News Review from BBC Learning English. Hello and welcome to News Review, the programme where we show you how to use the language from the latest news stories in your everyday English. Hi, I'm Neil. Joining me today is Dan.
Hi Dan. Hello everybody. So what have we got? We've got a story about a sporting surprise.
A sporting surprise. OK, let's find out more from this BBC World Service Bulletin. For the first time in 60 years, Italy have failed to qualify for the Football World Cup finals. The four-time winners of the competition were held to a 0-0 draw by Sweden in the second leg of their play-off in Milan.
So a bad day for Italy, whose international football team has failed to qualify for the World Cup. This is strange because they're four-time winners of the World Cup. They drew with Sweden 0-0, that's 0-0. And it's the first time that this has happened to them in 60 years. Many of the newspapers in Italy are describing it as apocalyptic.
Oh dear, the end of the world. The end of the footballing world, at least. That's it.
OK, well you've been looking around at the various news and sports websites at this story and you've picked out three words and expressions that we can use in our everyday English. I have. What are they? Scathing, goes ballistic and goes… Begging.
OK, scathing. Goes ballistic and goes begging. Let's start with that first one then, please. So, our first headline comes from gold.com and says goodbye to the mummies who control Italian football, Paolo Cannavaro, in scathing attack after World Cup failure.
Scathing, meaning strongly criticising. Exactly. Now, interestingly, this is a Norse... word and we actually still have the verb today, to scathe.
And to scathe means to hurt or to harm. However, we don't use it very much and actually it's used in its adjectival forms. There are two adjectival forms and scathing is one of them, which is a lovely newsy word because it's extremely confrontational, it's very aggressive and it's very, very critical.
And of course, newspapers often report on what other people have said, so it's an extremely useful word within the context. of newspapers. And we use this when we're offering a comment or an attack or a remark, an evaluation. Exactly. I use it on an evaluation.
It collocates very strongly with attack, comment, remark and report and other things of that nature. Yeah. We can also use the word unscathed, which means unhurt, not damaged at all.
Now, do you remember when we talked to the boss this morning about our new show? Yeah, we had an idea for a new show. Yes.
Cats. English. With cats.
English for cats. English for cats. It's going to be the new big thing.
He wasn't happy, though, was he? No, no. He gave us a pretty scathing report of what he thought about our idea.
It was a scathing attack, indeed. It was. However, I emerged relatively unscathed. Yes, you did.
Yeah, because you blamed it all on me. So there we use unscathed to mean... Yes.
escape from a situation unharmed, but we wouldn't say that somebody was scathed. No, you can't be scathed by a football to the face or something like that. It doesn't work. Yeah, OK.
So moving on to our next headline. Our next headline comes from The Sun and says, We need a win. Italy midfielder Daniele De Rossi goes ballistic at coaching staff before World Cup. exit.
So, goes ballistic, suddenly becomes very angry. Indeed. Now, this is an idiom and actually the word ballistic comes from Greek and it means to throw objects.
And you can imagine that goes ballistic means become suddenly very angry. So, you can imagine somebody getting angry and throwing things around because they've lost their temper. And this is a word that we associate often with missiles. Absolutely.
So, missiles, these ballistic missiles are propelled. or thrown forwards. And that's where the word ballistic comes. Something interesting else, sorry, excuse me, something else which is interesting is the word go in this case, because obviously people know the word go meaning to travel, but in this case the word go means become. So, for example, if you're afraid of needles and you have an injection, you might go white.
Or somebody can go missing. A cat, for example, can go missing. Synonyms of go ballistic?
can be sea red. lose your cool or become hot under the collar. Yeah.
I mean, the same thing. You kind of went ballistic earlier, didn't you, Dan? Well, I thought English for cats was a fantastic idea.
Personally. Yeah, but there's no need to start throwing things around, screaming. It wasn't acceptable in the office. Yeah, I do apologise. OK, let's have a look at our last headline.
So, our last headline comes from India Today and says... Italy shocked after World Cup berth goes begging. Goes begging is free to be taken. That's right. Now I'm a bit confused here, Dan.
OK. Because I thought begging was asking for money or for food or for some form of charity. Well, you're not wrong as usual.
But if a person goes begging, then they ask, they go out and try to find money or food or charity. But if something goes begging, It means that it's free to be taken by anybody who wants it. Kind of the opposite of the meaning that you expect, actually. So, for example, there was a party in the office, a different department, not ours, and they had a load of food left over and, well, that food went begging, didn't it? It certainly did.
We came downstairs and we were asking, are those sandwiches going begging? And they were like, yeah, help yourselves. We ate well that day, didn't we? So it doesn't mean that the food was asking for money.
No. That would be ridiculous. It means that it was available for people in need.
Indeed. Anybody, including beggars. And before we have our recap of vocabulary, we of course have our Facebook challenge.
And it's on a sporting theme. Italy's World Cup qualifier ended nil-nil. Now, nil means zero and is associated with football. Can you match these sports teams? sports to their scoring terms.
So here are the scoring terms first and then I'll tell you what the sports are and we'll see how people got on. So a, a deuce, b, a try, c, a century, d, a bullseye. And the sports, one, archery, two, rugby, three, cricket and four, tennis.
So what have we got? Well, I'm pleased to say that people did very well. First, let's cover the correct answer.
So a deuce is associated with tennis. A tri is associated with rugby. A century is associated with cricket. And a bullseye is associated with archery. And I've got a few people here who got that right.
So, well done, Angel Brisseno Morales. Well done, Garda Kassir. Well done, Sandra Clary, M.D. Sabah and Nicola Fermi. All well done. Good answers.
Yes, very good. And quite a difficult one this week. Yeah.
OK, so just a recap now of the vocabulary, please. Certainly. So, first we had scathing.
strongly criticising. Then we had goes ballistic, suddenly becomes very angry. And finally we had goes begging, is free to be taken.
If you would like to test yourself on today's vocabulary, there's a quiz you can take on our website, bbclearningenglish.com, where you can find all kinds of other videos and activities to help you improve your English. Thanks for joining us and goodbye. Goodbye.
News Review from BBC Learning English.