. This is an official spokesperson. Government-run media could also be called a mouthpiece.

Sometimes when one person is speaking, he says the same thing that his friend was going to say. When this happens, the friend might say: “

You took the words right out of my mouth

!” Sometimes a person has a bad or unpleasant experience with another person. He might say that experience “

left a bad taste in my mouth

.” Or the person might have had a very frightening experience, like being chased by an angry dog. He might say: “

I had my heart in my mouth

.”

Some people have lots of money because they were born into a very rich family. There is an expression for this, too. You might say such a person, “

was born with a silver spoon in his mouth

.”

This rich person is the opposite of a person who lives from

hand to mouth

. This person is very poor and only has enough money for the most important things in life, like food.

Parents might sometimes withhold sweet food from a child as a form of punishment for saying bad things. For example, if a child says things she should not say to her parents, she might be described as

a mouthy child

. The parents might even tell the child to

stop mouthing off

.

But enough of all this talk. I have been

running my mouth

long enough.

(MUSIC)

WORDS AND THEIR STORIES, in VOA Special English, was written by Jill Moss. I’m Faith Lapidus.