Now, the VOA Learning English software Words and Their Stories.
There are numerous styles of citrus fruit. The maximum not unusual are limes, oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, and lemons.
Out of all of them, it’s miles the lemon that has found its manner into some of English language expressions.
While consuming an orange or grapefruit may be high-quality, we do not usually devour plain lemons. Lemons are truly bitter. The acid in them makes it simply difficult to eat them uncooked. Lemons are so acidic they could truly take the protective tooth off your teeth.
So, biting into a lemon does now not deliver a smile on your face. In reality, when someone is sad, she may additionally have a puckered look on her face. In this case, we can say she seems like she just sucked on a lemon. We can also call this individual a sourpuss. This is someone who continually complains and usually seems sad.
With its simply sour taste, sucking on a lemon is unsightly. So, telling a person to “Go suck a lemon!” is a way of displaying your anger. It’s not sincerely fine and sounds childish. But there are worse things you may say!
While we don’t normally eat lemons uncooked, they could add taste and nutrition to foods and drinks. But in everyday speech, the word “lemon” normally represents something negative, terrible, or broken.
For instance, if you hand a person a lemon, you’ve got given them something this is broken or doesn’t work. This expression manner that you have created them. A “lemon” also can suggest an unsatisfactory solution.
As we said, lemon maybe something to procure that doesn’t make paintings. It is defective. Americans often use the phrase lemon to describe a newly-bought, however faulty automobile.
Let’s say you go to a car dealership and purchase what you watched is a good car. On the streets around the dealership, it runs perfectly. But at the drive domestic, the whole thing goes wrong—the gasoline pedal sticks. The engine begins smoking. Then it simply stops going for walks in the middle of the road!
You have sold a lemon.
As you watch the tow truck do away with the automobile for repairs, you name the dealership and demand your money again. The salesman says with a laugh, “No way! All sales are very last!”
Now, many people might get angry. Not most effective do you no longer have an automobile, but you’ve got misplaced a whole lot of money. But you do not get disenchanted. You find a manner to make this example work for you.
After all, you are a person who seems in the brilliant aspect. Your lifestyles’ perception is: When existence gives you lemons, you make lemonade!
Here, the time period “lemon” means a problem or problem in existence. Lemonade is a fab fresh drink. You may want to say it is the prize you get using overcoming a problem with your precise mindset.
So, we use this expression to describe a state of affairs in which something goes incorrect; however, the character inside the scenario chooses to turn it into a fantastic revel. People who flip lemons into lemonade we call constructive. They have a can-do mindset!
This is a commonplace word, and we use it in many different situations. Sometimes we do not even need to say the whole lot. If you, in reality, say, “When existence gives you lemons …” humans will know what you imply.
So, lower back to our damaged vehicle story. You take the lemon of an automobile you purchased from the dealership, and you’re making lemonade.
First, you study your rights as a buyer under a measure referred to as the lemon law. In America, this calls for a car producer or dealer to replace, restore, or refund an automobile’s fee that proves to be faulty after purchase.
Under the lemon regulation, you will get your cash lower back. But do not forestall there. Why make a glass of lemonade when you could make a whole pitcher!
You warn buddies and buddies about that car dealership. You write an editorial for the nearby newspaper approximately lemon legal guidelines. The newspaper receives many emails and letters from those who had similar reviews. Knowing their rights, they also demand their cash lower back for the lemons that had been brought to them. The newspaper is so satisfied with the number of responses that it gives you a part-time activity writing stories about customer problems.
You’ve become a horrific experience into something desirable, and you’ve helped others. Life gave you lemons, and you made lemonade.
And this is the stop of this week’s Words and Their Stories.
I’m Anna Matteo.
Have you ever needed to make lemonade from the lemons existence gave you? Or do you have got a comparable expression in your language? Let us know inside the Comments Section.
“Lemon tree very quiet and the lemon flower is good. But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat. Lemon-tree very quiet, and the lemon flower is nice. But the fruit of the terrible lemon is impossible to consume.”
Anna Matteo wrote this tale for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor. Peter, Paul, and Mary sing the tune “Lemon Tree” at the piece’s cease.
God confirmed me. Lately, it is good whilst lifestyles work towards me because this is the handiest time I can respond in a godly manner.
I can not reply in a godly way whilst fortunes are properly; once I’m ‘blessed’ after, I don’t have anything to whinge approximately. I can simplest reply as a person remotely connected to Christ whilst things do not go my manner.
Faith gives us the possibility to do our first-class while we’re at our worst.
It’s not a foregone end that this is the case, for we nonetheless want to surrender ourselves before our God. But the cause we can don’t forget our trials and struggles as pure pleasure (see James 1:2-4) is that they reveal God’s Spirit is in us through our humble responses. A struggle is our opportunity.
Only once I’m being maligned via any person can I reply in one of these foreign ways as to be noticed as someone special – the solution for that’s I stay for God. After I reply to take in the hurt propelled in opposition to me when I reply in kindly, mild grace, having most effective like to provide.
It is simplest once I feel justified to complain, yet chorus, that I understand the peace in accepting matters as they’re. Accepting something apparently impossible can also contain a massive paradigm shift and commitment, but it unveils something fundamental and primary. When the flesh folds, the Spirit surely takes over. This is especially true when matters are too hard to respond to in the flesh. We forestall combating.
