Hey everyone, Andrew here.
How's it going?
Thank you for clicking play and joining me today for this English language lesson.
You are tuned in to Catchword, which is the Q-Lips vocabulary series, where we teach you idioms slang, phrasal verbs, expressions and more.
That will help you improve your listening and speaking fluency.
Today I will be joined by my co-host Indiana, in just a sec, and we're going to talk about one of the lower parts of life financial disasters.
And we're going to teach you two essential English idioms used to describe situations where someone loses absolutely all of their money, or when a business fails completely and shuts its doors.
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Okay, let's welcome Indiana into the conversation now and get started with the lesson.
Here we go.
Enjoy.
Hello, Indiana.
How's it going?
Hey, Andrew.
I'm doing well.
I'm interested in talking about our expressions for today.
Although they're a little bit negative, they're really, really useful for financial situations.
And I think that could be a really great topic for our listeners to broaden their English vocabulary and idioms they can use when talking about financial situations.
Absolutely.
You know, life has its highs and lows.
And today we're going to focus in unfortunately, on one of the lower parts of life, and that is having no money, being poor or losing your money.
So guys, in today's episode we're going to learn two English idioms that we use when we're describing financial disasters.
And the two key expressions for this episode are to lose your shirt and to go belly up.
Now, they're not interchangeable idioms.
They have different meanings, but both of them are used to talk about financial situations that have gone wrong, bad and are financial disasters.
So we'll explain all of the details, give you some examples, tell you about the nuances, all of these things in this episode today.
So Indiana, why don't we jump right in and get started with the first key expression, which is lose your shirt?
Lose your shirt.
A shirt is a piece of clothing that we wear almost every day, I think.
And I could imagine that some people might get confused about this idiom because you're like lose your shirt.
Like I don't know, maybe you came out of the shower and you're looking for your shirt and you're like where is it?
Where is it?
But it's not this meaning, right?
It's a totally different meaning.
Could you explain what the idiom means?
Lose your shirt?
Yes.
So when we're using this idiom, we're not talking about losing a piece of clothing in your house.
But as we mentioned, this is an idiom about financial disaster.
So when somebody loses their shirt.
This is showing that they have lost so much money, perhaps in a risky financial decision or a bet or a bad investment, that they have lost everything, including the shirt that they're wearing right.
You could imagine.
I have lost all of my money, so much money that I can't even afford to put a shirt on right.
Like all my clothes, all my possessions are gone.
So it's just this idea that even the shirt on your back is gone because of a bad financial decision.
Yeah, well said, Indiana.
So guys, again, to lose your shirt just means to lose all of your money.
And because this is an idiom Most of the time when people lose all of their money, they still have clothes, right?
It's not very often that you see somebody who has lost absolutely everything in life.
So it is a bit of an exaggeration.
However, when you do use this idiom to lose your shirt, it does mean that you've lost all of your money or you're in a really bad financial situation.
And again, Indiana, like you said, this is usually the result of maybe a bad investment.
Like maybe you invest all of your money in the stock market and then the stock market crashes and you have no money left.
Then this is the kind of situation where we would say, oh my gosh, I lost my shirt, or he lost his shirt, or she lost her shirt right,
We can change the pronoun in the middle to adjust the idiom for the situation and the context that we're talking about.
Now I think we should emphasize that we only use this idiom when we're talking about really big financial losses, right?
Like Indiana, would you say, you lost your shirt if you bought a cup of coffee at the cafe and then, I don't know, the mug was too hot and you dropped the mug and the mug broke and you spilled your coffee all over the place.
And the cafe wouldn't replace the coffee for free.
So you had to buy another cup of coffee and maybe you had to pay for the mug as well.
I'm not sure if they were really stingy cafe.
Would you say I lost my shirt in that kind of situation?
No, certainly not.
And even, I think, if you bought something really expensive, and you know, not just an expensive latte, but like, let's say, a really big TV even then, if you regretted that decision, I don't think you would use lose your shirt.
I lost my shirt buying that TV.
I don't think you would use this expression anymore. in that situation.
I really think it's just for sort of financial decisions, like you said, in the stock market or like gambling or something or yeah, some sort of business venture.
It's less commonly used for something like a personal purchase or something like that.
So yeah, there's some restrictions to how we can use this idiom.
Even if you lost everything, like in a fire, if your house burnt down and you lost everything, or maybe you were robbed and somebody stole all of your stuff.
In these kinds of situations too, the result is the same.
You have nothing.
You've lost all of your possessions.
You lost all of your things.
However, we wouldn't use lose your shirt, right?
Lose your shirt is only for the specific, narrow focus of losing all of your money because of bad investments, bad business decisions gambling, these kinds of of things.
So guys, just keep that in mind.
That will help you to understand the meaning a little bit better.
Okay guys, so now that we know what this expression means, it's time to hear some real life conversation examples.
And in example one, we're going to hear two friends catch up at a coffee shop.
One of the friends is looking a little bit stressed out because they invested heavily in a brand new cryptocurrency that recently crashed.
So you could imagine that this is a pretty tense conversation.
So Indiana and I are going to read it for you.
We're going to do a little bit of voice acting here and you can eavesdrop in and take a listen.
So let's check it out now.
Here we go.
You look a little stressed out.
Is everything okay?
Not really.
To be honest, I'm having a terrible week.
You know that crypto coin I told you about?
The one I put my savings into?
Don't tell me it crashed.
Crashed?
It completely tanked.
I basically lost my shirt on that deal.
I should have just kept my money in the bank.
I don't know what I was thinking.
Okay, in this example, we heard two friends chatting at a coffee shop, and the conversation was not a happy one because one of the friends just lost all of her money in a cryptocurrency investment.
She said that the coin, the crypto coin, completely tanked.
It tanked.
Indiana, what does this mean if an investment tanks?
When something tanks, like an investment or a company's profits, that means that it goes down incredibly fast.
It describes really rapid decline.
So when this person's investment, when she says it tanked, that means she pretty much lost all her money.
The investment was not a good idea and it did very poorly in the market and it was a disaster.
So this is a great option for when you really want to emphasize that a stock price or a company's profits.
Some number goes down really rapidly.
You can say that it tanks, it tanked.
Yeah.
And Indiana, we even use this to talk about sports.
Like.
I watch ice hockey and my favorite ice hockey team, the Vancouver Canucks, are doing terribly this year and they keep losing and losing and losing.
And we're saying that they're tanking.
They just keep losing again and again and again.
Their winning record is going down, down, down.
So yeah, a very useful expression to talk about losses in some capacity financial or even in sports.
Okay, very good.
Why don't we move into our second example for everyone now?
And in this one, we're going to hear about a gambling loss.
And so two friends are catching up and chatting after a weekend trip to a casino.
And one of the friends is not so happy.
So let's take a listen to this example now.
Here we go.
So, how was the trip to Vegas?
Did you have a good time?
Yeah, it was fun, but man, the blackjack tables were absolutely brutal.
Oh no.
Did you win anything?
Win?
No.
I honestly lost my shirt.
I walked in with 500 bucks and walked out with nothing.
Ouch.
Remind me never to go gambling with you.
Okay, so here, instead of a financial investment, we see the idiom lose your shirt, used between friends talking about gambling.
So when you make a pretty bad gambling decision, you spend 500 and you're going to the blackjack table and you keep going, even though you probably shouldn't, and you lose all that money.
You might say wow, I really lost my shirt at the blackjack table.
Yeah, I cannot imagine myself doing this, but this would be the perfect scenario to use this idiom.
Yeah, and hopefully, guys, you never have to use this idiom to talk about yourself, right?
It's a good one to know for when you're doing English listening.
You'll hear this used in TV shows and movies and maybe even on the news.
However, you don't want to use it to talk about yourself.
That would be a pretty bad situation.
So yeah, this guy lost his entire gambling budget for the trip.
Started with 500, left with zero.
So he lost his shirts.
Okay, good.
Indiana, why don't we move on to our second key expression for today, which is to go belly down.
Go belly up.
And when we say it quickly, it sounds like go belly up.
Go belly up.
So why don't you do the honors?
Do you want to introduce this one to us and tell us what it means?
For sure.
So the word belly is another word for stomach.
It sounds a little bit cuter, I think, or like colloquial, like a friendly way to say stomach, like tummy and belly.
These are some other options for stomach.
And go belly up so you can imagine, okay, your belly is going up.
This idiom comes from the image of a dead fish floating upside down in water.
Its belly is facing up towards the sky.
And this symbolism is used for describing a business or a project that completely fails, goes bankrupt, just does not work, and basically, dies is the idea behind this expression.
So you could say that a failed business, you could say it went belly up.
So you're getting that image of an animal, like a fish, dying and showing its stomach.
Uh, Pretty gross image, but it works.
It's really a great way to show that a business or a project completely failed, financially and otherwise.
Yeah, just think about like those poor goldfish that we raise when we're kids, right?
Like you have a little fishbowl and a goldfish and it lives for a few days and then the goldfish goes belly up.
And I think we use this expression sometimes too to talk about pet fish like this.
Like if you had a pet fish and it died, you could say, oh, it went belly up, right?
True.
I think that's right.
This expression we also use to talk about, specifically businesses or projects or companies or stores or restaurants that go out of business and fail because it's just not financially possible for them to continue.
So this is the key difference guys, between the first expression to lose your shirt which we use to talk about people and individuals, and to go belly up, expression number two, which we use to talk about companies and businesses and restaurants and stores, that kind of thing.
So we can't use them interchangeably.
We have different subjects that we use when we're talking about them.
Here in Seoul I notice that businesses come and go super, super rapidly way way, way faster than they do back home in Canada.
So it's unfortunately really sad.
And I guess sometimes you never actually know what the behind the scenes reason is why a business goes out of business, right?
Like you don't know if it's financial or related to something, personal issue of the owner or something.
I'm not sure, but there's a lot of turnover here in Seoul.
You'll see businesses pop up and then close down all the time.
And yeah, a lot of businesses, I assume, go belly up for one reason or another.
But how about in your city?
Do you notice this as well?
Is there a lot of turnover with businesses starting and failing or not so much?
What's it like where you live?
Yeah, I think, especially with the restaurant business, like food service, it's a pretty cutthroat industry.
It's pretty competitive.
And I think the margins, like the profits that restaurants make are pretty poor generally.
So yeah, it's really common to see that turnover in my city like oh, there's so many new restaurants opening up this year, but unfortunately several of them go belly up by, you know, the end of a couple years.
It is pretty sad, but I do think that it might for restaurants.
That might be kind of the nature of it.
Yeah, I agree.
I think here in Seoul as well, it's usually cafes and restaurants where I see a lot of changeover, because I've been here for a long time and maybe I just have a pessimistic attitude.
I'm not so sure, but sometimes when I see a new restaurant open, I'm like ah, I don't think it's going to last for very long.
So if it looks like a good restaurant, I tell my wife hey, let's go there quickly, before it goes belly up, because
I'm just not too optimistic sometimes about these restaurants staying in business because, like you said, the margins are really really close.
So this means that there's not a lot of profit.
It's expensive to operate one of these businesses.
And if you just have like a bad month of sales, that could make you go belly up, right?
Like it's very, very difficult to run one of these businesses where the margins, the profits, are not too big.
Yeah.
Okay, well, Indiana, I think we can jump in and listen to some examples.
Again, guys, we have two of them for you.
And in the first example conversation here we're going to listen in on a couple walking down the street and they're just looking for a place to eat dinner, but they find that their destination is closed.
Okay, let's take a listen to that conversation now.
Here we go.
I'm starving.
Me too, but look, the windows are all covered in paper.
Did this place go out of business?
What?
No way.
They were always so busy.
Yeah, but I heard that the rent in this neighborhood got crazy expensive, so I guess they finally went belly up.
That is so sad.
And now where are we going to eat?
In this example, we hear two friends looking for a place to eat.
I guess they had a restaurant in mind that they were going to go to to eat lunch or eat dinner.
And they finally get to the restaurant and they try to go inside and they notice that all of the windows are covered in paper.
The doors are locked and the business has gone belly up, meaning that it's no longer in business.
We often also say that a place has gone out of business, right?
Meaning that they failed as a business and they're no longer operating to go out of business.
So yeah, unfortunately, this restaurant has gone belly up.
It's gone out of business.
And that's just because maybe the neighborhood, here's a difficult word, guys, gentrifying.
The neighborhood has been gentrifying, which means that there has been a lot of new people and new investments moving into the neighborhood, which has raised the price of the rents in the neighborhood so that that restaurant can no longer afford to be there.
And so it has gone belly up.
Kind of sad but common situation, I think, Indiana.
Indeed.
Okay.
Let's listen to our final example conversation for this episode.
And what's going to happen in this one?
Well, we're going to hear two managers at an office discussing a competitor company that has been struggling in the market.
So let's eavesdrop in and take a listen.
Here we go.
Did you hear the news about Apex?
Yeah, I saw the report this morning.
Looks like they're going to file for bankruptcy.
I can't say that I'm surprised.
Their sales have been dropping for years.
I knew they were going to go belly up eventually.
It's a pretty good opportunity for us, though.
We might be able to pick up some of their clients.
So in this dialogue between a couple of managers at a company, you hear this expression go belly up about another company in the same industry, because their sales had been dropping for many years and they eventually decided to file for bankruptcy.
So these managers use this expression to describe this closing business.
The other company went belly up.
I think you really would often hear this expression in a business context or in the news, just like our other expression to lose your shirt.
You might see this in a headline like business goes belly up after 10 years or something like that.
I think you could see this, hear this a lot in the news or in these business conversations.
So it's a good one to keep an ear out for, I think.
Yeah, I totally agree.
Very common idioms, unfortunately, like we are talking about bad financial situations.
So it's always a little bit sad when we have to use these idioms.
But like we said at the top of the show, life is nuanced.
There's the good, there's the bad, there's the in-between.
And we need to know expressions and vocabulary to talk about all of the situations that we can experience in life.
And these are two that we can use to talk about when we're talking about bad financial situations.
So, just to recap, when an individual loses all of their money due to a bad financial decision, we can say that they lost their shirt.
And when a business goes out of business and they fail as a business, then we can say they go belly up.
So guys, thank you for listening to this episode.
We hope that you learned a lot with us.
We hope that you were able to improve your vocabulary with us today.
And now we want you to be active with your English.
There are a couple of ways that you can do that.
First of all, you can join our small group speaking classes.
And if you click the link in this episode you can go to the schedule and see the schedule for our small group conversation classes and join an upcoming one and talk with me and talk with Indiana and talk with our other awesome teacher Alina, about some of the expressions and concepts that we talked about in this episode.
And then also you can join our Discord community.
It's free for everyone to join, and it's a great place to make some example sentences and to share your thoughts and opinions about this episode with our entire community.
So guys, now the ball is in your court and it's your turn to be active with your English.
And I think that will really, really help you hit that next level with your fluency.
So guys, please take care.
We'll be back soon with another brand new episode and we'll talk to you then.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
