This is an All Ears English podcast episode 1493.
Be a peach and listen to this fruity episode.
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What is your favorite fruit?
We use fruit idioms and expressions all of the time in native English.
Get four of them today and a simple role play to show you how to use them.
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Hey, Lindsay, how are you?
Hey, Michelle, I'm doing good.
It's a different kind of year this year.
This is coming out on Christmas Eve, so different kind of year, but I'm still, you know, I'm in it.
It's the holiday, so I'm going to celebrate in one way or another.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Oh, so it is still like a magical time of year.
I mean, guys, we're recording this a little bit in advance.
And the other day, my husband put on some Christmas music.
And I don't know what made me so because I love Christmas music.
And it made me it gave me all the feels something expression.
I was just like, Oh God, I like, why the regular holiday season?
And but just curl up by the fireplace.
Yeah, it's a different kind of year, but that's okay.
We're rolling with it.
We're figuring it out.
We are moving on, you know, things, you know, we just had an election here in the US.
So moving on, moving up.
Yes, yes, yes, exactly.
And have you been eating a lot of fruit last Lately, this is such a random question, Michelle.
It's very important.
I liked your transition.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I try.
I do.
Lately I've been eating a lot of grapes, and I always eat bananas at breakfast and some apples sometimes.
What about you, Michelle?
Oh, I love banana.
No, no, no.
I'm okay with bananas.
I love grapes.
But my favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite fruit is pomegranate.
I thought you were going to say lemon.
That's weird.
Pomegranate.
How do you eat it?
Do you put it on salad or what do you do?
Oh well i, i mean, i used to.
Just sometimes they have it where you can buy it, just from the grocery store, and they've already just taken out the seeds and you just eat the seeds and like, oh my gosh, when i've been traveling, like in italy they, they um, sell like a lot of pomegranate juice, like fresh squeezed pomegranate juice, and that is my, Oh my gosh.
Like that is.
That is one of my greatest joys in life is anything with a pomegranate, because I like, I'm all about tart tastes.
Like I love the tart taste.
I mean, I do also love sour.
Oh, my gosh.
Now I want to.
I don't think I've had a pomegranate since since before the pandemic.
So I am.
That's a weird fruit.
My favorite is. probably like nectarines or peaches.
In the summer, there's nothing like a really good nectarine in August.
Oh, so good.
So good.
And I love plums.
Plums.
Yeah, you do like then that more tart taste, I guess.
Oh my gosh.
But anyway.
So Lindsay, we're going to be talking about fruit today, because recently we did an episode not so recently actually we were talking about the word lemon in episode 1404.
So guys, go on, check that out.
And that inspired me when I was going through that episode that we have a lot of fruit.
And our idioms.
And we do.
This is going to be one of our idiom theme, idiom vocabulary episodes, because they're they're really fun when we do a theme.
And I actually think it's very helpful for learning.
Very fun and very relevant, right?
I mean, we don't speak in textbook English, guys.
We bring life into our words.
We bring color, right?
Bring color, bring sports, bring color, bring a fruit.
And this works out really well for Christmas Eve because, you know, sometimes people will eat fruitcake on Christmas, you know, in some cultures.
Right.
I know that that's been a common throughout history to bake a fruitcake, you know, in around Christmas.
Right.
Michelle, what do you think?
Any thoughts on that?
I don't even know if I've ever had a fruitcake.
I mean, aren't they kind of gross?
They're not.
They're not good.
It's just that they look gross.
It's in all the stories and the songs, right?
It's part of the cultural aspect of Christmas, I think.
Yeah.
So just a side point there.
No, that's good.
And guys, speaking of Christmas and gift giving, we're in the holiday season.
Guys, we want you to give yourself or give your friend a gift by following us on Instagram or Or telling a friend to follow us on Instagram.
Guys, we are over there having so much fun.
We do stories.
We do videos.
We do pictures.
And we teach vocabulary.
So much stuff that you don't want to miss.
Yeah, we've started doing more different things on Instagram in the last few months.
For example, now some of these episodes are actually on video.
They're on YouTube and they're also being put on Instagram in some cases.
Plus, we've just started experimenting with stories.
Like you said Michelle, we didn't really know how to do them, but we're learning and figuring it out.
Definitely, definitely.
Okay, awesome.
So let's get into some fruit idioms.
So what's the first one, Lindsay?
All right, this is a good one.
This is actually this could yield a whole nother episode.
So this concept of apples and oranges.
Yeah.
And this is not just a fruit idiom.
This is a way of presenting an analogy or a lack of an analogy.
Right.
So I hear this a lot.
We hear it a lot in political debates.
Michelle, tell us more.
Well, I mean, I've been, you know, you mentioned the election.
You know, there were a lot of times when I'd be watching not always the people in the debate, necessarily.
I mean, it could be used, but I feel like the commentators might say like, you know, sometimes.
Because I don't know if you ever watch the commentators after debates.
Yeah, sure, of course.
They go through the whole thing.
And you know.
So they might say, like if one is opposite their side, they might say oh, but that's apples and oranges.
Like you know, explaining how two, I mean it's used to talk about comparing two things that aren't really related to each other.
So sometimes...
In politics they'll try and relate two things and say yeah, but this person did X Y, Z and say that it relates to one topic.
And then the other one might say, wait, but those are apples and oranges.
Like you can't really make a true relation between these two things.
Exactly.
I would tend to say apples to oranges.
You could say both.
People do say both.
It's apples to oranges.
Or the opposite of that would be, yeah, it's apples to apples, right?
It's a direct comparison.
You can compare those two things because they equal out.
They make sense.
But when it's apples to oranges, it's not fair to make that comparison, because they're two completely different things.
Right.
Right.
Right, right, right, right.
Exactly.
So, Lindsay, let's do this little example.
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Okay, here we go.
Uh, all right.
So which is better, michelle living in new york or being near the beach?
Well, it's really apples and oranges, lindsay.
They both have benefits and aren't even really close Good.
Yeah.
And I mean something.
If we wanted to switch that question and make it apples to apples, you could say which is better, like living in New York or living in Boston, or something.
Hopefully that makes it clear for our listeners.
Do you agree with that, Michelle?
Yeah, I think so.
I don't feel like I hear apples to apples that much, but I think apples and oranges or apples to oranges is more common.
Yeah, I think you're right.
But just to have something to market against, right?
Yes, exactly.
So it's not like zucchinis to zucchinis.
It's apples and oranges.
I love it.
Yeah.
Or here's another one.
Lindsay, was the weather better last year?
Oh, Michelle, it's apples to oranges or it's apples and oranges.
We had a huge hurricane.
So, of course, things were much cooler here last year.
So you're saying you can't compare 2020 to 2019.
Right.
Right.
Because it's different weather patterns, that sort of thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
They can't be compared.
So, okay, that's apples and oranges or apples to oranges.
So, the next one, Lindsay, you like peaches, you said.
I like peaches too.
I do.
Yeah, I don't really use this, but I know it's common, right.
So peachy, everything's just peachy right, right?
Or sometimes people say peachy keen, even cheesier, right?
So right now we're watching that show, The Queen's Gambit.
You know that one?
Oh, everybody's telling me to watch that.
Yeah it's.
I don't know if I like it that much.
It's kind of weird, but it is really fun because it's set in the 50s or the 60s.
And it's really fun to see the fashion, see the phrases they use, the way they spoke so much more formal.
So this peachy keen is something that I feel like would come out of the 50s probably.
Right, right, right.
Or somebody might say, describe someone as a peach, right?
Like, oh, you're a peach, right?
Like, so basically peach, I mean, this has a, these are good feelings, right?
So it's like, oh, everything's peachy, like, oh, everything's great.
Everything's good.
Or if you're a peach, it's like, oh, you're great, you know?
Yeah.
But again, I think also still all of these are quite old fashioned.
I think, I don't know.
I don't hear these being used.
This peach set here, I don't hear it being used as much now.
It depends like on the person's personality, because I do know I'm thinking of some specific people I know who use this word.
Interesting.
These words.
Are they young or old?
Young.
And I mean, I know.
Isn't that weird, though?
No, I mean, you're not.
I don't I don't disagree with what you said.
So I think it's all about just everybody's unique language on this one.
Everyone's got their own style.
And that's what we want you guys to have is your own style.
By listening to the show, we want you to be able to build your style of English, like make it yours.
Absolutely.
So, for example, you could say something like, oh, everything's just pretty peachy now.
So I mean, you could use it sarcastically, of course, like oh yeah, it was real peachy, you know, but you know that's like anything.
Or peachy keen.
You could say, oh, I'm doing peachy keen.
I got a glass of lemonade and everything.
And so the word keen also means good, right?
Satisfied, fine, good.
Yeah.
And then your peach, you said, oh, you're sweet.
This could be sarcastic, right?
Yeah.
So how could it be sarcastic?
Could you read this one?
So my friend is canceling on me again.
She's a real peach.
Yeah.
So that's like that's not so that's not good.
Right.
So that's not could be sarcastic.
Exactly.
And then this one I like.
I really like low hanging fruit, because this is used actually a lot in business talk.
When you talk about, like the simplest thing you could do to make the biggest difference in a company's growth is the low hanging fruit.
So really common.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
So it's, you know, the easiest, the clearest thing that can be done or completed.
So, like Lindsay, when you're starting your week, do you like to begin with the low hanging fruit or do you do the most challenging thing first?
Ooh, that's a good question.
I have a whole time management system now, but yeah, I like to get some quick wins.
So low hanging fruit, if I can achieve it quickly and easily, I'll go for that first.
But it is important to go for the big things too.
I don't know.
I'm kind of, it's a toss up on that one, Michelle.
That's a tough question.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it is used a lot in business, I would say.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure, for sure.
And then we have one more, Lindsay.
What is it?
Oh, my gosh.
This one is new to me.
Top banana.
Oh, what does this mean?
Well, I recently had this.
I think I've talked about that I like to do the crossword puzzle because I'm so cool.
And I recently had this as a crossword puzzle clue.
So I wanted to include it.
So a top banana is like a leader or someone who's successful.
So like my best friend is top banana at her firm.
So maybe she can get you an interview.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
I love that.
More informal, of course.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
Well, we have a role play today, right, Michelle?
Let's do it.
So, Lindy, we are talking about we're co-workers and we're talking about a task for work.
Okay.
Okay.
So, what should we start with?
Uh, let's go with the low hanging fruit and get those graphs over with.
Sounds peachy.
Did the top banana tell us what to do?
Yeah, he gave us some guidelines, but I haven't looked yet.
Do you think last year was easier at work or this year?
Oh, well, Lindsay, you're comparing apples and oranges.
They're totally different because our team changed so much.
Oh, that's true.
Okay.
So let's rehash it.
Let's go back through it, Michelle.
So you said, let's go with the low-hanging fruit.
And again, that is really common nowadays.
I hear that a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah, like the easy stuff, the easiest to get done.
And then you said, sounds peachy, like sounds great.
And then you said, did the top banana tell us what to do?
That's so funny.
I've never even heard that one before.
That's all new to me.
That's funny.
Yeah, and I was pretty sarcastic.
And then...
You asked me a question and I said, you're comparing apples and oranges, right?
Because things were so different, like you can't compare them.
Exactly.
And I would say apples to oranges.
But I think we maybe we could do a follow up on that or something.
I think it's probably it's probably like we say different things there.
Yeah, I'm just having it in here.
I guess it's probably both that would work.
Yeah, actually, I'm seeing apples and oranges.
Maybe I'm wrong here.
But both are okay, guys.
You can get away with both.
Just as long as you understand what you're trying to say when you say that apples and oranges.
Yeah.
Okay, Michelle, what's the takeaway for today?
Guys, we love fruit.
These are common idioms with fruit.
Okay, idioms and words, right?
Try them today.
And, like we said sometimes, if this learning in categories works for you, definitely keep going with it.
Like we've done sports idioms, we've done all sorts of things. with specific categories.
So if you like this method, keep going with it and send us another idea for a theme episode.
Totally.
If you have a request for a topic, send your ideas to lindsayatallersenglishcom and send it in.
Whatever you want to learn and go have a piece of fruit, because fruit is healthy.
Enjoy your pomegranate.
All right.
Sounds good, Michelle.
Have a good one.
Bye.
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