This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 149.
Are you a workaholic? How to spice up your English vocabulary.
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Hey, Aubrey, what's going on? How you doing?
I have a question for you. I think I know the answer, but maybe I'm wrong.
Are you a workaholic, Lindsay? Oh, I probably would have to say yes.
I pretty much am. I pretty much lean in that direction.
Thank goodness for my family. They pull me away on the weekend, do not let me work.
But I work a lot. I work a lot. Yeah, it's a good thing you're not like on Wall Street.
I feel like it would be 24 hours. You'd never get away.
Yeah. Yes, it would be really tough. What about you, Aubrey?
It doesn't seem like it, but you work hard.
I would say you definitely work hard. I wish I could say no, but I absolutely am.
Right. If I often will prioritize work tasks above like family things or my children's needs.
So I can't help it if I really am honest with myself.
I am a workaholic. Right. Got it. I really value my my role in the company here at Allers English.
Right. I love what I do. I love my students.
It it's tricky for a mom, I feel like, to get enough validation and value from her kids and her family.
So often you seek that at work and a personality like mine can't help but be sort of a workaholic in all aspects of her life.
Yeah. Well, you know, it's okay. It's okay.
We can do things like, you know, we can have our family pull us away a little bit, which is good, you know, balance us out.
But I think it's also, it's good. There's a good side to it too, right?
It's like, you want to do a good job. You want to take pride in your work.
We just have to sometimes rein ourselves in.
That's a good bonus phrase for our listeners today and just tone it down.
Yeah. Exactly. Right. To limit ourselves, to be thoughtful and smart, to prioritize because it's true.
It's better than quiet quitting or being super lazy.
Right. Yeah. We're valued employees. We're valued team members, but it can be dangerous.
Workaholics are more likely to burn themselves out, are more likely to, you know, I don't know, start having anxiety because they want to do the best job possible and maybe they don't have time.
So This is a fascinating thing to think about.
We are definitely going to have in Spotify the poll question, are you a workaholic?
Because I want to know about you guys, our listeners.
Would you consider yourself a workaholic?
Those who listen to this Business English podcast, I want to know.
Yeah, we want to know. Are you a workaholic?
So guys go and check out that poll as soon as you can, right?
Put in your vote, you know, yes or no. Are you a workaholic?
We want to know it. And have we done another episode very recently on All Ears English?
Similar to today's episode, but different.
Absolutely. But I also want to share this poll.
We're going to check the results and we're going to share it here on the Business English Podcast in an upcoming episode.
So definitely share and then we will report the results so that you know, like, hmm, Business English Podcast listeners, are they workaholics like me?
What's the breakdown? What's the percentage?
So let us know so we can get a pretty accurate number there.
That's a good point, Aubrey. We want to know you guys as an audience, right?
Who are we as an audience? Are we hard work?
Are we workaholics? Are we not? What are you guys like?
And we want to know you. And this is a cool way we can try to get to know you guys through these polls.
So definitely go to Spotify, answer the poll.
But yes, you're right. We had a recent episode about portmanteaus on All Ears English.
It was episode 2057, how to stay current with popular portmanteaus.
So if you did not hear that one, be sure to follow All Ears English so that you're not missing any of the amazing episodes over there.
Yeah. Well, first of all, what the heck is a portmanteau?
It's a weird word. It sounds like a French word.
And I just said it in a very American way, which probably sounded awful to you.
It is. It's true. Portmanteau, it means like a valise, like a big suitcase.
Right. And it's the two words carry, porter, and manteau is a coat.
So something to carry coats in, like a big suitcase.
Okay. Yeah. So we call that like a dress bag more often we'll use to put a coat or a dress like hanging and then it folds in half, right?
How did that word come to represent two words coming together?
Who knows? It's so interesting. Is that the first word that was ever two words squished together?
I doubt it. I don't know why we pulled that one from French into English, but it is interesting.
And we use it all the time with our, we just use an English accent and say portmanteau.
The French are probably horrified. I'm sure they are, yeah.
But we use it often in business English as well.
There are so many portmanteaus that you will hear at work that you want to be able to use in business English.
And we also did another episode, Aubrey, on All Ears English 1546 called Staycation Mocktail, How to Combine Two English Words.
So go check that one out as well. And while you're at it, over on All Ears English, hit follow on that show as well as Business English.
Hit that follow button, guys, so that we can drop right into your listening queue.
It doesn't take any work to go and find us.
We will come to you. Yes. I was so happy on my road trip.
I didn't have service for a lot of the time.
So I was really glad there are quite a few podcasts I follow because they automatically drop into my queue.
We're downloaded because I'm not one who thinks ahead.
It's like, I need to download what I want to listen to.
So I was really happy. I had some already in my queue.
So you got to follow guys. I love it. All right.
So what are the portmanteaus? Today we have four.
We have four of them for a listen, four or five.
Yeah. We're sharing four that we use very often in English, starting with the one we were talking about at the This is work combined with alcoholic.
We've talked about this in recent episodes, or maybe it was on IELTS Energy, how we'll often add a holic to lots of things, right?
There's a store that sells cinnamon rolls near me called Cineholic, where they've taken cinnamon and alcoholic.
It just sort of means you're obsessed with something.
So really, this means you're obsessed with work.
What comes to mind is chocoholic, right?
Chocolate-aholic, which I would say I definitely am.
I love chocolate. Are there any others you can think of, Aubrey, that just off the top of your head?
That we use all the time? Good question.
I feel like we use it a lot. Sleepaholic, snappaholic.
I feel like we just add it to lots of things, right?
Sure, a lot of things. But chocoholic is for sure the most common.
Yeah. So here's a sample sentence, guys.
Write this one down for workaholic. Mary is such a workaholic.
We need to get her to take a vacation or even just a staycation.
Another portmanteau. Yes, we taught that in one of the other episodes, right?
Staycation to take a vacation and stay for a vacation where you're actually staying in your town.
Yeah. Have you ever tried doing that? I hate staycations.
Do they work for you? Yeah, I'm curious.
I've never tried it. I need to get further away.
Yeah. I've done it once or twice and it was not fun for me.
I'm like, if I'm going to pay for a hotel, I want to be somewhere not in my town.
Right. Because in my mind, while being a workaholic for me, if I did that, I would be like, I'll just check my email really quick.
I'll just check our stats on this. And then all of a sudden I'm in, I'm deep in there.
I'm in the email. And then you can't quite get out.
Well, I know this is true about you too, that when you travel, you want to get out and see the place and meet the people.
And if you're just doing a staycation and the whole goal is to be away from your house, you're already in the place where you can do that all the time.
So you don't have that element of a trip.
So I'm a hard pass on staycations. And just a simple experience of being in a place, breathing new air, like just eating new food, hearing new languages.
I agree. That's what I want if I'm paying for a hotel.
Yeah, I agree. Okay. We're on the same page with that.
So what's the next one? So this one is guesstimate.
I use this all the time at work. It's just the words guess and estimate together.
So I might say this is just a guesstimate, but I think we'll improve sales by 20, 25 percent this quarter.
Nice. Fantastic. We could just say this is just a guess or this is just an estimate, but it's just kind of a more fun native way to combine the two and be just a little bit more informal.
It's a little bit more jokey, but you can use it obviously in business English because we're teaching it to you here.
Here's another example. Can you give me your annual projections?
Just a guesstimate is fine. I love that.
And by the way, this is useful in business, right?
Because when you're starting a project or you're projecting out a new idea, you don't want to take the time to do in-depth estimates right away.
It's just an idea. Exactly. Yeah. That's why I think we've created this portmanteau is because even if you said just an estimate is fine, I feel like that person would still feel like they need to crunch some numbers and get a pretty close estimate.
But if you say guesstimate, that's like, give me the number off the top of your head.
What would you guess is the estimate? Yeah, it's like a ballpark figure, right?
We talked about that when we talk about American baseball combined with American business English ballpark figure, very broad.
So we don't waste time. Exactly. You just have to be in the ballpark, meaning doesn't have to be that close.
We need a very quick ballpark estimate. You got it.
For this next one, I have to say I use this a lot.
I love this. Okay. So this is Mansplain, which is a mixture of man and explain.
And just right off the top, I want to say this really isn't that gendered.
I will definitely talk about a female mansplaining something to me.
Unfortunately, this men have gotten the, you know, the short end of the stick on this, where it has happened a lot where what this means is, a person will explain something that they don't need to, right?
It's something that whoever's listening already knows, or they're explaining in too much detail.
And we call this mansplaining. Because in the past, at least men have had a tendency to do this to women.
But more and more, I feel like gender is taken out of it.
I find myself mansplaining sometimes. Yeah, my children, I'll be explaining how to empty the dishwasher or something.
And my kids are like, stop mansplaining that to me, mom.
Oh, that's hilarious. Your kids are even using it.
Oh, I do this for sure, too. And, you know, we love our male listeners, guys.
Don't worry. You know, we're going to take the gender out of this a little bit.
I will say I get subjected to this when I go to podcast conferences with people.
Let's just say people that are just starting their show, making sure I know all about podcasting.
Right. Right. And you have to be careful not to do that to others, right?
Because you don't know how much they know what's the learning curve, right?
So it's just an issue of being careful to not assume someone doesn't know.
Ask questions instead. Find out what they know instead of just explaining something they might already know about.
And that just makes you more interesting when you ask questions, right?
Ask good questions, be smart enough to ask good questions, and then have the empathy to respond with the information the person needs.
So let's give a couple examples. We might say, Janet is always mansplaining things that she reads in the news, right?
Or it could be Jared is always mansplaining.
It doesn't matter the gender of the person.
It's what you're doing. If you're explaining to someone something that they already know.
Yeah. And then I don't want to mansplain.
So please let me know if there's anything that's not clear.
So yeah, so this is an interesting approach, right?
When you're having a meeting, for example, you could take that approach from the beginning, just say the information instead of giving all the details.
Yeah. And this is interesting because if I were in a meeting, instead of saying mansplaining, because there is a little bit of an element to this is still gendered.
It's still a little offensive. I probably would just say, I don't want to make assumptions.
So please let me know if there's anything that's not clear.
I'm more likely to use mansplain among like very close friends.
Oh, yeah. That's a really important point, Aubrey.
I would not use this in a work meeting with my colleagues.
Right. Exactly. Yeah, it is. There is. Even though we're saying we're taking the gender out of it, we know anyone could do this.
It still has the word man in it. There is enough gender that it could it could be offensive.
Yeah. So I have heard people use it at work and I have thought like, oh, should we be saying it that way?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. I wouldn't do that.
I think this is used more often with people telling their friends about what happened maybe at work.
Absolutely. Describing something that happened to them where this happened.
So good. Do we have one more, Aubrey? Yeah, this last one is infomercial, which is information plus commercial.
You guys might write or plan or direct or record infomercials at work.
They're very effective advertisements. And now you know it's also a portmanteau.
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Exclusions apply. See details online. Yeah, infomercials are kind of famous for like what comes on late at night, right?
3am if you wake up and the TV's on, there are these infomercials on TV all the time, right?
I was in an infomercial once for a shark vacuum.
We had my friend knew the like a person who was casting for their infomercials.
And it was basically like you can get this free vacuum if you're in the infomercial.
So they filmed us vacuuming and I said everything like, oh, this vacuum is amazing, whatever.
And then I had a few people like texting me like, I just saw you in an infomercial at 2am on TV.
Oh, you find out who watches TV in the middle of the night, right?
Exactly. So funny. Do we have any samples here, Aubrey?
Yeah. So you might say we're planning an infomercial for our new product.
You might be on a team where you're having every infomercial, like there's a lot that goes into.
So that would be a very big project and you might someday or you'd currently make these at work. yeah and here's another one this infomercial was particularly effective causing sales to skyrocket dramatically nice yeah so you might be describing marketing or some kind of ad and talking about how effective it was yeah i feel like usually infomercials are direct response campaigns where they're literally just taking calls and they're taking sales over the phone for stuff it's not brand awareness because you don't have the mass market awake watching TV.
You know what I mean? So you have to be able to measure it in a way, I guess.
It's interesting though, because where infomercial really is just information and commercial, if we really think about it, typically we do describe infomercials as those longer ads in the middle of the night where it's like call now and order.
But really every ad on social media is an infomercial.
If it's like a TikToker describing a product and sharing information in a commercial, really that's an infomercial.
Yeah. And the line between now we have the new term content marketing, right?
And so the line between content marketing, infomercial, it's starting to blend with the internet.
Things have changed a lot, Aubrey, with the internet, right?
Of course. Exactly. Right. The way advertisements are made, the way people are marketed to is definitely evolving.
Absolutely. 100%. I love it. All right, Aubrey, quick role play, and then we will get off the microphone for today.
All right, perfect. In this role play, we're co-workers discussing our plans for tonight.
You want to start us out? Yes, perfect. Here we go.
All right. This is just a guesstimate, but I think I'll be done working around nine.
What? You are a workaholic. You're going to miss that dinner with our clients.
I'm kind of glad, actually. Martin is always mansplaining how to use the cutlery.
That did happen last time. It was more painful than watching an infomercial.
I kind of love this because it's true. Infomercials are very long.
And if you're not really interested in the product, they're super boring.
So this is actually just kind of a funny way to be funny, to compare something to an infomercial.
I love it. More painful than watching infomercials.
Yep. All right, Aubrey. So yes, let's go through the role play real quick.
Yeah. So you first said this is just a guesstimate, meaning I'm just guessing, I'm just estimating that I'll be done around night.
Yes, exactly. And then you said you're a workaholic.
Yep. I'm like, why are you working till nine?
You're obsessed with work. You should be quitting at five.
I'm calling you a workaholic. I'm clearly doing it sort of playfully.
I'm also saying like, we have this meeting with clients you need to be there for.
Yeah, perfect. And then what did I say? Yeah.
And this is interesting because it's clear that you're working late to avoid the meeting with clients.
One of them is always mansplaining how to use the cutlery.
This is like the silverware, the knives and forks.
Imagine you're at a fancy restaurant and someone is explaining to you how to use them.
And if you already know... That's a good example of mansplaining.
That's a great example. It's usually, not always, but common knowledge kind of that someone assumes you don't know or it's not necessarily.
It could be more technical or in-depth knowledge, but they're just assuming you don't know it.
Then that did happen last time, the cutlery explanation.
It was more painful than watching an infomercial.
Right. This is that funny way of comparing an infomercial to something really boring and painful.
More painful than watching an infomercial.
I love it. I love that we've been talking about portmanteaus the last couple of weeks on both shows.
Aubrey, where should we leave our listeners?
Yeah, portmanteaus are extremely common in English, guys.
You want to be able to use them at work.
You want to understand what your co-workers mean when they use them.
So today's tips will help you to be able to do this, right?
To build those connections and to be confident in using very native vocabulary.
And also to understand when you hear them, you know, we've, we've said, we, I want to remind our listeners for the term mansplain, don't use it at work, right?
It could be unprofessional, but you can use it to talk about work.
Okay. Absolutely. With close friends, right?
You can describe that person who mansplained something.
Just don't say it to their face. Exactly.
I love it. So good. Well, Aubrey, thanks for hanging out on the show and guys remember hit follow on this podcast.
Let it drop right into your feed. We can come to you three days a week.
Awesome. We'll see you next time, Lindsay.
All right, Aubrey. Take care. I'll talk to you soon.
Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
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