YouTube / iTunes / Spotify / Radio Public / Pocket Casts / Google Podcasts / Breaker / Overcast
Listen to ArtisanEnglish.jp posts & lesson intros here.
Idiom: Knock you off your feet
There are two ways that someone or something can knock you off your feet.
The first way is physical.
If you go outside in a super typhoon and try to walk across the parking lot, the strong winds will knock you off your feet.
Someone or something can knock you off your feet if it physically causes you to fall down or emotionally overwhelms you.
Not getting a flu shot means that it’s more likely you’ll catch the latest flu bug, which will leave you bedridden for a few days if you’re lucky and a week or more if you’re not.
If you’re foolish enough and want to test the theory of getting knocked off your feet, you can enter a ring with Mike Tyson.
Yeah, sure, the guy retired quite a while ago.
Still, a little love tap from the infamous biter, and you’ll be down for the count.
So far, you have three ways in which you can be knocked off your feet in the physical sense.
Now, let me give you three non-painful ways it can occur.
Marriage proposals always seem to do it.
A proposition of marriage, especially if it is unexpected, will undoubtedly excite the receiver and knock them off their feet.
Next, we have a random act of kindness.
Due to the high number of disasters we’ve suffered this year, there have been many acts of kindness.
An act of kindness, especially from a stranger, will surely knock you off your feet.
You will try to say thank you, but expressing your gratitude is hard.
Thirdly, an unexpected raise has excellent potential to knock people off their feet.
The unemployment rate is low across the G8, but for some reason, salaries are not increasing.
A sudden raise just before Christmas is sure to be a welcome surprise and, you guessed it, knock employees off their feet.
That’s all for today.
If you want to knock someone off their feet, you can do it physically or leave them emotionally overwhelmed.
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 78.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.