This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 428, How to Be Unstoppable at Work.
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Hey, Aubrey, how are you today?
I'm great, Lindsay.
How are you? Pretty good.
Pretty good. Aubrey, have you read, what is that, Beowulf?
Beowulf? Oh, Beowulf.
Beowulf. I've heard of Beowulf, but I never had to read it.
I did have to read a lot of the classics at university, but I never read Beowulf.
Have you, Lindsay? Obviously, I haven't.
Yeah. You recognize it now that you hear it, right?
It's like, you know, pretty famous.
It is kind of a weird word, the way it's spelled.
Yes. How do you even pronounce that?
Beowulf. I mean, maybe I read it and I just forgot about it and it just didn't stick with me.
It's possible in high school or college, you maybe had to read it and then you immediately forgot about it yeah exactly but we have a question from khadir right one of our amazing listeners yes who was reading beowulf and has a great question about something he saw in this do you want to read it for us lindsay yes here we go qadir says hi lindsay aubrey michelle i hope you're doing well i'm finally in college and it's somewhat more challenging than i thought it would be but still before my question i would love to thank you for answering my previous questions.
I do appreciate it indeed.
When I was preparing for my midterm in the survey of English course, I ran into this sentence about Beowulf.
The sea burial with which the poem begins helps to establish the inexorable margins of life in the story.
The adjective inexorable here seems a bit tricky.
I think it means constantly increasing or decreasing.
However, I cannot be sure no matter how hard I try to distill the meaning.
I also would like to learn new adjectives that we could use instead thanks for reading my question it feels amazing hearing my questions being answered here goodbye all right awesome from khadir great a long -term listener he's been listening to the show for a very long time so big shout out to khadir yes hello khadir thank you for the amazing question and review here i really thought this was interesting because i saw an x -ray ball here i'm like i've seen that word i know that word what does it mean?
I would not have been able to just define it off the top of my head.
And then I asked a bunch of people I know, really well -educated people and same.
A lot of them were like, I feel like I see that in the news sometimes.
Couldn't define it.
It's definitely not common in the English language.
And so then it's interesting.
I'm like, this is interesting to think about.
We should know what it means for sure, but should we use it in everyday conversations?
It's an interesting.
And like, as you guys know, I mean, on this show, we bring everything back to human connection and we we may take a position or an opinion in certain episodes because we ultimately want you to be connected not disconnected from human beings through English that's the point of learning language in our opinion okay absolutely and I love how Kadir was asking like what are some other options that I could use more easily and everyday conversations it's possible that he also recognized like I'm not sure I could throw this into a conversation yeah yeah words really have powerful power they can distance
you from people they can bring you closer so before we get into this whole discussion here for kadir and our listeners i want to remind you to hit the follow button right here on business english all right guys hit the follow button now to get three episodes a week yes and i think this is especially interesting at work because you want to build connections with co -workers colleagues clients and it could actually hurt the connection if you use a word that they're not familiar with they don't understand what is the impression right you may see this in news articles academic writing like this about Beowulf
maybe you'll hear it in a presentation or a speech it's important to know what it means yeah it's interesting to think about should you throw it into a conversation with colleagues yes super interesting and before we get even further in Aubrey do we have some poll results that we want to share yes we want to share the results from one of our recent Spotify polls thank you everyone who fills these out we love seeing the results yes the question was have you ever volunteered for more tasks than you had time for I certainly am guilty of this I know you are too Lindsey yeah I think you might do this more
than I do but definitely our results here were stark Aubrey uh we learned that 71 .4 percent of our audience said yes and 28 .6 percent said no and it makes me think of the term voluntold.
You were voluntold to do something.
Right? That does happen, right?
But maybe you did volunteer.
Like, I don't really have time, but I want to feel like a go -getter.
I want to be a valuable part of this team.
So we're sometimes volunteering for more than we have bandwidth for.
Or even in our community, I, on Friday night, went to my neighborhood association happy hour, and it was such a random mix of ages and people and lifestyle.
It's really interesting.
Interesting interesting neighborhood I live in here.
But they all, you know, the manager or the committee heads came out with the committees.
Like, you can sign up for this committee and that committee and that committee.
And I was tempted. But then I thought, oh, don't overcommit, you know, don't spread yourself too thin.
Yes, do you actually have time?
Yes, so true. And it's interesting with these Spotify polls, we love seeing the results.
But if you're out there thinking I would have answered no, but you didn't answer, then come answer the Spotify polls so that your voice can can be heard so that all of our statistics could be accurate.
We'd love to hear from everyone who's able.
Fill out those Spotify polls.
All right, good stuff.
Now let's get deeper into inexorable.
First of all, the pronunciation here, Aubrey.
Tell us more. Yeah, so inexorable.
That second syllable gets the stress, inexorable, and it's an adjective, but we do use it two different ways.
First of all, to describe things, and so this is a thing that is impossible to stop or prevent, a thing that is relentless, we would describe as inexorable.
So, often you'll see it in the news about technology, right?
The development of new technology seems to be inexorable.
Or our competitors inexorable growth makes it extremely difficult to keep up.
So, something is coming forward, it's not going to stop, right?
Exactly. And then we also use it to describe a person, but it does have a different meaning here it means that they are impossible to persuade like their mind is made up so sort of similar where you know they're unstoppable about their opinion on something right you might say the CEO is inexorable in her decision to hire a new VP mm -hmm or we need to be inexorable during the contract negotiation mmm interesting okay yeah so what's interesting this is a very impressive high -level word right I am impressed when I hear someone use this type of vocabulary I'm impressed that your vocabulary is so vast
right yes yes it can hurt the connection because not everyone's familiar with it so you do really want to think about who you're talking to make sure they all know the words that you're using yeah I mean it doesn't you know it goes further to try to build the connection then to try to impress people and have them think you're so smart but then you're you're disconnected right um that just doesn't get us very far in life trying to impress so if i would say if you're at a fancy party and you see people dropping fans maybe a dinner party people are dropping fancy words like this drop the word go
for it why not because that would be connection in that moment right exactly in other scenarios maybe Maybe avoid it.
Yeah, we've all met that person who does have a very impressive vocabulary.
Use it in front of them.
Right? Then they're going to know what it means and they're going to be impressed and you can have a fun conversation about how you love words.
Yeah, exactly. All right, well, then for most scenarios, Aubrey, what would be some other options that we can have?
Yeah, we have a couple of synonyms in English that are also impressive and mean mean the same thing, but everyone will be familiar with their meaning.
So first of all, relentless, right?
She was impressed by his relentless determination to reach his goals.
It means the same as inexorable, right?
Unstoppable, you're not able to keep them back.
Yeah, or unstoppable.
Like we said, the company's growth was unstoppable once they launched their app.
And again, I like that you said these are also impressive.
These are not just like average words.
These are above average, impressive words.
Okay. Exactly. Right.
And for all of the sentences we gave for inexorable, you could use these.
They are interchangeable synonyms, right?
The development of new technology seems to be relentless or unstoppable, right?
You can just swap them in there.
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the shift we are seeing toward automation and data integration is unstoppable but our platform will help you stay ahead of the curve that sounds great we're concerned about support though we tried one company that took quite a long time to get back to us when we reached out you won't have that problem with us we offer relentless support that is available 24 hours a day relentless support sounds great yes we're not just offering a product we're offering a partnership um seems like a pretty typical sales call tech sales call right yeah and it's interesting so i i used inexorable here but i had the client
use it i think if you are the client this works right especially if you have an impressive vocabulary go for it but as a salesperson, I wouldn't use it to a client.
It's interesting to think about depending on the relationship and the impression you're trying to give.
If you don't know them well, you don't know for sure that they'll understand.
I would use unstoppable or relentless instead.
Yeah, it's true. We should get more salespeople on the show to kind of pick their brains on how they build relationships and how they use words strategically in conversations, right?
Because that's what sales is is building relationships absolutely I love that idea yes yeah yeah all right so then you said unstoppable you said the shift we're seeing towards automation and data integration is unstoppable but our platform will help yes and then finish off by saying we offer relentless support so relentless isn't always negative sometimes it is right but it can just mean like always there you can't stop it 24 hours a day I think it's a creative use of the word relentless right because usually we associate that with something negative oh this guy's relentless he just won't stop
talking right but if you flip it and you say our support is relentless it's kind of a bit of a a fun word play you're being creative with your word choice there right exactly right you want more support we offer relentless support i like that so i mean let's give our listeners a little takeaway kind of our take on just the word inexorable and what we're gonna do here what we suggest yeah this is interesting to think about right throwing a word like inexorable into a conversation can actually hurt the connection right it's not guaranteed that the person you are talking to will know what it means
that could be awkward for them do not ever put someone in a situation where they have to ask you what does that word mean that you just used right there's power imbalance here there's awkwardness right Right.
So you can use it. But like Lindsay said, maybe at a dinner party with friends that, you know, love words and love learning new words.
That would be a very different situation.
Yeah. It's all about connection.
I mean, I know the time that I remember one specific moment.
I remember this being used for some reason is a meditation talk, like a Dharma talk from one of my teachers.
It was on a recording.
And I remember she was describing something about the universe, about the nature of life.
Right. So she's giving a talk and that kind of thing is a little different.
she's kind of on a platform.
She's got sort of a relaxing tone of voice going on that you can get away with that because we're not in a direct conversation.
She's describing the nature of life.
These kinds of scenarios you could get away with inexorable.
But if you're trying to have a conversation, a back and forth, and you expect a response from the person in front of us, that's when we get into trouble.
Exactly. So this is really interesting because there are a a lot of words like this in English that are a little less common, impressive, but not everyone knows the meaning.
So you are going to, if you're reading Beowulf, for example, there are going to be a lot of places where you will encounter vocabulary that even the average native speaker might not know.
So it's important to track that, right?
Are you hearing native English speakers use it in everyday conversations?
If not, you might not want to throw it into a conversation at work.
Yeah. But there's nothing wrong with knowing what it means and knowing how it works and how to use it.
So that is our final advice.
I love it. Aubrey, see you in the next episode.
All right. You have a good day.
All right. See you next time.
Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
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© transcript Emily Beynon
