This is the Business English Podcast, episode 349, Amazing Alliteration.
Commit these sticky phrases to memory.
Welcome to the Business English Podcast from All Ears English.
Get the English skills you need to achieve your dreams in global business.
For a presentation, a meeting, or your office party, this is Real Business English with your favorite American hosts, Lindsay and Aubrey, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.
Treading water is an English idiom that means that you are working at something but getting nowhere.
Are you treading water with your English?
Get your personalized English fluency level with our free 8 -question quiz.
Find out why you're stuck and how you can stop treading water.
Take our free English level quiz at allearsenglish .com slash fluencyscore.
That's allearsenglish .com slash fluencyscore.
Hello, Aubrey. How are you today?
I'm great, Lindsay.
How are you? Good. Glad to be back on Business English.
So do you know anyone, Aubrey, who has an alliteration in their name?
I do feel like I know a lot of people.
I'm mostly thinking of actors right now.
Lindsay Lohan. Yes.
But yeah, a lot of people have a alliteration in their name.
What about you? Yeah, I do know a few people.
And actually, I know someone who used to work in radio who used to have a double alliteration in her name, but she changed her name.
So it was funny. Yeah, the maiden name, right?
But yeah, it's cool.
On the radio, it tends to work, right?
It's like the DJ, you know, the person people know.
Yeah, because it just it's like there's something about alliteration that it's just like our brains love it.
Right. So whether it's we're going to teach three really fun phrases that we use in Business English today that have alliteration, or if it's about brands name, there's a reason that a lot of the brands, you know, have alliteration.
Oh, for sure. So first of all, we should probably clarify what is alliteration.
Yeah. So this is when a consonant sound is repeated.
So or a vowel sound, though, usually sometimes there's a different word for that.
But so amazing alliteration, you could consider alliteration, right?
We have the same sound at the beginning there.
And then, you know, that name, Lindsay Lohan, that double L.
So just repeating that same sound at the beginning of a word is alliteration.
Yes, I love it. All right.
What else? Where did today's idea come from?
Well, this came up in a recent episode when we were talking about alliteration and wondering, you know, are people more successful?
We feel like we've heard some studies.
We've seen some results of, you know, people, if they use their middle name, you saw something, or if they have alliteration in their name, sometimes their names are more memorable for people if there is alliteration.
I think so. I think so.
It does. You're right.
There's something that just rolls off the tongue, something very palatable for the human brain to hear that alliteration.
Yes. I listened to a podcast on Freakonomics.
How much does your name matter?
And this was in 2013, but they talk a lot about everything that can be assumed by someone's name, whether it helps you get a job, whether, and then alliteration is one of the things that it makes someone's name more sticky, which is a word that's interesting, that's used, that means memorable.
And we use this in marketing as well to say something sticky.
It sticks in your brain.
Wow. So I guess that could be your argument, right?
You might do better.
Let's say if you submit your resume among a hundred other applicants and you have that alliteration, maybe they'll remember you.
Sometimes job applications can be a little bit, there's some arbitrary element to it.
There's a magical element to things, right?
When it comes to applying for a job, the recency effect of the last person that interviewed or the first person that interviewed, these are real things.
It's true, right? If everyone has about the same qualifications, it might be recency, it might be if your name is more memorable.
Yeah. Yeah. I look at my brain sometimes, just something I've done more recently, I'm more likely to be biased towards it.
You know what I mean?
Absolutely. Yes. Sure.
And then it's interesting to think about brand recognition, right?
If you work in branding, in marketing, you have thought about this, you're aware of this.
You know, for businesses, unique and memorable names can build that brand awareness.
So for example, PayPal, TikTok, they're intentionally using alliteration to be more catchy and memorable.
Interesting. Coca -Cola.
Uh -huh. There's a lot of other ones.
I like the older ones.
Yeah. Interesting. Okay.
So what else do we need to know then here?
Yeah. Well, we also use alliteration in many English phrases, including phrases that we often use at work.
So we're going to share three today with some examples of how they might come up at work.
The first one is cookie cutter.
This is fun. The alliteration of the K at the beginning of these words.
Right. Sounds the same.
The cookie cutter. Nice.
So here's a sample sentence.
These logos are all really cookie cutter.
Let's come up with something unique.
And usually cookie cutter is not actually not a good thing, right?
It has a negative connotation of a lack of originality, a lack of anything distinct.
Right. So it kind of means too similar.
You'll often say it if something's too, you know, oh, these logos are cookie cutters.
Let's do something outside of the box.
For sure. What else, Aubrey?
What's another sentence?
Yeah. You might say let's add branding to personalize these slides.
They're all a bit too cookie cutter.
Yeah. So you can see like, oh, we want to personalize this for a company.
We want to make it more memorable.
Just like alliteration makes something more memorable.
If something's too cookie cutter, everything's getting lost.
Everything's kind of getting boring.
Yeah. We use this a lot to talk about homes.
Right. So in certain neighborhoods, houses look all the same in the neighborhood that I grew up in, New Hampshire grew up in.
I feel like there was one developer that developed the entire neighborhood.
It wasn't really suburban.
It was more rural suburban.
So it wasn't very super cookie cutter, but there were like five or six models of home that you could choose and there were no other options.
Totally. It was a little cookie cutter.
And it's even more extreme in some neighborhoods, or it seems like it's the exact same model.
Right. And we'll call them cookie cutter homes because they all look exactly the same.
Yeah, for sure. The HOA enforces the type of color paint you can have on your house or the developer just gives you one choice.
And that's it because they want economies of scale and they're purchasing.
Right. Yes. Yeah. We just watched Edward Scissorhands with our kids.
Oh my God. I love that movie.
It's such a great movie.
If you guys haven't seen it, you need to go watch it.
But they have the neighborhood where they live is the most cookie cutter neighborhood you've ever seen.
Timberton did it on purpose.
Right. Every home looks exactly the same.
Oh my God. Johnny Depp is a really young actor.
Oh my gosh. I'll have to watch that this weekend.
So good. It holds up.
It's still really excellent.
It's really good. Okay.
Second second alliteration phrase.
What is it? Yeah. It's good as gold.
Good as gold. And this just means excellent value or something's in excellent condition.
Yes. For example, our credit is good as gold.
So we'll be able to get financing without an issue.
Nice. That's a very positive connotation here.
Right. This means that something very good, very valuable.
You might say that presentation was good as gold.
That's a really high compliment.
I want people to say this about my presentation.
Sure. Yeah. We'll take the compliment.
And number three is a sorry site.
So we're going in a bad direction now.
Something that's in a bad condition or a bad situation or just looks untidy.
Maybe you come home from the weekend, you leave your high school kids at the house and they could trash the house.
Right. That would be a sorry site or at work, you might say, my desk is a sorry site.
I really need to organize it.
I feel that way on Fridays with my desk.
I'm thinking, oh my gosh, this looks like a storm hit this place.
Are we going to organize or abandon ship, abandon ship coming back on Monday, start over new room.
I believe this one or at least until the weekend it's a total loss or this spreadsheet needs to be cleaned up.
It's a sorry site. Yeah.
And this is, it's interesting how phrases like this, I think part of it's the alliteration and part of it is just that it's pretty idiomatic, really lightens things up.
So even though two of these are quite negative, like they had this negative connotation, it keeps things lighthearted still just because it's sort of a fun phrase.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, maybe you are stressed out that your desk looks like a mess, but you can say something kind of funny, kind of fun, kind of cutesy and just have a little laugh with if you're working from home, right?
With family or something, there's a very different feeling between this is a total disaster and this is a sorry site.
Oh my gosh, totally.
Yeah, because if it were truly a disaster, you probably wouldn't have time to come up with fun little alliterations, right?
All right, good. This episode is brought to you by Google Gemini.
With the Gemini app, you can talk live and have a real time conversation with an AI assistant.
It's great for all kinds of things.
Like if you want to practice for an upcoming interview, ask for advice on things to do in a new city or brainstorm creative ideas.
And by the way, this script was actually read by Gemini.
Download the Gemini app for iOS and Android today.
Must be 18 plus to use Gemini live.
OK, let's go for a role play.
So here we work in a restaurant.
Yeah, I'll start us out.
These dishes look great.
I need them to be cookie cutter, exact same portion size and presentation on each one.
That's good to hear.
One was a sorry site, so I started over, but the rest turned out well.
Great job. These are all good as gold.
I love this. We're doing really well in our restaurant.
Yeah, that's where cookie cutter is positive, right?
Sometimes you need everything to look exactly the same, same portion size, same presentation, and you want it to be cookie cutter.
Right. Like if you're sorry if everyone ordered the same dish or if you're doing a family -style meal pre -ordered and it all needs to come out looking the same, right?
So you're saying I need them to be cookie cutter, the dishes, meaning they need to look the same.
This food is here and then that one's next to it, exact same portion size.
And then I said what, Aubrey?
And you said, oh, that's good to hear.
One was a sorry site, so I started over.
This is a fun way to say one was not cookie cutter, right?
The presentation, maybe whatever happened, it was not working out.
So you had to start over.
Yeah, I love that. And then you said, great job.
These are all good as gold.
So you're just putting your stamp of approval on it there.
Yeah, I love this good as gold.
It's such a really fun, encouraging phrase, but also totally appropriate for business.
And sometimes you are looking for new and interesting ways to complement someone's work.
You can't always just say, great job.
Yeah, a great job can get a little boring after a while, can it?
I agree. We need new things to come up with.
There's going to be another episode over on All There's English, a part two.
Exactly. Make sure to follow both here on the Business English podcast and All There's English because part two will be over there.
Idioms with alliteration that we use in everyday conversations more.
So be sure to follow both podcasts.
Yes. And where should we leave our listeners today?
What does this mean?
Our knowledge now of double alliteration of what is it?
I always say double alliterations, but I'm not sure if that's, did you see that in your research, Aubrey?
I didn't really find that.
I think it's just alliteration.
But I can see the thought of double because it's double of letter, right?
Yes, but it's just alliteration.
I think that makes sense.
What do we need to know?
Any final thoughts?
So whether you are creating brand new...
