This is the All Ears English Podcast, nasty versus mean in English.
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Did you ever wonder what is the difference between the words mean and nasty?
Today, we answer a listener question to show you which one is more versatile and how to deploy each word in conversations.
Hey there, Michelle, what's shaking?
Hey Lindsay, not too much, how are you?
I'm good, do you have a question for me today?
I am excited for this question.
Yes, I'm excited for this episode.
So the question is, do you know anyone who is mean?
Mean, oh my gosh, I hope not.
Jeez, I have known people.
I remember when I was in second grade, there was a teacher that had a reputation for being really mean.
And her name, ironically, her name was Mrs.
Dragon. Mrs. Dragon, what a cool name.
I thought it was pretty cool, but everyone was like, oh, she's a dragon.
And I just remember her being kind of mean.
Yeah, so my second grade teacher.
Yeah, oh wow, for second grade, gosh, I'm a mean teacher in second grade.
That sounds like that person was in the wrong job.
Right, totally. Do you know anyone who's mean?
It's funny that you said second grade because I was just thinking about that this word is a little bit juvenile.
And when you hear it, you do think of people who are from your childhood.
Maybe that we're mean.
Like I knew some. Totally.
I definitely knew some mean kids growing up.
It is a little juvenile.
I'm glad you brought that up.
It's much more rare to hear an adult say that about someone or say it to someone like you're mean.
No, that's really something a kid is likely to say to another kid.
Maybe a parent to a kid.
So I'm excited to get into this today for a.
Right. I am too. And we're talking about this because this was actually a listener question about this word and another word with a similar idea.
So we're going to get to that in just a second.
But guys, if you haven't listened already, we did episode 2257 was let's bury the hatchet, how to end an argument in English because maybe when you're arguing, somebody throws out that we're mean.
For sure. For sure.
So guys, go and check out that episode and all of our past episodes.
We publish five days a week now in all there's English, so you got to hit that follow button to make sure you get all the episodes, including the Saturday ones.
Today's episode is a Sassy Saturday.
We love it. Sassy. Yes.
So maybe we're going to be a little mean today.
No, I doubt it. I doubt it.
I doubt it. I doubt it.
I doubt it. OK, so this is.
Yeah. I am very excited for this question.
What do you think? I am because it came from YouTube.
We love that. And it's a question from at niche.
Cabarazzi, I'm having a hard time pronouncing that name, but I'm going to read the question.
We love this listener.
The listener says, girls, I'm in love with you.
Oh, we're in love with you too.
Compliment. Wow. Thanks for what you're doing.
After a boring day, I take a walk every evening, always listening to your podcast.
We love that. Thank you to this listener.
Thank you so much. It's for you guys that we do this show.
It's the reason why we exist.
You guys are the reason they said, could you explain the words nasty and mean?
I heard them in a different context and I was a little confused.
Thank you so much. Great question.
Yeah, this is fun. This is going to be a fun one to talk about.
And I love how this listener listens to it, told us about when I'm sorry, I don't know if it's a man or a woman.
When I listen to us on this on this walk in the evening.
I love that. I just love that.
And maybe guys, because this is the Saturday episode, we wonder maybe you guys are walking with us now.
Maybe you're on your way to brunch or maybe you're meeting a friend outside for a pick in the park.
Whatever it is, we just hope you're having a really great weekend so far.
I love that. I love that for sure.
Let us know what you're doing in your review of the show.
Let us know what you do when you listen to the podcast.
You walk your dog, ride the subway.
What is it that you're doing while you're listening to us?
So I'm excited for this question because I love when we get into nuances, Michelle.
Nuances. Yeah, that can be a little bit tricky, but it's so worth it to go into it.
So nasty and mean. So these are very similar.
But to me, when I think about it, I think of mean is just generally the opposite of nice.
So maybe it's a little selfish or maybe a little conniving or maybe someone just said something mean.
Right. conniving. That is a winning word, bonus word for today.
That's conniving. What does that mean?
I mean, it's kind of like this evil you're planning something a little bit.
Yeah, that's for sure, for sure.
Yeah. You might hear someone say something like, don't be mean, I didn't do anything to you.
Yes, exactly. Or she was mean to me.
Your kid might come home and say that about her friend.
Very good. That's why you could see these themes feel a little juvenile.
Right. The stuff that kids kind of deal with.
There are mean adults out there too, for sure.
But right. Oh, there definitely are.
I think adults tend to get wrapped up in different things, right?
If someone's mean to them, they might use different words to describe that person, or they might just not be as bothered.
Maybe curse words. Curse words, or they might be more specific in how they describe the person, or they might just not worry about it because they've developed a sense of, well, that's their problem, right?
If they're mean. Yeah, right.
I think now I don't, yeah, meanness.
I don't know. I don't let that stuff bother me as much as when I was a kid.
You know, I think it kind of like shrug it off if someone has if someone is like that.
Were you a sensitive kid, Michelle?
I would imagine maybe.
Yes, I was. What about you?
I was really sensitive, and there were mean kids sometimes, and I remember I would.
I remember sometimes crying like if they were mean to me, right?
Like you say, yeah, it's sensitive.
So this is where this comes up.
And here's another phrase.
She can be mean, but deep down, she's a nice person.
Now, go ahead. Go ahead.
I don't know. Right now, for some reason, in my head, Meryl Streep and Devil Wears Prada is popping up.
And I'm thinking of a mean adult.
That might be one of my favorite movies.
Yeah. Yeah, so I could imagine somebody using that word about her, right?
So it's not that it can't be used as about adults.
But an adult using about adult is a little different.
Whereas like Lindsay about your teacher, you'd say that teacher is mean.
Again, just this juvenile side.
And I think it's just that adults by that time have a broader range of vocabulary choices.
Like I would say Meryl Streep in that position would be manipulative or conniving.
Lots of other words you have choices.
Kids don't really have that many choices and they may not think about those nuances quite yet.
So that's really interesting.
And I do want to say one other thing.
Sometimes we use the word mean to express something that's great.
Like I make a mean pasta sauce, right?
And I think Abery and I did another episode on that.
Maybe you and I did.
I think it maybe was me, actually.
I don't know. I'd have to take a look, but you're right.
I make. Yes. Oh, yeah.
So don't discount that.
Don't forget about that.
There's also that meaning, which is totally different from what we're talking about today, guys.
Okay. Exactly. Exactly.
So all right. I'm glad you brought that up.
So now let's talk about nasty.
Okay. So that to me is a little bit more extreme sounding.
I'm sure we're both thinking of the same cultural context that happened.
In the election. No, I think about just politics right now in general.
Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, about about something that someone said.
Oh, I don't know specifically a nasty woman.
Oh, I actually don't remember that.
But yeah, there's there's been a lot of quotes that certain politicians.
I mean, it feels like every day there's a really awful.
There are some real awful quotes coming out from certain politicians.
I won't name names today, but yeah, it's a hard.
It's gonna it's gonna get worse.
Michelle, it's going to be very intense this fall.
I know. So we're here for it.
We're in board what will weather the storm.
Yeah. So nasty is more extreme and it's also a little more versatile the way it could be used.
So we'll show our listeners about that.
Yeah, right. So this could refer to things, not just people.
So, for example, something dirty could be nasty.
You could say this person is nasty.
Let's clean it out.
Maybe I'm describing my own purse right now.
Oh, for sure. I mean, the trash needs to be taken out.
It smells nasty. Walk downstairs.
Someone has been cooking fish and hasn't been taken out.
Right. It smells nasty.
Take out that trash.
Right. Yeah. Yes. Or, you know, something disturbing or unpleasant can be nasty.
So you can even describe the weather as nasty.
So you could say, bring an umbrella.
It's nasty out there.
Oh, for sure. For sure.
That is a really common use, actually, to describe the weather.
Nasty out there. Yeah.
And here's another example about the trash.
Of course, you had a trash example.
When we walked in, there was a nasty smell.
Then we found that there was moldy fruit in the trash.
This sometimes happens.
We're in the fridge.
There's a funky smell coming from your fridge.
And then you figure out.
The worst. And then you grab the moldy peach.
And then you look at it.
He's like, nasty. You have to throw this out.
That is nasty. That's how we use this word.
That's the worst. Do you ever have it where you're walking by your sink or you're walking by something and you catch a whiff of a smell.
But you're thinking, did I have...
Where is that coming from?
And you can't quite find it.
What happened to me in Cambridge last week when I was there visiting I guess Cambridge is just a little more urban than Denver.
And it was extremely humid last week on the East Coast or two weeks ago.
And it was trash morning.
It was 8 a .m. We went to move our car.
I hopped out onto the sidewalk and I was overwhelmed by a really nasty smell.
The trash on the side of the road overwhelmed.
Yeah, the trash didn't come by.
So anyways, this is very versatile.
I would say this word.
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Okay, Michelle, what else do we need to know?
Okay, well, so I was going to bring up the political situation, but there was a situation where, I mean, I can say it.
I'm not going to, you know, Trump called Hillary Clinton a nasty woman.
I forgot about that.
He ended up taking that and putting a positive spin on it because like there were shirts that said nasty woman because nasty can also have this sense of, huh, I can't curse on the air.
But yeah, you know, someone's a bad something.
Yeah, like you are in charge, right?
You're in charge. You're boss like you know, so they took that word and they put it in kind of a positive light to like that.
You're cool. You're nasty.
Right. Sure. But that makes sense.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
This one is a little more interesting than mean.
I would say because it has more edges.
It can be used repurposed in different ways.
Right. Right. Right.
Exactly. So let's just break it down one more time.
I mean, again, mean is generally a more, I mean, nasty is a little juvenile sounding too.
A little bit. But mean is generally more about a person or something someone says like, that's mean or she's mean.
Whereas nasty is a little bit more extreme, but it can describe more things like when they said it's more versatile, a setting, something dirty.
Like it wouldn't make sense to say, bring an umbrella.
It's mean out there or your purse is mean.
Right. It's in that sense.
Right. It's just different.
I mean, mean does have lots of meanings though.
I mean, what do you mean?
That's not what I mean.
Yes. Or the mean is an average, the mean number.
So there's lots of different uses of it.
But in terms of this, I think what the listener was getting to this meeting, we've really discussed today.
Another day we can go into the mean, the average, the medium, the mean, the mode, all those things.
Oh my god. Math equations.
You know, all those good things we learned in school and but today.
Oh my gosh, completely forgot about that one.
But today is just about mean versus nasty character traits or setting scenarios.
Yeah. Trash cans, things like that.
Michelle, this is really fun.
But you know, there is actually an even better place to consume this podcast.
Because there's a place to actually consume it where it's ad free.
And we haven't talked about this too much.
We do sometimes have ads commercials on this show.
But the place you can go to hear just the show without any outside voices, outside commercials is where Michelle, where is it?
Is the app. The All Ads English app.
So we have this for iOS and Android.
There's tons of great things about this app.
You can get real time transcripts and you can listen to the app episodes at any speed, right?
So you want to slow it down.
You want to speed it up, whatever you want to do.
You can do it there.
And more granular speeds.
We just updated the app this year.
Because you guys were asking us for you wanted to listen at one.
Let's say point eight.
Point nine. You can actually do that on one point one.
One point two. You can't do that as far as I know on Spotify or Apple, but you can do it over on the app.
We've also added a new premium bonus feed, which recaps all of the vocabulary words for the week.
Michelle, I think our listeners just need to go over and check it out.
You can try it for a seven day trial for free, guys.
Go over to all your zinglish .com slash app.
All right. Okay. Love it.
All right. Let's do our role play.
All right. Here we go.
We are friends at a restaurant.
Okay. Okay. Can we talk about the plan for the summer for a second?
Michelle, I'm not in the mood.
Don't be mean about it.
Well, I'm sorry. I'm just tired.
I didn't mean it. It's okay.
Oh, ew. There's a bug in my food.
Oh, yuck. That's nasty.
Let's call the waitress over.
She's even pretty nasty with other customers.
Don't be scared. This is gross.
Okay. Yeah, very good.
Very good. So we found a bug in the food.
Ooh, yes. So first I said, Oh, Michelle, I'm not in the mood to talk about the summer plan or the plan for the summer.
Right. And you said, Okay, don't be mean about it.
Maybe I snapped at you.
Right. Right. But I was just a little tired.
Right. Right. Yeah.
So then you said I'm just tired.
I did. Sorry. I'm having trouble talking with my getting over a cold.
Sorry. I didn't mean it.
And yeah, of course, that's a different meaning of me.
And what you're saying there is I didn't intend.
Right. I didn't intend to that was something.
Yeah. And then you said, Ooh, there's a bug in my food.
And I said, Oh, yuck.
That is nasty. Now this is referring to the example I said about the trash on the sidewalk in Cambridge or the fish in the garbage.
Right. This is that scenario.
Okay. We all know. Yes.
Yes. And then I said I got a I was a little scared of the waitress because I said she seemed pretty nasty with other customers.
Now I could have said mean too there.
So that would have been a time where either one would be okay.
Yeah. I think as we I think we did a good job kind of describing there that yeah, we've driven that point home that mean is a little more juvenile.
Nasty might be a little more adult like or something or more interesting to use have more uses.
Yeah. Yep. Yep. Okay, Michelle, where should we leave our listeners?
This has been kind of an interesting episode today.
Yeah, this was fun.
This is a fun question about the nuances, like Lindsay said, we love talking about these nuances on the show.
And so we really went over some specific ways to know the difference today.
And I think the moral of the story is we know we don't have any mean listeners.
And then we just know that these are two really good vocabulary words to try or to listen for.
Yeah. And I also want you to know guys, this is how we get to 99 % fluency c2 level, which we're all working towards is actually asking these questions.
What is the difference between this word and that word?
And then paying attention and then starting to experiment, plug them in in different places in your conversations.
That's how we reach that fluency level.
It's time to really differentiate and expand our vocab.
Yeah, yep, love it.
Love it. Great question.
Thank you so much. And yeah, guys, have a great day.
All right. Have a good one.
Michelle talked to you soon.
Bye. Thanks for listening to all ears English.
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