Have the Last Laugh With These English Idioms

Lindsay McMahon (0:00)

This is an All Ears English Podcast, episode 2702 Have the last laugh with these English idioms.

Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English? We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection, with your American host, Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer. Coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA. And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com/subscribe.

Aubrey Carter (0:51)

For more connection in life, lighten up, find out what we mean by that today, and get four ways to talk about laughing it off in English.

SPEAKER_3 (1:03)

This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom.

Aubrey Carter (1:05)

For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story.

SPEAKER_4 (1:09)

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Aubrey Carter (1:12)

The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom.

SPEAKER_4 (1:21)

Big or small, we're here for all of it.

Aubrey Carter (1:24)

Celebrating 125 years with new moments still ahead. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at nordstrom.com.

Hello, Lindsay. How are you today?

Lindsay McMahon (1:35)

Hey there, Aubrey. I'm feeling great today. I'm feeling great. What are we getting into on the show?

Aubrey Carter (1:39)

I have a question for you to start us out. Have you ever been in a situation where things went really wrong?

Lindsay McMahon (1:46)

Yeah. I feel like my dad has really bad luck. So when I was looking at colleges back when I was 17, we went down to Washington DC. I wanted to look at some colleges there, and we flew into Dulles Airport, and so we thought we were flying back out of Dulles Airport to go home. Of course, that would make sense. I would assume that. You would think that, but no.

Somehow our reservation was to go out of National Airport. So there are two or three airports in the DC area. So we show up at Dulles Airport and we're not on the list. We go to check in. We're not on any list, any flight.

And so we had to reroute ourselves all over the East Coast. I think we ended up in Chicago and maybe Atlanta. I don't know. Just trying to get back to the Boston area. It was wild. But yeah, we were able to laugh it off within a couple days, I think.

Aubrey Carter (2:41)

Nice. That's impressive. Yeah, we're talking about this phrase, laugh it off today. Sometimes when something goes really wrong, it takes a little while before you can laugh it off, right? I'm going to be upset about this for a few days, and then eventually you can laugh it off. What is that phrase for you to laugh it off? Let's go. So we have some really interesting vocabulary today.

And we're going to share a few different phrases like this, laugh it off phrases for when you're able to see the humor in something, right?

Lindsay McMahon (3:07)

Aubrey, do you feel like you've gotten better at laughing things off as you've gotten older? Do you think this is an acquired skill that comes with age?

Aubrey Carter (3:14)

I maybe think the opposite. When I was younger, I was really good at laughing things off, right? I just like nothing seemed very high stakes. I didn't take anything very seriously. Things would go crazy wrong. And I'm just like, whatever. Whereas now, now things have more real import. Yeah, that's true.

Lindsay McMahon (3:32)

You have kids and everything.

Aubrey Carter (3:34)

Often it's harder to laugh things off now, but usually give me a little time and I'll be able to look back and see the humor.

Lindsay McMahon (3:41)

Yeah, I feel like it's an interesting mix of both. For me, it's like as I've gotten older, I've realized things aren't as serious as I thought they were before. But you're right, there's higher stakes now in a way. Like maybe you've spent more money on the vacation or something, or everyone's planning to do the plan you created, for example.

Aubrey Carter (4:00)

That's the thing. If you're in Charlie, it's your idea, it's your plan, everyone's upset. Whereas when you're a kid, you don't have that kind of responsibility.

Lindsay McMahon (4:07)

You're just like, you're just along for the ride. When my dad screwed up our flights, I was like, okay, that was a bad job.

Aubrey Carter (4:15)

He might have been really upset about it. You're just like chilling.