Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[hanygeorge38]

Dear Bud

I have received an email from a friend of mine she is american
she used in her message some idiom and slangs which was dificult
for me to understand even though i used the famous website for
the dictionaries www.onelook.com


we flew out on Christmas Eve to spend the holidays with the Young 'Uns and their young 'uns

(does the uns means here childern ? )

Now those two have a thoroughly modern marriage in that the husband is the chef in the house. I want one of those kinda guys!!!!) As an impetus to motivate him to crank up the ole cook stove for Christmas vitals

(what is meant here by to crank up the ole cook stove for Christmas
vitals)


I intended to send out a humorous newsletter with the Chrissy cards but but I refrained. The ole poop....

(what is meant here by the ole poop....)

I had forwarded a recipe to him for Home-made Eggnog. Darned if he didn't take the bait and marshal the ingredients as an adventure in entertaining

(what is meant here by {Darned} if he didn't {take the bait} and {marshal the ingredients} as an adventure in entertaining )


what is meant by (let out a yelp)

Thanks
_________________
hany

[Sirius]

[bud]

Hi Hany,

Just adding a few thoughts...

Young'uns is a slang contraction for young ones. Sometimes people use this old rural slang in a jocular, loving sense.

To crank up something is jocular way to say to start up a macine or device. (In fact, all of her slang has a jocular, loving sense.) It connects back to a time when we, for example, had to crank a car in order to start it; or we had to go outside and gather wood, bring it into the kitchen and load it into the stove, start the fire, and let it heat up awhile before we could start cooking.

Vitals is very old, rural slang for cooked food.

Ole is slang for old, again, with that jocular, loving sense attached to it.

Poop would almost certainly be a man. In your friend's context, it is endearing. In another context, it might express mild annoyance. Fart means just about the same thing, although its negative sense is probably stronger than poop's negative sense.

Darned was once a somewhat polite repacement for damned, which at one time was very rude to say in public. That's no longer true. Still, darned continues with that jocular theme.

Take the bait is a reference from fishing. You plop the best bait you have for the fish you want to catch on your hook, and hope the fish takes the bait; that he bites hard enough to get caught on the hook. Her sending him the recipe was the bait. He bit.

[advoca]

Oops!

Nice typo there, Bud. Not vitals, vittles (regional variant for victuals)

[bud]

Yikes! How did I not notice that?

[advoca]

Don't worry, Bud. It's not vital.

[Bob S.]

_________________
"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper

[Marcomb]

HI,

I watch movies a lot, and I encounter a lot of slang and idioms I don't understand. Over past couple of months, I develop ways to find out meanings of them.

Generally, you can type the slang in quotation, "crank up� + meaning, in google, you will be directed to the site I suggested here.

But to be more efficient, I would use http://www.answers.com/ as general dictionary, it has good definition of words, followed by translation to most of the languages, for me is Chinese. The special feature of this site is that it will suggest possible phrase or idioms for you to choose, and you can get the answer quicker. Also, you can try to find idioms from their idiom section http://www.answers.com/library/Idioms.

To find out real American slang, I would suggest http://www.urbandictionary.com/, it's not a formal dictionary, but it provides close-to-real-life explanation from many people with suggested accuracy rating.

I can find almost 95% meaning of slang and idioms by the combination of Google, answers.com, and urbandictionary.

Good luck
Martin