice.
I love that.
I know.
Hello, Rowita.
Thank you for sending in this amazing question.
And this is going to be fun because we use this two very different ways, right?
One is very common in business English as well.
And the other is trendy new slang.
Let's briefly go into the first one, because we actually talked about it in a recent episode of Business English.
If you are sleeping on the Business English podcast, you might have missed it.
Good one.
I see what you did there.
I see what you did there.
Um, so we'll start with his first meeting again.
So this means when we say sleep on, it means to wait until the next day to make a decision after giving it more thought.
Aubrey, are you the kind of person that wants to do this, or do you, you know, make those quick decisions and just go with it?
I do often want to sleep on it, right?
Especially big decisions.
Like, let me think about it for a while or let me decide and then see how I feel tomorrow.
So yeah, I do.
What about you?
Do you often sleep on a decision?
I do.
I don't like to rush big decisions, but sometimes I am indecisive and it's hard to know.
Usually if you sleep on it, I think you're more likely to get to what your gut is telling you.
Absolutely.
You know?
Yeah.
And then you'll feel like, okay, I took the time to make sure I made the right decision.
Yeah.
But you might hear this in a job interview, right?
Or at work when someone's giving you time to consider, say, well, sleep on it.
Let me know how you feel tomorrow.
A job interview or maybe specifically a job offer, right?
If you get a job offer, a package or something, and you're not 100% sure, right?
Maybe the person offering you the job would say, sleep on it.
Let us know in a couple of days.
Exactly.
I know this is a big decision.
Sleep on it.
Get back to me in a couple of days.
Or he said he's going to sleep on it and let us know tomorrow.
Yes.
So be sure to stay to the end.
We will share with you the episode of the Business English Podcast where you and Michelle actually Lindsay dove into this phrase and similar vocabulary like think on it, mull it over.
So stay to the end and we'll give you that episode number.
Okay, sounds good.
Now, let's get into the trendy one that all the young kids are saying now, right?
Yes.
So when we say don't sleep on it, don't sleep on this, this is newer slang.
That means don't overlook it, don't miss out on it, or maybe don't underestimate it.
Hmm.
Okay.
I like that.
That's a variety of reasons.
Don't overlook, don't underestimate, don't miss it.
So for example, don't sleep on that thrift store.
I found designer jeans for 10 bucks.
Yeah, that store has unexpectedly good stuff, right?
If you're not going and seeing what's there, you're going to miss out.
So be like, don't sleep on that store.
Yes.
I just got a great idea.
We need to do an episode about when you should say bucks and when you should say dollars.
Oh, that'd be a great episode to understand because there is a little bit of connotation to it.
There's a little bit of when we say bucks, which we mean dollars, right?
It's a little bit more casual and it matters who are around.
And it might imply how much money, right?
Just 10 bucks.
Maybe.
Interesting.
So hit follow and we'll cover that.
Hit the follow button, everyone.
All right, Aubrey, what else?
Yeah.
So another example here if you're telling someone about a movie, you could say like okay, don't sleep on that movie due to its mediocre reviews.
It's one of the best I've seen all year.
So you're telling them like, don't miss out on it because you're seeing bad reviews.
Don't sleep on it.
And we could, as a bonus, we could make this a little more casual by saying something like don't sleep on this movie just because it got mediocre reviews, right.
We can bring, because that feels formal to me, right?
Due to, to me feels a little bit formal.
What do you think, Aubrey?
Yeah, for sure.
Due to it's a mediocre reviews.
I agree, right?
These, especially when you're using slang like this, it's very casual.
It's conversational.
So a lot of these are also often more of a response, right?
If I'm telling you about a movie and you're like oh, I saw it had some bad reviews so I probably wasn't going to watch it.
And I might just be like, oh, don't sleep on it.
It was amazing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Very casual response.
Perfect.
And then what is the other trendy word that people are saying now to go along with this?
Yes, we wanted to share a related trendy new word, which is just fire.
You guys use fire, but it's used in a new way to mean that something is amazing or impressive.
So in the same way, anything that you should not be sleeping on, you could call fire.
And we'll often say straight fire.
My kids use this all the time, but I've started hearing it a lot on podcasts, on TV shows.
It's sort of being adopted into the language more.
So excited for you guys to be using it.
Don't you think that when you know it's kind of like with Facebook?
When all kind of the moms got on Facebook, the kids left Facebook right.
Do you think that the kids will leave the slang when the moms and the adults start using this fire?
That does happen sometimes, right?
We'll adopt a phrase into standard English and a lot of us will start using it and then the really young kids will stop using it because it's not cool. hear their their mom or an adult say it they're like mom you shouldn't be using that probably right or something what how do they absolutely well this reminds me of so recently so you know this new trendy phrase cook to say like oh I'm cooking like we're cooking and then the WNBA used it and it was like let them cook did you see this And so then there was a big uprising because people were like, we shouldn't be implying that women should be cooking in the kitchen.
And then, but it was a misunderstanding for people who didn't realize, this is this new slang.
That means like doing something really well.
If you say like, let them cook, it means like, let them play.
They're awesome.
So it's funny now, ever since that, I'm like, now I wonder if the kids will stop saying cooking.
And that happens to me where I'll be like, oh, I'm cooking if I'm doing something well.
And my kids are like, don't say that.
You're too old to say that.
Yeah, but the funny thing is that's not new slang.
My dad used to say that in the 80s.
That's not new.
Everything that's old is new.
I would bring home good grades or something and be like, you're cooking.
That's so true.
Or we have the phrase like, now you're cooking with grease, right?
And so they've just sort of adjusted it a little bit and adopted it and have decided that only kids can say it.
Like right now, kids are wearing what we wore in the 90s.
You know what I mean?
It all just kind of comes back.
It's so funny.
It's so true, right?
It becomes trendy.
It becomes super popular.
They decide that only kids can use it and then they reject it once everybody's using it.
I love it.
So funny.
All right.
Well, let's use a couple examples here.
Yeah.
So for fire, for example, I might say that new burger spot downtown is fire.
You got to try it.
Just means it's amazing.
It's really good.
Nice.
I'm going to start using this now.
This track is straight fire.
I've had it on repeat all day.
Yes.
Okay.
It's really good, right?
A song that you really love.
Oh, this is fire or this is straight fire.
I love it.
All right.
Good stuff.
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Okay, Aubrey, let's break it into a role play.
Here we are friends and we're discussing where to meet for lunch.
All right.
Okay, perfect.
Do you want to start us out?
Yes.
So where do you want to go for lunch?
There's a new Caribbean spot downtown.
I heard it's fire.
Someone told me the jerk chicken is next level.
Oh, I saw that place.
It looks kind of sketchy.
It's not in the best area true, but I'm not going to sleep on a place that might have amazing food just because it's not fancy.
Okay, you convinced me.
Let's go check it out.
Yeah, most of the time the best food is not necessarily in the fanciest places, right?
It's so true.
My favorite Thai place is in this sketchy strip mall like downtown, but it's delicious.
It's by far the best like penang curry in the valley.
There you go.
It's worth it.
Totally worth it.
All right.
So here we have, we dropped the fire, right?
So we said, you know, where do you want to go for lunch?
And you said there's a new Caribbean spot downtown.
I heard it's fire.
And you probably have to punch that word a bit, right?
Yeah.
It would be strange to say like, I heard it's fire.
You do have to emphasize it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Put some enthusiasm into it.
Right.
All right.
What else, Aubrey?
And then I said, you know, this would be a good place for me to say like oh, don't sleep on that Caribbean place, right.
I'm saying I'm not going to sleep on a place just because it's in a bad area, right?
That means like I'm not going to overlook it, underestimate it.
I'm not going to miss out based on, you know, the area it's in.
Yes, I love it.
Guys, go over and check out Business English 441.
This is the one where we mentioned sleeping on something, right?
How to buy time to make decisions at work.
Right.
Totally different episode, different skill, but equally important.
Yeah, it's fascinating that we would have two such very different meanings for this, right?
One, the sleep on it that we use, you know, in everyday conversations as well.
But a lot at work to say to like really seriously consider a decision is so different from the slang version.
So you just have to know in context which someone means.
You got it.
Aubrey, what should be our takeaway today?
Anything else?
Yeah.
I think whether you use trendy new slang often depends on your personality.
I think all these phrases that we're talking about today, anyone can use.
I've started hearing them more in media all over the place.
And it depends on who you're with as well the situation, because these are all very informal words, right?
But in casual situations, try using this fun new slang.
Yes.
And force the Gen Zers to invent something new, right?
That's what Have fun with slang.
It belongs to all of us.
Let's enjoy it.
And remember, the goal is connection, right?
So it's not about the words we use.
It's about using those words to get to a moment of connection.
Yes.
And what a great way to connect, right?
To share what someone should not be missing out on, whether that's a TV show, a restaurant, a movie right.
And this is a fun way to say it.
Don't sleep on it.
All right.
Good stuff.
Aubrey, see you soon.
Have a good day.
Awesome.
See you next time.
Bye.
Bye.
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