This is an All Ears English podcast. Hack your way through the 11 meanings of this word. Welcome to the All Ears English podcast downloaded more than 200 million times.
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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 and to get your transcripts delivered by email every week go to allearsenglish .com forward slash subscribe do you know any life hacks today you'll learn the meanings of this extremely common word so that you won't be a hack in English.
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Hey, Aubrey. How are you today?
I'm great. How are you, Lindsay?
Good. Aubrey, do you know any good hacks?
Do you have a favorite hack of, I don't know, health hacks or life hacks?
There's so many, right?
I do have an interesting hack.
I discovered that if you microwave fresh garlic cloves for just 10 seconds in the microwave, then they slide right out of their little skins.
I used to like have a hard time peeling them out of skin or I'd smash them to get them out of the skins.
And so if you want whole garlic cloves, they'll just slide right out of them if you microwave them for a few seconds.
Is that a fun hack?
That is so smart. Yeah.
Because otherwise it is kind of hard to get the skin off of it and then you get garlic.
Those papery skins peels off in like a million little pieces.
And then your hands smell like garlic for three days, right?
Right, right. Yeah.
So I asked you if you had any health hacks or life hacks.
hacks. What are we talking about today?
Yeah, we're talking about the word a hack.
This came up in a recent episode when we said couldn't hack it.
And then we were thinking, we're like, there are so many meanings of hack in English.
So we've promised this follow up episode.
Yeah, I'm excited. I'm really excited to get into this because it really is not just related meetings.
It's completely different meetings, especially when we get in to be able to hack it or to hack it.
Right. Um, but wow.
Yeah. You know, all sorts of different meanings for this so first before we get into it Aubrey I want to say thank you to some of the people that left a review for our show guys it means a lot to us when we see your reviews we know you've taken the time to go over rate and review the show I'm seeing a really nice review here from Imran MZ from the US five -star review Thank You to wuju from China thank you to Olivia Olivia Lemons from the U .S. and Crescent Reviewer from Canada.
Amazing reviews, Aubrey.
Thank you for these reviews.
We read them. They mean a ton to us.
It also helps other people find the show.
If you haven't yet reviewed the podcast, please, wherever you listen to podcasts, rate, review and subscribe.
Yeah. And we'll do our best to read your name out loud on the show.
So if you want to interact with us in one sense of the word, go ahead and leave a review.
Okay, good. Absolutely awesome.
So let's dive in. Many of the meanings for hack are related to technology, computing, gaming.
So we're going to share some of those first. All right.
Yes. Okay. What is the first?
So the first one, Aubrey, what would it be?
Yeah. So first is, this is a noun because there are a lot of nouns and verbs for hack, right?
So this is a noun that means unauthorized access.
So an example sentence, their software detected protected the hack.
So we use it as a noun to mean someone has accessed something illegally.
This is the kind of hack that you do not want.
No one wants this kind of hack.
This is why we don't use Wi -Fi at like a coffee shop.
Yes. Or an airport, even though I still do sometimes.
But oh gosh, geez, what can we do?
We have to be careful for sure.
I usually try to do use my hotspot at the airport, you know, from your phone.
You do that. But sometimes I'll be like, oh, I get lazy.
But But yeah, good.
Not like one of these days we're going to regret it for sure.
All right. And then we could also use it as a verb to and it is to gain that unauthorized access.
He hacked into the government database.
Not a good. So these very related.
Right. The verb is the action of doing the thing right.
So he hacked the database.
The database has a hack.
Love it. OK. Is there another type of meaning here, Aubrey?
Yeah. So also related to technology.
there's a this noun it's a creative and often improvised solution to technical problems right so for example she came up with a clever hack when the system froze so sort of like a workaround will also use that noun a workaround or a hack yeah and that's also kind of similar to the question at the top of the show you had a clever hack for getting the skin off of garlic right yes exactly right yeah that's a hack so life hack or just a hack in general it's like a creative solution for something, a shortcut.
Exactly. Or as a verb, to come up with a hack.
So there's a bug with the software.
We need to hack together a quick fix.
And that's interesting to put hack with together, right?
Hack together. Yeah, it's interesting.
This is definitely more informal.
We'll say we need to hack this.
We need to hack together a fix.
We also use the phrase jerry -rig.
I don't know where that comes from.
That's very popular in Idaho.
We were putting up a volleyball net the other day and we didn't have the right you know clamps and things so we were just like trying to figure it out with the ropes and that's another way to be like we need to to hack together something yep nice and then there's still another one aubrey what is it as a noun this one my kids use with video games this is more for gaming it's a cheat or a modification so my son for example learned some hacks on mario kart and now he wins every time so they're and and they're not always even necessarily illegal.
There's just like certain combinations of buttons that are kind of a hack that give you some kind of advantage.
Oh, very cool. Very cool.
I think, yeah, successful people in life learn this for many, many ways in many aspects of life, right?
It's about success.
It's about taking a little extra time to study the game, whether it's the game of life, whatever it is, and take that extra step and be strategic.
Good point, right? It's not just video games.
There's lots of things where you're trying to find a hack just like a easier way to do something yeah for sure or you could say she hacked the video game to get unlimited lives now this is she cheated the game in a way right this is as a verb right so we can either the noun is the cheat or modification the verb is to do that right so to use some kind of modification or cheat yes i love it so that kind of wraps up this huge bucket of of, you know, hack meaning make something easier, be smarter, be quicker, be tougher, shortcuts, like succeeding with a secret that maybe other people don't know.
That is one bucket, right?
Exactly. So many different sort of ways to use it, but yeah, all kind of in that bucket.
And then the next one is all about cutting or chopping, right?
We also use hack for this verb.
He hacked at the tree with an axe.
And this definitely is not like precision slicing, like with a knife.
This is like you're hacking at something.
It's more like brute force.
Yeah, exactly. Not very precise.
Exactly. They hacked their way through the jungle with the machete.
You see on the movie sometimes someone taking a machete and just bushwhacking, right?
Exactly. Yeah. This machete is that broad, heavy knife that you'll see used to often just clear a path through like a jungle.
Yeah. What about cutting hair?
Oh, I don't know if I want the word hack anywhere around my hair because you know please no right you might say i asked for a trim but she hacked off several inches of my hair so this definitely means to cut but in sort of a rough manner or it might be used to emphasize how much was hacked off like how much was cut off so does that mean so if you said that would i think that you're happy with your haircut or not aubrey no i think this definitely has this negative connotation we use it to mean that a lot was removed and usually not in a way that is you know really professional and like a good not a precise
way not an art artistic way right it's the opposite of what we want um i always thought it would be a lot of pressure to be a hairdresser you know yeah every time i go to the hairdresser i think oh how is she feeling right now with the pressure i guess she just gets used to it right but i don't know but imagine if people aren't happy with their haircut that would be so stressful for me I couldn't do it it wouldn't be me it would because all you could do is wait for it to grow back I mean there's nothing or wear a wig but most people don't want to do that right right that's the thing there's no go
back there's no delete button there's no delete button I mean even a tattoo you can have a tattoo removed right so in a way tattoos are less risky than getting your hair cut oh my gosh it does grow out though have you ever had a bad haircut Lindsay yeah I definitely have I definitely have yes yeah mine I had one that was really short that was almost was kind of like a bowl cut.
Oh my gosh. When I was in like eighth grade.
I look at pictures now, I'm just like, oh no, so bad.
Oh geez. Yeah. Luckily hair does grow back.
All right. So that hack is cutting something with no precision, with just brute force, like you said.
Now there's a third use of hack.
This is interesting.
What is this? Yeah.
It's for a writer. This is a noun.
It's a person who produces either mediocre work, um especially in writing or journalism so you might say that writer is a hack all her ideas were taken from articles i've already read right so you're sort of accusing them of shoddy work of using other people's ideas often yeah or this can expand out to really any anyone that does something poorly this makes me laugh because i think about my dad used to play tennis and he was never that good at tennis my mom was better i was better we'd play as a family but he had a lot of self -berating language and he would always like he would double fault and then
he would he would talk to himself and i would hear him say you hack and then blah blah blah blah that's really funny he called himself a hack to like that he wasn't playing well yes exactly yeah it could be that too right it's interesting how we use it it definitely has this like very harsh sound to it yes so it kind of makes sense for like chopping it's a harsh way of chopping a harsh way of writing right very unpolished yeah just really if I think that I think the key term here is mediocre in my mind if we want to expand the term hack out for someone that does really anything in a mediocre way
I think we can say that that makes sense yeah and then we also use it to describe a cough like a loud hacking cough is not the like quiet little it's like a loud the whole everyone in the room can hear it.
For sure. This is what you don't want.
You know how when, at least for me, after I'm getting over a cold, sometimes I'll get the throat tickle, and it'll happen at times when it's just very inopportune moments.
Maybe you're giving a speech and you have a coughing attack.
That's kind of hacking, right?
Yeah. And the only way you can really get rid of the tickle is that loud hacking cough.
The little controlled coughs are not going to help.
Nope. Nope. Until your eyes are watering.
I think everyone knows what we're talking about here.
Absolutely. Yeah, you might say.
So as a verb is like I was hacking so badly in the meeting that I had to step out.
So it's a verb, but we also use it as a noun.
Yeah. Or like this.
He had a persistent hack that wouldn't go away for days.
So it's a cough, right?
Another way to say cough, meaning like a really loud, harsh cough.
Yeah. So good. Yeah.
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Okay, Aubrey, we are back for a role play.
clay. And you're right.
This is possibly the most diverse word in the English language.
So we're going to see how it comes out.
Yeah, we do. These are just the most common, there are quite a few more.
And then the one that we had covered in that previous episode to not be able to hack it, couldn't hack it, we use that a lot idiomatically.
So you'll have to, well, at the end of the episode we'll share that one so you can go back if you missed it.
So we haven't even seen all the meanings there are, that's incredible.
Okay. So So here we're camping so fun with friends and trying to split wood for a campfire.
That's interesting.
Yeah, I'll start us out.
Man, this log won't split.
I've been hacking at it for 10 minutes.
Oh, I saw a hack online, actually.
Supposedly, if you flip it upside down, it might be easier to split.
Oh, nice. Thanks. Speaking of hacks, I figured out how to hack Zombie Fortress to get unlimited ammo.
You still play that game?
Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. Wow, who is that hacking inside the tent?
Oh, I think it's Janet.
She's had a bad cough for several days.
Nice, yeah. We got a bunch of them here.
Yeah, I really like the way you transitioned and you said speaking of hacks and then you flipped it into a totally different meaning, right, different topic.
Really interesting.
Yeah, we do that a lot, right?
Especially words like this that have multiple meanings.
That's a great transition.
Speaking of hacks, and then it made me think of that, right?
Oh, I figured out how to hack this video game And maybe we both used to play it sounds like you don't anymore your little judgy Right exactly a little judgy there So you started off by saying you're there you've got your your I'm trying to split a log trying little log exactly Yeah, and you say I've been hacking at it for ten minutes I mean, I'm trying to split it for ten minutes Oh, yeah, like hitting it with the axe as hard as I can.
This is yeah, you know not precise cutting Yes.
And then what did I say?
Yeah, you're saying I saw a hack online about this.
If you flip the log, that might be easier.
So this is like that life hack, that shortcut.
Yep. Yep, exactly. And then you said, oh, nice, thanks.
And then you had that brilliant transition.
Speaking of hacks, I figured out how to hack, meaning how to hack zombie fortress to get unlimited ammo.
So you're able to kind of cheat the game a little bit, right?
Right? Yeah. And this is interesting when we're talking about hacking wood, right?
And then you saw a hack online.
Oh, speaking of hacks and I'm talking about a totally different hack, but this is clever.
If you're able to do this, find a word that has multiple meanings, and transition to something else, like that's impressive.
I love when people do that.
Yeah. That's like playing games with the language.
We love it. And it builds connection, right?
Love it. And then our last one was, oh, who's that hacking inside the tent?
someone's got a bad cough and we can hear them coughing loudly.
So we could call that hacking.
Who's hacking inside the tent?
For sure. I remember during COVID times, there were always lots of comments when someone was coughing loudly, right?
In public, there were always judgy comments for sure.
Those days are over.
Thank goodness. But at least now we're not quite so worried about their cough getting us sick, right?
Yeah, it's true. It's true.
Anything else we need to know today, Aubrey?
Yeah. So this is interesting because because as we were thinking about this planning, like, wow, hack has so many meanings.
That might be the most, you know, it might have the most meanings of any word in English.
So I looked it up. I tried to find out.
And the word set has 430 different senses.
No way. As a verb, noun, and adjective.
It holds the record in English for the word with the highest number of distinct meanings in English.
Crazy. 430, Lindsay.
Aubrey, we need to do an episode on maybe 10 of them or or maybe, right.
Guys hit the follow button to make sure you don't miss that episode.
We now have to do an episode on that.
I'll bring, we have to, right.
And if you missed where we talked about, couldn't hack it, that was episode 2432.
You can just scroll up.
Don't get washed out by phrasal verbs.
And that came up. Someone couldn't hack it.
Love it. And guys, yes, that's it.
Check out that episode.
Don't forget to go check that one out.
And a takeaway today, Aubrey, where should we leave our listeners?
Yeah, there are so many words in English that have multiple meanings like this.
They're used as a verb and a noun, maybe also as an adjective.
This can be really confusing.
So, definitely pay attention to context clues to know which meaning is being used.
Today's tips will help you know about all of the different meanings of hack.
But it always comes down to, right, don't let something like this stress you out.
Yes, words in English have lots of meanings.
That shouldn't keep you from starting the conversation, from connecting in English.
Yeah, it always comes back to human connection.
Connection, not perfection.
Don't let anything get in the way of that.
But here we are trying to level up our English, right?
And there are ways we can do it and get inspired by when you see this really smart transition.
Speaking of hacks, using a double meaning of a word and flipping into the other meaning.
You can start by observing native speakers doing that and then starting to do it yourself.
So clever. I'm excited to see our students doing that in Open Conversation YouTube and all of you guys try it.
So fun. All right. Sounds good, Aubrey.
See you next time. Have a good day.
Awesome. Have a good day.
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