YouTube / iTunes / Spotify / Radio Public / Pocket Casts / Google Podcasts / Breaker / Overcast
Listen to ArtisanEnglish.jp posts & lesson intros here.
Idiom: Bite/hold your tongue
So, how good are you at biting your tongue?
Yes, I know now, and then you may accidentally do it while eating, and it hurts.
That’s not what I mean.
What I mean this time is how good you are not saying something when you really want to say it.
Sometimes, you want to tell your friends they should not post a particular picture on Instagram.
Perhaps the photo is too risqué, or they do not look good when they’re drunk.
You may create an uncomfortable situation by saying something, so you bite your tongue and let them learn the hard way.
Then, there are times at the office when the boss has ideas about how things should be done and asks if everyone else agrees with his decisions.
Now, everyone knows that the boss’s approach is a bad one.
However, they also see the boss does not take constructive criticism well.
Therefore, everyone bites their tongue, knowing that when the idea is proven inadequate, the only one responsible is the boss.
My students and I often talk about hot-button issues related to politics or religion, but we always do so with an academic purpose in mind.
They may say something I can’t agree with, or I may say something that they find slightly offensive.
However, we both bite our tongues.
We know that the purpose of the conversation is for them to learn to express their thoughts correctly in English, not to have a heated argument or fight.
When you bite your tongue, you prevent yourself from saying something even though you want to.
Knowing when to bite your tongue and when to speak your mind is a specialized skill unto itself.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 73.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.