Episode 0172

Hello everyone and welcome to English Pod. My name is Marco.

That's right. We are going to take our clothes to the dry cleaners.

Okay, so that means we have some dirty clothes they need to be cleaned.

Let's listen to this dialogue one time and when we come back, we'll be talking about the words and phrases that you hear in it.

Hello, Mr. Henderson, what can I do for you?

Okay, I can have it ready by the end of the week.

Okay, I can have it ready tomorrow afternoon, but this suit is also very stained. I can't guarantee we can remove it completely.

Fine. Can you also iron and starch this shirt?

Certainly.

All right, we're back. So now there are probably a couple of words that you didn't understand. So why don't we look at those now in language takeaway?

Language Takeaway

Marco, you already told our listeners about one phrase, uh, to dry clean, so dry cleaned.

All right, so that's when you take your clothes to a professional who doesn't only wash them, right? You don't just put water and soap on it. They actually put some special chemicals and use special machines to get very hard to remove stains from it.

Exactly. And so this is often what we use when we clean coats or fancy shirts and dresses because you don't want to clean those yourself.

Right, you can't put those in the washing machine.

No, so this is the dry cleaner, that's the name of the place. And the action, what they do is they dry clean clothes.

Okay, very good.

All right, well, I mentioned that we take them to the dry cleaners because we want to remove stains.

Okay, so a stain is a mark or some color that does not come off, does not go away.

All right, so for example, um, sometimes you can have a wine stain.

Ooh, wine stains are the worst, they're red and they never come off or a blood stain.

Or a blood stain. Right, so you can a stain is a noun, but you can also use it as an adjective. My shirt is stained.

Okay, so it's stained. My pants are stained and I can't wear them again.

Again, now that's also you can also use it as a verb. I stained my pants.

All right. So it's a verb, it's a noun and an adjective, all in one.

Easy to remember. Well, there's another word that's, uh, well, related to this word. We spilled something, okay? So I spilled wine and it stained my shirt.

Okay, so to spill. And that means that you took some liquid and you put it onto your clothes.

Or you dropped it and it made a mess. Okay, so spill, I spilled some milk.

Okay, spilled. Now, it's pronounced differently from spell, right?

That's right.

It has an an I spelled.

All right, now, our next word is also a noun and a verb, to iron.

To iron means to make something flat with no lines, okay? To smooth it out. So we use an iron to iron.

Exactly. So it's a metal, electronic object.

It gets very hot. So you wash your shirts for example, and your shirts are wrinkled because you just washed them. So you need to iron them.

That's right. And so you smooth them out, you flatten them with this object, an iron.

Okay. And well, usually, if you take them to the dry cleaners, they will iron them and also starch them.

Okay, so to starch something means to use uh some powder or chemical to make something stiff or uh hard.

So the the noun or the the chemical is also called starch.

Exactly. So you think of a shirt with many buttons that a man wears to work. He has a collar around his neck and that needs to be high and tall. It can't be flat and wrinkled. And so a dry cleaner will use starch to make sure that this stands up.

Okay, very good.

So those are five keywords for the dialogue today. Let's listen to the dialogue again and we'll be back with fluency builder.

Hello, Mr. Henderson, what can I do for you?

Okay, I can have it ready by the end of the week.

Okay, I can have it ready tomorrow afternoon, but this suit is also very stained. I can't guarantee we can remove it completely.

Fine. Can you also iron and starch this shirt?

Certainly.

All right, we're back now, so let's take a look at Fluency Builder.

Thank God.

Thank God.

All right, what is this phrase Thank God?

Okay, this is a is a phrase we use in English to say that we're happy about something or that we're relieved. Okay. So maybe I'm nervous that the mail isn't going to come today. And then the mail comes and I say, oh, thank God, the mail came. Yeah. I'm happy. I was, I was hoping it would come.

So you're relieved. Thank God.

Now, uh, is it, you know, we are using the word there, God, but it doesn't really have a kind of like a religious connotation that much, right?

Not anymore. No. It's usually just a phrase.

Okay. Now, what about this acronym ASAP or ASAP?

ASAP, so as soon as possible. It's an acronym, so the first letter comes from the word. It means as soon as possible, very quickly, right away.

You always hear that in in an office setting as well. I need those papers ASAP. I need those reports ASAP.

Exactly. So you can say it either way, ASAP or ASAP, and it means immediately.

Okay. And he said that he needed the suit ASAP and he said, I can have it ready by the end of the week.

Okay, so that might not be fast enough for the client, for the person here who has the stain, but, uh, the end of the week is a very, very useful phrase because it means, um, that maybe today's Monday or Tuesday, by Friday or Saturday, we'll have this ready for you. Because we think of the end of the week as Friday, maybe. Thursday, Friday.

So I can say the end of the week or the end of the day.

Exactly, the end of the month.

Or the end of the year.

Very good. Okay. So great phrases there as well. Let's listen to the dialogue for the last time.

Hello, Mr. Henderson, what can I do for you?

Okay, I can have it ready by the end of the week.

Okay, I can have it ready tomorrow afternoon, but this suit is also very stained. I can't guarantee we can remove it completely.

Fine. Can you also iron and starch this shirt?

Certainly.

All right, we're back. So now dry cleaning, ironing, are you good at this or do you get a lot of your clothes dry cleaned?

Really?

Really?

Mhm.

Really, why is that?

It is frustrating. It takes some practice. Uh, my suggestion is to use the the spritzer, you know, that in the iron, there's some water that can come out, like that.

Well, if you, if you spray the water, it, it makes the, the lines go out for longer.

Ah.

Right, because if you iron over that, it's more permanent.

I've also seen some sprays sometimes that you can spray your clothes with some special chemical that's not actually starch, but it helps remove the wrinkles quicker.

Exactly. I, I don't use that. I use water generally, but, uh, they're all available.

All right. So that's all the time we have for today. If you have any questions or comments, you can visit our comment section on EnglishPod.com and we'll see you guys there.

The English pod audio review.

Listen to the meaning, then say the vocabulary word.

Way to clean clothes without water using chemicals.

Dry clean.

To allow something to fall from the container.

Spill.

Marked or dyed or discolored with foreign matter.

Stained.

Stiffen clothes, etc. with starch.

Starch.

To smooth clothes with a heated iron.

Iron.

Let's try that faster.

Marked or dyed or discolored with foreign matter.

Stained.

To allow something to fall from the container.

Spill.

Stiffen clothes, etc. with starch.

Starch.

Way to clean clothes without water using chemicals.

Dry clean.

To smooth clothes with a heated iron.

Iron.

Now say the word and hear it in a sentence.

Dry clean.

I need to dry clean my skirt.

Dry clean.

I picked up your clothes from the dry cleaners.

Dry clean.

The tag on this shirt says dry clean only.

Spill.

She spilled her juice all over her homework.

Spill.

He was in such a hurry that he spilled his coffee all over the front of his shirt.

Spill.

There was an oil spill just off the coast.

Stained.

Her children had grass stains on their pants.

Stained.

I'm never going to be able to get this stain out of this shirt.

Stained.

The wine he spilled stained his pants.

Starch.

Can you starch my shirt?

Starch.

He starched his dress shirts so that they were nice and crisp.

Starch.

You can starch your jeans as well.

Iron.

He irons his shirt before putting it on.

Iron.

I need to iron the laundry.

Iron.

Every night, my mom does the ironing while watching TV.

The English Pod audio review.