Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
My name is Dr. C and I'm a TESL certified English teacher.
I teach English online to students who are learning it as a second language.
My goal for this podcast is that it can become a resource for you to help you with your vocabulary, fluency, and knowledge of American culture.
On today's episode, we are going to discuss turkey idioms.
So if you watched our video last week, you saw the traditional Thanksgiving foods and how turkey is closely associated with the Thanksgiving holiday.
Now, when we're talking about turkeys, we use turkeys a lot in different sayings and idioms here in the United States.
And I wanted to share some of those with you, discuss their history and their meaning, and tell you how you can use them in sentences.
So with that, let's begin.
Besides eating turkey at Thanksgiving, we also use turkeys in different phrases and idioms here in the United States.
These phrases can have very different meanings.
And if you're not from the United States or if you're not a native English speaker, you might not understand what we mean by these different sayings.
So on today's episode, I wanted to tell you these different idioms, discuss their history and tell you how you can use them in conversation.
The first idiom that we are going to discuss is to talk turkey.
So to talk turkey means that you are having a very open and honest discussion with someone.
You are not being invasive.
There's no ambiguity, which means there's nothing that's unclear.
So when you're talking turkey with someone and you have a conversation where you're going to talk turkey, that means you're having a very frank, a very direct conversation.
This is usually in business.
So people normally talk about this or use this phrase when they're talking about some type of business aspect, but it doesn't always have to be.
It can also be if you're having maybe an uncomfortable discussion with someone, a discussion that might be a little bit uncomfortable for one party or the other.
But again, it doesn't always have to be that.
It just really has to be a very open discussion, a very direct discussion between two different parties.
A little bit about the history.
The origins of this saying are a little bit unclear, which is funny because the idiom itself means to be very clear, to be very direct.
The origins aren't really sure.
It might have to go back to the Native Americans and European settlers originally in the early 1600s.
So turkey at the time was a very valuable commodity.
It was a very important food item.
And there might have been business negotiations between selling turkeys and buying turkeys.
It might also have to do with the sound a turkey makes.
So turkeys are known for making some gobbling noises, some very distinct, clear noises.
And this might have to do with having very distinct open conversation.
Again, not too sure on the exact origins of the phrase.
But if you want to use it, let's give some examples of how it's used.
Again, it's normally in a business negotiation.
So those are going to be the examples that I start off with.
So let's say that you go to buy a new car.
You go to the car dealership, you find a car that you really like.
And then you ask the car salesman, how much does this car cost?
Now, he might be a little evasive with his answer.
So evasive means that he's not clear.
He's not really going to answer you right away because he wants to negotiate the price and see what the most amount of money he can get out of this sale is going to be.
So he might invite you to go back to the office and he might say, well, let's talk some numbers.
Let's negotiate this a little bit and let's kind of come to an agreement.
So maybe you offer a certain amount he counter offers and it goes back and forth.
And you're not really getting a straight answer of how much this car really is.
So in that case, you might say, hey, I'm tired of negotiating.
Let's talk Turkey. What's the bottom line?
What's the cost of this car?
Another example might be if you're getting a job promotion and you're unsure.
You know, it comes with a raise, but HR and your boss haven't told you how much that raise is going to be.
You could say, I need to talk Turkey.
Let's talk Turkey. Let's actually talk about my new salary and what this job entails.
That would be a good example and a good use of how to use it.
Of course, you can also use it in a non -business context.
It's not as common, but let's say that you have a friend that you're having some type of disagreement with and you're not really seeing eye to eye and maybe you're not really even sure why anymore.
Like, why is there this tension?
You could say, we need to talk Turkey.
We need to get to the bottom of this issue so we can be friends again.
So again, if you're trying to use this phrase or if you hear this phrase used, it means that you're having maybe a difficult conversation, but a very direct conversation.
You're going to be very open, very honest, and you're not going to try to hide anything in your answers.
And in return, you want the other person to do the same.
Our second idiom is to quit cold Turkey.
Now, to quit cold Turkey means to give up something abruptly.
The something is usually something bad.
So we would say some type of substance, some type of bad activity.
So for example, smoking or doing drugs, gambling, those would all be things that you would, you might consider giving up or quitting cold Turkey.
The origin of this phrase goes back to the 1920s.
Originally, it did not mean what it means today.
It actually meant to discuss something openly, like to talk Turkey.
But now it has had a completely different meaning.
Over the years, it's changed.
And so the current meaning comes from when people withdraw from alcohol or drugs or some type of substance, they can feel bad.
They can feel poorly.
They can have their skin kind of turn a lighter color.
We would say they look pallid.
They might also have shakes or some goosebumps on their arms.
And so the skin of the person who was withdrawing from that substance was said to resemble a cold Turkey.
So if you think of a turkey who's had their feathers removed, their feathers plucked, their skin would have bumps and they would be very cold and they might be a little bit shaky.
And that's where this term comes from.
So when someone tells you that they are quitting cold Turkey or they quit cold Turkey, that means that they abruptly stopped doing something.
An example of this in a sentence would be, if I told you I had a headache, can you ask me why?
And I said, well, I decided to stop drinking caffeine.
And so I gave up caffeine entirely and I just quit cold Turkey.
And now that I have a headache, I'm regretting that choice.
Another example would be if someone was a smoker and so they said, that's it.
After 20 years, I've decided to stop and I'm quitting cold Turkey.
This usually means that it was a very abrupt.
There's no tapering.
There's no slow gradual decline.
It's just one day you're using it one day you're not.
And usually that means you have some type of withdrawal.
You have some type of feeling bad, maybe having some type of symptoms, especially if it is more of a drug use type situation or smoking alcohol, for example.
And that's where this saying really comes from.
So you might hear it in TV shows or movies.
You might hear it on commercials, talking about quitting cold Turkey.
And that's what it means to withdraw from some type of substance or some type of bad activity.
And our third idiom is to gobble something up.
So gobble is a word that is very closely associated with turkeys in the United States.
People say that turkeys make the sound and the sound is gobble.
If you're in the United States in November, you'll see ads that have turkeys that will say gobble gobble, or you'll hear it in ads on the radio or on a TV commercial, for example.
And because it's associated with turkeys and also associated with how they eat, when we're talking about gobble and we're being literal, we're talking about someone eating something.
Someone eats something very quickly and we would say that they gobbled it up.
So I could say that my puppy gobbles up her food.
As soon as I put food in her bowl, it's gone.
Or, for example, if you take cookies to a company potluck and before you even get to try one yourself, they're gone.
You could say, wow, my coke workers really gobbled up those cookies.
There's already none left.
That is when you're being literal.
So literal is having to do with eating, being figurative with this saying, because it can also be used figuratively, means that you're not talking about food and you're not talking about eating.
What you're talking about in that case, in that instance, is that something was very easy to do, and a person was able to do it very quickly.
Usually the person was able to do it quickly and enthusiastically, we would say.
But you can use it really kind of in any context if you're using it more figuratively.
So let's say that I give an exam out to my class and the smartest student in my class gets done with the exam in 10 minutes and gets a perfect score.
I would say, wow, they really gobbled up that exam.
That was nothing for them.
So they got done with the exam.
It was super easy for them.
They got a perfect score.
They gobbled it up.
You can also hear this a lot with sports teams, with athletes and different sporting events.
So let's say you're watching soccer, as we call it here in the United States, and Messi scores a goal, and it was really easy for him.
He got the ball, and there was no defense.
He just went really quickly and scored the goal.
You could say, wow, Messi gobbled up that defense.
That was nothing for him.
It was so easy for him to score.
So when you're talking about it in sports terms, it usually means that one athlete or one side is dominating the other.
So maybe the Los Angeles Lakers gobbled up that other team, or they gobbled up the defense.
That is the instances that you would hear it.
So again, gobbled up can be literal with food, can be figurative, in terms of just saying that something was really easy and quick to do.
And our last turkey idiom is to be a stuffed turkey.
If you watched or listened to our episode last week, you know about the different food items that are available at Thanksgiving, and one of them is stuffing.
So if you didn't hear that episode, a very quick recap.
A turkey, you hollow out the inside cavity, you remove all the organs, and then you can stuff other food items inside of it when you put it in the oven to cook.
So turkeys are traditionally stuffed at Thanksgiving.
This is where that phrase comes from.
Also, because Thanksgiving is associated with eating a lot, traditionally, if you have Thanksgiving dinner, you don't just have one plate of food.
You eat your first plate of food, you might eat a little bit and then you eat again.
Maybe you even eat a third time.
So when we're talking about being stuffed or feeling stuffed, that means that you've eaten a lot of food, that you might feel a little bit uncomfortable, maybe you overindulged, ate too much, and maybe you're regretting your choices.
So for example, let's say that you ate three plates of food on Thanksgiving.
You could say, oh, I am a stuffed turkey.
That means that your stomach is very full.
You're probably uncomfortable and just hoping that that pain goes away relatively quickly.
So when people just say they're stuffed, usually, again, that's referring to eating too much for their stomach to feel very full.
And then with this time of the year, with it being Thanksgiving, people will say a stuffed turkey, referring to Thanksgiving dinner.
I hope you learned a little bit about these different turkey idioms and sayings.
As you can see, they mean a wide variety of different things.
It can be very confusing to understand what people are meaning when you hear them, especially if you're not from the United States.
So I hope this helped you.
And I hope if someone says this phrase or idiom to you, you will understand what it means now.
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