This is an all ears english podcast.
Episode 25, 21.
That's terrible how passionate people articulate negative things.
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Sometimes bad things happen in life, and we need to comment on them.
Today, find out the difference between horrible and terrible, and get a few more ways to express yourself when these things come up.
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Hey Michelle, how's it going today?
Hey Lindsay, I'm doing well.
How are you?
Good, but I have an important question for you here.
Okay.
You like food, right?
I do.
I like, I love food.
Of course.
Who doesn't, right?
So have you had any terrible food though, where you live, like in your town?
Have you stumbled into just any just bad food?
It happens once in a while.
I wouldn't like a terrible is a very strong word.
I would say I've had some mediocre food where I'm just not that excited about it.
For example, I love Indian food and there is an Indian restaurant near me where it's just not.
It's just not there.
But what's funny is my friend thinks it's the best Indian food he's ever had.
See, sometimes it's really just a matter of opinion, I guess.
Exactly.
Exactly.
But I prefer another restaurant.
So I wouldn't... Again, I would never go out and say it's terrible, but it's not my favorite.
How about you?
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
Terrible food.
Geez.
Nothing comes to mind.
I'm sure I have before at some point.
But yeah, same...
I would say weird, weird food.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like when I went to London, I feel like I had some kind of some weird, a weird sandwich.
It looked good.
Yeah, I just like took a walk during a conference.
Let's just grab a sandwich, right?
Grab a sandwich.
And it was just a weird, I was like, start eating it.
I was like, does it's now you start eating something you're like, It's good.
Oh, actually, it's not.
Is it good?
You're not sure.
Do I like this?
Do I not?
Just a weird experience.
Yeah.
So not terrible, not horrible, but weird.
Yeah.
Oh well, I'm glad that you brought up the word horrible as well, because we're going to answer a listener question today.
This comes to us from YouTube.
You want me to read the question?
Yeah, that would be great.
Go for it, Michelle.
Okay.
So this listener says...
Hello, Lindsay.
I'm Riyad from Syria.
I love your podcast.
I've been watching you for the past three years.
Thank you so much for listening.
This listener says, yeah, three years.
That's great.
I have a question for you.
Which word do you prefer to use in your life?
Horrible or terrible?
Okay.
These are two kind of negative words.
Very negative words.
But We can't shy away from these things.
These are common words.
Not everything in life is rosy and perfect.
So but yeah, I mean, it's a good question.
I mean, Lindsay, of course, these two words mean very bad.
Yes.
Yes.
Very bad.
And sometimes we just need ways to say that something is very bad.
So that is totally fair.
It's a great question.
Great question.
Yeah.
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Okay.
Exactly.
Perfect.
All right.
So I looked into the differences.
I was thinking, is there an actual difference?
But honestly, they're so small.
I don't even necessarily want to get into it because I don't even really agree with them.
I mean, do you, Lindsay, do you find that there's much of a difference between these two?
No, that's not where we're going to take this episode, right, Michelle?
Because it's not worth it.
Right.
That's negligible.
Negligible difference, right?
Good point.
Good vocab word.
Yes.
Do you lean?
If something isn't great and you want to use one of these words, does one speak to you more than the other?
Good question.
I feel like... Maybe horrible.
Maybe I use horrible a little bit more.
What about you, Michelle?
Would you say you say terrible more?
I mean... I would say...
I think I say terrible more.
I mean actually on the way home from, on the way to drop off my daughter at school, there was terrible traffic.
Okay, terrible, terrible.
So like, I could imagine myself having said terrible over horrible.
But but again, it kind of depends.
It's just what feels more natural.
And it's, it's what feels to you as the most emphatic word in that moment.
So honestly, like it might just depend on the day, which one you choose, which one feels most powerful, in a sense, because you want to really explain to the person how bad the traffic was.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
But you could say horrible to talk about traffic.
Let's The traffic is horrible at this time of day, so avoid the highway.
And so, Lindsay, could we have said terrible?
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah, it would have been fine.
Yeah, terrible.
Very interchangeable, right?
Or I feel horrible.
I have a bad cold.
Could you say terrible?
Yep.
Indeed you could, Michelle.
Indeed I could.
Yep.
The workload isn't too terrible.
So you might hear someone say it like that.
It's not it's something is not terrible.
Right.
It's not too terrible.
Right.
Yeah.
The workload isn't too terrible.
So isn't too horrible.
I mean, I guess I don't hear that as much too horrible, but you could say it.
You know, it's not like there's a language police.
No one's going to tell you.
What are you doing?
Yeah, you could do it just for some reason.
I feel like I hear the chunk too terrible more often.
Same.
Yeah, I would agree.
But yeah, today.
So that's kind of the basic answer to the question.
But I wanted to focus on some more idiomatic conversational expressions, with terrible and horrible today.
So we're going to start with terrible.
Yes.
Lindsay, what's the first one?
Well, you know about this.
You've gone through this, Michelle.
Well, probably as a person yourself, but also as a mother.
Yes, exactly.
The terrible twos.
So this is I wonder if in our listeners' cultures, they have a way of saying this, because it's a phenomenon right?
With little kids, when they enter around the age of two, they start to walk, right?
They start to kind of like run around.
They start to be more opinionated, but...
Two is tough because they don't have like that much language.
Okay.
Yeah.
So they get very frustrated and that's where tantrums come from and things like that.
I was reading that that's also when the neophobia comes up, the fear of new things, which is where they get crazy about trying new foods right.
Like they're like, oh, I don't want that.
They're right.
Yeah.
It's like everybody thinks they have this amazing eater and then they hit two and And then you realize, oh no.
Yeah.
It's a real thing.
Neophobia.
Like, it's so funny.
So here's a sample sentence.
Sheila just entered her terrible two.
So I've been trying to figure out how to handle her outbursts.
Oh, yes.
And that is a cultural phrase that we use in American culture.
I'm curious whether that's common for our listeners.
Yeah.
Another one is to feel terrible, right?
Maybe you actually physically feel terrible.
You feel sick.
You don't feel well, but you could also just feel a kind of mentally terrible.
You feel you're, you're something happened and you just feel bad about it.
Yeah.
Maybe you feel guilty in this case.
You, I feel terrible about this, but I can't come to your wedding.
Right.
You feel in this case, there's a little guilt.
Um there's, you just feel sad.
You feel sad, you feel guilty, you feel bad, and you could also use it as with an ly, so you could say terribly right um, and this is really really common as well.
I'm terribly sorry, but i will not be accepting the position.
Yeah yeah exactly, and i feel like i hear this among British English speakers too, pretty often right.
Yeah.
Maybe more than American English.
I'm not sure.
Yeah.
Or what's another thing?
Or just an expression.
That's terrible, right?
She lost her phone.
That's terrible.
That would be kind of terrible to lose your phone, right?
Yeah.
And then one more is a terrible blow.
So what would that mean, Lindsay?
It's kind of like a Yeah.
Something really that hits you in a bad way.
Something that hits you and it happens.
It was a terrible blow for him when he didn't get into his dream school.
Maybe a little surprising.
Something is a little shocking to you.
It's a blow.
It's a real, you know, we did an episode about hit, right?
It hits you.
Right.
Yeah.
And we're going to do another.
Yeah, I know.
I realized that I used hit you.
Go back and listen to 2519.
Guys, that would be where we talked about that.
And you could make the connection there.
All right.
Good.
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All right, Michelle, let's flip over to horrible.
Again, we're saying they mean the same thing and we'll just show our listeners exactly how it's used okay.
Mm-hmm.
So you might hear I mean and again, a lot of these, I mean some of them are only with terrible or horrible.
Like you don't say the horrible twos.
It's the terrible twos.
We use the alliteration with that.
But some of them you can just kind of mix and match.
So you could say a horrible experience, but you could also say a terrible experience.
So you could say we had a horrible experience at that hotel, so we won't be returning.
Yes, totally.
Or you could say that's horrible, just like we taught you that's terrible.
That's horrible.
We can use it this way.
So that's horrible.
Why didn't you tell me your hamster died?
Yeah.
Or you can just like you can say terribly, you can say horribly.
So that's horribly rude of you.
This one sounds a little elevated to me.
Almost like Lindsay, you were talking about British English.
It sounds a little British to me, but you might hear it.
British English always seems to sound a little elevated.
Don't you think?
Yes, it does.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
It's the best, though.
I don't know.
I'm still a fan of Aussie English myself.
Oh, yeah.
Well, that too.
Both.
Both.
Yeah.
So much fun.
And then a few extending words here.
Horrifying, right?
This is something that's scary, but also not scary in the typical way.
What do we mean by that, Michelle?
Right.
So it could be, oh, the ghost was horrifying.
Yeah.
Right.
But you can also use it, not as in terms of the traditional way of thinking you're scared of something.
Right.
It could be something about the price.
So, for example, the price tag on that furniture is horrifying.
Yeah.
And I actually I think I say this type of i think i say this word a lot yeah, probably i'm.
Oh, that's horrifying.
I think i use the word horrifying a lot.
You, you shared last time on one of our episodes about how you tried to order a coffee.
That was like 18 or something.
I can see you using it there.
That is horrifying.
I am canceling my order exactly exactly actually guys yeah, make sure you hit follow, because we do have a um follow-up for that one coming up that I just planned.
Oh, good.
I'm excited for that.
And I would also say Michelle, other scenarios where you might say horrifying, embarrassing situations.
I shared my really embarrassing situation where I showed up to a wedding in casual clothing.
I was confused about the dress code.
It was very confusing.
That was absolutely horrifying.
That would be a great moment to use that word.
Yeah.
Horrifying is a really good one.
I think that's very common.
I think it's stronger than horrible and terrible.
Don't you think?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Horrifying.
I don't know.
There's something about this one that feels very natural.
This one almost feels the most natural to me that comes up most in my daily life.
You know, it's horrifying.
Yeah.
If you're someone, it depends on your personality, though.
And that's what's cool about listeners at their level.
B2C1, you can express your personality.
I think there are certain personalities that may not use that as much.
It's really like if you're someone that emphasizes things and really I don't know narrates life in a sense.
The ups and downs of life.
That's you, Michelle.
I like to have fun with words.
I'm very... emphatic in the way i speak so i do like to say horrifying that's your word michelle that's your that's my word horrifying oh boy what about appalling do you use the word appalling Yeah, maybe not as much as horrifying.
I'm realizing as we go through this episode just how much I like that word, horrifying.
But appalling, that's more disgusting, right?
Yeah, there's an element of disgust there.
Yeah, not necessarily.
I wouldn't necessarily say this food is appalling, like actually disgusting, but just more like his behavior is appalling.
Yes, a real turn off in a sense, right?
Yeah, it's...
The meaning is slightly different.
It's hard to describe the meaning difference, but it's got a slightly different quality to it.
Okay.
So let's put these all into a big role play and mix it up here, Michelle.
So here we are friends talking to, we're talking about our other friend who just had a bad breakup.
All right.
All right.
Here we go.
I feel terrible for her.
Same.
She thought this was the one.
It's really horrible.
Yeah.
And what he said to her in the end was horrifying.
I know.
Totally appalling.
Yeah.
Oh, no.
Yeah.
That's not good.
That's not good.
So we're talking about it.
So you say, I feel terrible for her.
That means you empathize.
You feel bad for someone.
Right.
And you said she thought this was the one.
It's really horrible.
What does that mean?
The one?
She thought this was the one or you could have said he was the one.
Basically, you're saying the person of your dreams, right?
The person you're going to be with forever, right?
Yes, exactly.
Exactly.
And then you say it's really horrible, right?
And then I said, and what he said to her in the end was horrifying.
Yeah.
And then I said, I know, totally appalling.
And I mean, I was just looking for another word to use there.
So I don't have to repeat the words you used.
Right.
So that works really well.
You're disgusted by what he did and said.
Right.
And actually, that's really interesting.
We could do a follow up on that, how sometimes you just want to agree with somebody.
So you might just kind of repeat them, but switch your word.
Right.
So it's horrifying.
Totally appalling.
Right.
It's kind of interesting how we can connect with people in that way.
And just take it to another level.
That'd be a great way for our listeners to challenge themselves when they're in conversation with native speakers.
Try to do that.
When someone makes a statement, if you agree and they've used an adjective, try to use another adjective.
That means the same thing.
Really good practice.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
Let us know how that goes, guys.
All right.
Well, if you haven't already, go on and check out episode 2496.
That was three winning frameworks to speak up in a meeting with Anna Connelly.
Excellent.
What's our takeaway for today, Michelle?
I mean, not everything is, as you said, what's the expression?
Something in roses?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Sunshine in roses.
That's true.
Once in a while, something bad happens in life and we need the words to articulate it.
And these are great ways to do it.
We've talked about horrifying experiences. terrible, horrible, appalling.
We hope you don't run into these things too often, but once in a while it happens and we need the words right.
Yes, exactly.
All right.
Well, thank you again to our listener for this question.
Really good one.
Guys, you know that you can always also submit your questions on YouTube like this listener.
So feel free to ask any follow ups or any other questions there as well.
Yep.
And I think, no matter what the topic is, we're always looking to connect by choosing the right vocabulary in the right moment.
So we're going to come back to that idea that we mentioned earlier about kind of I don't know tagging along with someone with a new adjective, a new word.
So guys, hit that follow button so you don't miss that episode.
Really good stuff.
All right, Michelle, you have a good day.
I'll talk to you soon.
All right.
Bye, Lindsay.
Bye, guys.
Bye.
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