YouTube / iTunes / Spotify / Radio Public / Pocket Casts / Google Podcasts / Breaker / Overcast
Listen to ArtisanEnglish.jp posts & lesson intros here.
WotD: Quid pro quo
Hello boys and girls, I’m back with another Latin term again. This time it’s quid pro quo.
Now, don’t roll your eyes and say you don’t need to know Latin.
If you graduated from university, then you should know a little Latin.
If you want to speak English at a high level, you should know some.
I’m doing my best to teach you what I know, and I hope you’re doing your best to learn it.
That’s what today’s Latin word means.
It’s an equal exchange; I do something for you, you do something for me. To put it simply, it’s a win-win situation.
Another familiar way of expressing the same idea is with the expression I scratch your back, you scratch mine.
We all want to get a fair deal.
If I think about the use of quid pro quo in everyday culture, my mind immediately turns to the movie The Silence of the Lambs.
There’s a scene in that movie where the main character, Hannibal Lecter, uses it.
He says, “Quid pro quo – I tell you things, you tell me things. Not about this case, though. About yourself. Quid pro quo. Yes or no? Yes or no, Clarice? Poor little Catherine is waiting.”
If you watched that movie in Japanese, you missed the Latin in that quote.
Quid pro quo is also a great term to use in contract negotiations.
Any negotiation requires give and take on both sides.
Yes, both sides want to get the better of the other, but the best settlement is one which is mutually beneficial for both sides.
That way, there are no hard feelings.
When discussing the terms of a deal, you could meet some of the other party’s demands but then use quid pro quo to get them to meet your requirements for something.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 6th-grade education (age 11).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 82.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.
