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Episode: Business Jargon: Jargon about delays

Author: BBC News
Duration: 00:06:18

Episode Shownotes

Pippa and Phil talk about some common business jargon that is used to talk about delays and priorities at work. Find a full transcript for this episode and more programmes to help you with your English at: ``https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish`/english/features/business-jargon/241125FIND` BBC LEARNING ENGLISH HERE: Visit our website ✔️ https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish Follow us ✔️

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Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_00
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hello and welcome to Learning English for Work and our special series all about business jargon. I'm Phil.

00:00:13 Speaker_02
And I'm Pippa. We've been talking about the strange words and phrases we use at work that not everyone understands and today we're focusing on the ways we talk about delays.

00:00:24 Speaker_00
Yes, you can visit our website for a transcript of this episode to read along with. That's bbclearningenglish.com.

00:00:36 Speaker_02
So, Phil, sometimes it can feel like things are happening really slowly at work.

00:00:42 Speaker_00
Yes, it can be frustrating, can't it, if you've got an idea you really want to get started on but maybe there's not enough time, there's not enough space, there's other more important things.

00:00:54 Speaker_02
Yeah, or you've got something you're really passionate about and you're in meetings and you just feel like other people are delaying it, they don't want you to kind of get cracking on your idea.

00:01:05 Speaker_00
And we're going to look at some common jargon phrases that are used to talk about delays.

00:01:11 Speaker_02
Yeah, so the first phrase we have is to put something on the back burner. Do you know what that means, Phil?

00:01:19 Speaker_00
It sounds like something to do with cooking.

00:01:22 Speaker_02
Well, I think it actually is. So if you think about your stove, your place where you cook things, a stove or a hob, you have hot rings in the front and then you might have a smaller ring and that's the back burner. So it cooks things more slowly.

00:01:38 Speaker_02
So we're using this metaphorically. So if we put something on the back burner, we're putting it somewhere it's going to cook more slowly. It's the things that are less urgent or important.

00:01:49 Speaker_02
If you're going to stop making something a priority, for example.

00:01:53 Speaker_00
Yes, there's another one we've got here. To park something. And yes, it is what you do with your car. Of course, if you park your car, then you leave it somewhere and you don't do anything to it for a while. And with work, it means the same thing.

00:02:11 Speaker_00
You leave it and you don't do any work on it for now. Maybe you come back to it later.

00:02:16 Speaker_02
Yeah, so if you were in a meeting and you were talking about a project and then your boss said, oh, I think we're going to park that project for now, that means we're not going to do any more work on it at the moment.

00:02:29 Speaker_00
The next one we've got here is to put a pin in something, which is about remembering something for later. I don't know, maybe like pinning something to a notice board or in your calendar or something.

00:02:41 Speaker_02
Yeah, so when we put a pin in something, we mean we need to kind of remember it, we need to know that it was important.

00:02:48 Speaker_02
So people might say this if they're having an interesting and useful conversation at work and then something else gets in the way, you know, maybe somebody calls or there's a meeting.

00:02:59 Speaker_02
And the idea with saying, oh, let's put a pin in this is that you pause the discussion, but you remember what you were talking about so that you can talk about it later. So it's only a small delay, unlike the other phrases that we've talked about.

00:03:11 Speaker_00
Right now a lot of these phrases have got this idea that you might return to something later, so they're often used like this.

00:03:18 Speaker_00
Although they could also be a polite way of telling you just to stop working on something and maybe you're not actually going to go back to it in future.

00:03:27 Speaker_02
So it's difficult to know whether you ever will return to something. If I say, oh, put a pin in that idea, Phil, come back to me later about that, I might actually mean, oh, actually, can you just focus on what I've asked you to do?

00:03:41 Speaker_02
It's kind of difficult to see. And these are kind of some of the nuances we get with using this kind of jargon.

00:03:53 Speaker_02
So that's some phrases that are often used to pause work on certain projects or ideas, but we also have a few common phrases to talk about a situation where delays keep happening, Phil.

00:04:05 Speaker_00
Yes, maybe sometimes you just put something off and it means to delay something and we often put something off because we just don't want to do it.

00:04:17 Speaker_02
Yeah, that's a really common phrasal verb. So you could just say, Oh, I'm going to put that off until later. It means you just don't do it for now.

00:04:25 Speaker_02
Another phrase we have that we've actually talked before about on this podcast is the idea of kicking the can down the road. So if you kick the can down the road, instead of solving the problem, you just delay dealing with it.

00:04:39 Speaker_02
So the problem doesn't go away, you just kick the can down the road, but you'll have to probably deal with it later.

00:04:45 Speaker_00
And while we're talking about kicking, you can also kick something into the long grass. And that's similar to kicking the can, except we use this when we think someone's delaying something and they hope people will forget about the problem.

00:04:58 Speaker_00
It's in the long grass, no one can see it.

00:05:01 Speaker_02
Yeah, people sometimes use this when they're talking about politics as well.

00:05:05 Speaker_02
So they might say that a politician is kicking a problem into the long grass and they're just hoping maybe that nobody notices and it's not going to become a problem in the future.

00:05:18 Speaker_00
Do people use strange phrases at work you'd like to understand better? Or maybe there's some business jargon that just drives you mad? Email us at learning.english at bbc.co.uk.

00:05:35 Speaker_02
That's it for this episode of Learning English for Work. Next time we'll talk about the jargon for success at work and there's quite a lot of it.

00:05:43 Speaker_00
See you then. Bye. Bye.

00:06:02 Speaker_01
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00:06:16 Speaker_01
Just search BBC Learning English newsletter or follow the link in the notes for this programme.

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