Words and Their Stories: Get Your Act Together
12 November 2011
I'm Susan Clark with the Special English program WORDS AND THEIR STORIES.
A woman from Japan was telling a friend about her trip to the United States. The woman had visited major businesses and investment companies in New York City and Chicago.
"I studied English before I left home," she said. "But I still was not sure that people were speaking English."
Her problem is easy to understand. Americans in business are like people who are in business anywhere. They have a language of their own. Some of the words and expressions deal with the special areas of their work. Other expressions are borrowed from different kinds of work such as the theater and movie industry.
One such saying is
get your act together.
When things go wrong in a business, an employer may get angry. He may shout, "Stop making mistakes. Get your act together."
Or, if the employer is calmer, he may say, "Let us get our act together."
Either way, the meaning is the same. Getting your act together is getting organized. In business, it usually means to develop a calm and orderly plan of action.
It is difficult to tell exactly where the saying began. But, it is probable that it was in the theater or movie industry. Perhaps one of the actors was nervous and made a lot of mistakes. The director may have said, "Calm down, now. Get your act together."
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