Transcript of AE 687 – Expression: Give Someone a Run for Their Money

I'm trying to keep up with all this stuff, but they really are giving me a run for my money here.

I think because we cover technology, we can recount. We almost feel beholden to actually kind of put our money where our mouths are, and actually to give it a run for its money and see what it can do.

No roster of natural poisons would be complete without a visit to the kingdom fungi because although few of its thousands of species are poisonous, some of the ones that are contained toxins that would give botulism a run for its money.

The screen on the Infant Optics is right in the middle of the size range, but the high resolution and great camera quality, gave Samsung a run for their money.

G'day, guys and welcome to Aussie English. My objective here is to teach you guys the English spoken Down Under. So, whether you want to speak like a fair dinkum Aussie or you just want to understand what the flipping hell we're on about when we are having a yarn, you've come to the right place. So, sit back, grab a cuppa and enjoy Aussie English.

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Anyway, bit of an intro there, guys. But let's get into today's episode. So the expression is 'to give someone a run for their money', 'to give someone a run for their money'. Have you heard this expression used before in English? I believe this is one that's fine to use anyway. It's not specific to Australia. You'll hear British people saying it, you'll probably hear South Africans, New Zealanders, you'll hear Americans saying it'.

To give someone a run for their money'. I wonder if you know what this means. Before we get into that, let's go through a little joke. And I was like, how can I tie this in with the expression? So, I found a joke about money, ok? It's a bad one, as always, but yeah, it's a pun. It's a word, play on words, right? It's a joke, that is a play on words. Here we go.

Why should you always borrow money from a pessimist?

Why should you always borrow money from a pessimist?

So, a pessimist is someone who is very negative, right? The opposite of an optimist, someone who always assumes the worst things are going to happen. They are a pessimist. So, why should you always borrow money from a pessimist?

Because they'll never expect it back.

Get it? They'll never expect to receive the money returned to them, right? They'll never think about the possibility of ever seeing that money again. They will have kissed that money goodbye when they gave it to you because they're a pessimist, right? They're very negative person, always assuming the worst, as opposed to an optimist who would assume the money would come back, right?

So, why should you always borrow money from a pessimist? Because they'll never expect it back.

Alright. So, today's expression 'to give someone a run for their money'. Bit of a long one, it's a bit of a long expression's. There's quite a few words in there. But let's go through and define them.

So, 'give', right? To give someone something is to, well, could be to hand someone something, right? You're holding it and you hand it to the other person to have maybe momentarily, maybe forever. You give that thing to that person.

A 'run'. This is the act of running in a race, right? So, if you're playing, say something like baseball and you step up to the tee, you hit the ball and then you run to first base, second base, third base, and then a home that is a run, right? A run. I guess they have them in cricket as well, where you run the length of the cricket pitch, they run.

'For'. Now, man, this one's a hard one to define, right? It's weird how the smaller words in English tend to have so many meanings and be relatively difficult to define at times. So, the word 'for,' not the number, right? F O R is used to indicate the object or recipient of a perception, desire or activity, right? There's the jargon for the explanation, but let's give you some examples. If a bear was chasing you right? Maybe a drop bear in Australia, if a bear was chasing you, you shouldn't run for your life, You should play dead, right? You shouldn't run for your life.

Another example might be that someone has a good eye for a bargain, right? They got a good eye for a bargain. Find these hard words to define.

'Their'. This is simply the third person, plural pronoun possessive, right? 'Their'. 'Their'. So, it's their car, it's not my car. These keys are their keys, they're not my keys.

And the last word here, 'money', is just coins and bank notes, right? You open your wallet up, you hopefully got some money inside your wallet. So, could be coins, could be bank notes, 'money', right? There a sort of medium that you can exchange in order to purchase things or sell things.

So, what does the expression 'to give someone a run for their money' mean? It means to challenge someone, to provide someone or something with challenging competition, to give them a run for their money. And it's got an interesting origin. I looked this up and it comes from horse racing where if you want a run for your money, it is that you want a horse to do well in a race that you've put money on, right?

You bet money on that horse and you want it to run for your money. You want it to participate in that race. And so the thing is, sometimes horses can be taken out of races after people have already placed money on them, after they've already placed bets on those horses. And so if that happens, the bettors don't get a run for their money, right? They don't have a chance to win money because the horse is gone.

So, if the horses in the race, they want a run for their money, they want that horse to challenge the competition, to provide the rest of the horses with challenging competition. So, I guess the horse is giving the other horses a run for their money, but also the better. Anyway, to make it more clear, let's go through some examples.

So, number one: imagine you're a coach of a local footy club in rural Australia, right? Footy, football, could be AFL footy, could be rugby, depending on which state you're in. They use that term footy to refer to that weirdo's in Queensland.

Anyway. So, you're the coach of a local footy club, your team isn't made up of pro athletes, right? Far from it. Instead, it's made up of everyday Joes, you know, just blokes from down the street. They have everyday jobs, they're middle aged. Maybe they're dads, you know, they're just your average Joe, everyday guy.

And they only train once a week, as a result, before the Saturday game. So, your team plays through the season, does pretty well and the grand finals coming up. And it turns out that your team has managed to earn a place in the grand final and has a chance of winning the premiership, right? The championship, whatever you want to call it in that case.

However, to give the other team a run for their money, you'll have to get your players to train extra hard in the lead up to the final match, right? They'll have to maybe knock off from work early a few days in the week leading up to the game. They'll have to do some extra workouts, put in the hard yards, do some fitness training in order to give their opponents a run for their money. So, hopefully they give them a run for their money and they win the finals.

Example number two, this is a bit of a romantic example. Imagine you are starting year 12 at school, right? The final year of high school in Australia, year 12. And you notice there's a new girl. She's come from a different school, she's moved to your school and she's completely new. Doesn't know anyone, right? Pretty quickly, you think, oh, she's really attractive, she seems really nice.

And you get the hots for her. So, over the following days and weeks, you sort of see her around school and you start to develop a bit of a crush on her. You get the hots for her, right? You start to sort of have, I guess, what would that be? A romantic interest in this girl. So, you notice also, though, that a whole bunch of other blokes, well, kids at school, have also, you know, had their interest piqued by this girl, they're also wanting to ask her out on a date.

So, you want to beat them to the punch and know, your only way of getting a date with this girl is by making a good first impression when you, you know, finally strike up the courage to chat with her. So, you pluck up the courage one day hoping you'll give the other guys a run for their money and sweep her off her feet.

However, unfortunately, you end up sort of lost for words and your attempt to chat with her ends up going badly, right? You fall flat on your face. You make a bit of a fool of yourself and the other guys end up having a chance after all. So, you didn't manage to give them a run for their money.

The last example here is imagine that you are a wildlife photographer who's recently gone on a trip to a country in Africa, maybe somewhere like Namibia, right? So, you went on safari taking heaps of different stunning photos of the picturesque landscape and the majestic wild animals, the beautiful wild animals, things like elephants, lions, buffalo, wildebeest, cheetahs, and you just really enjoying yourself.

So, between outings, though, when you go back to your camp, you're busily editing all these photos and then posting them up online. And when you get home from the trip, once it's completely finished, what you're hoping to do is to submit these photos, at least the best ones, into different photography competitions to try and, you know, win some money, maybe become a little bit famous.

So, on your trip during one day, you ended up taking an absolutely phenomenal photo of a cheetah, right? Sitting on its mound with a bunch of cubs. The sun was just right, the light was beautiful, and when you're done editing the photo, you know, it's a real winner and will definitely give any competition in these photography camps a run for their money, right? It's a ripper. It's a real beauty of a photo. It's definitely going to give everyone a run for their money.

So, there you go, guys. That is the expression 'to give someone a run for their money', to challenge someone, to provide someone or something with challenging competition.

So, let's have a quick listen to those phrases again that you heard at the start of this episode, see if you can understand how the context of them using this expression. Let's go.

I'm trying to keep up with all this stuff, but they really are giving me a run for my money here.

I think because we cover technology, week in, week out, we almost feel beholden to actually kind of put our money where our mouths are, and actually to give it a run for its money and see what it can do.

No roster of natural poisons would be complete without a visit to the kingdom Fungi because although few of its thousands of species are poisonous, some of the ones that are contain toxins that would give botulism a run for its money.

The screen on the Infant Optics is right in the middle of the size range, but the high resolution and great camera quality, gave Samsung a run for their money.

Alright. Good work. So, now let's go through a little listen and repeat exercise. We'll talk about a quick Aussie English Fact and then we'll finish up for the day. So, listen and repeat after me, guys, let's go.

To.

To give.

To give someone.

To give someone a.

To give someone a run.

To give someone a run for.

To give someone a run for their.

To give someone a run for their money.

To give someone a run for their money.

To give someone a run for their money.

To give someone a run for their money.

To give someone a run for their money.

I'm going to give him a run for his money.

You're going to give him a run for his money.

She's going to give him a run for his money.

He's going to give him a run for his money.

We're going to give him a run for his money.

They're going to give him a run for his money.

It's going to give him a run for his money.

Great job, guys, great job. Remember, if you want to work on your pronunciation and learn the sort of secret tips and tricks for connected speech and sounding much more natural when you speak English, too, you know, in order to reduce your accent, make sure to cheque out the Australian English Pronunciation course, as well as the Academy, which is full of lessons related to connected speech and pronunciation as well, ok? So, you can find that content on www.aussieenglish.com.au.

So, now let's go through the Aussie Facts. So, I thought today, right, we're talking about the expression 'to give someone a run for their money'. And the origin was about horse races. So, I thought I would touch on some really famous Australian horses. So, I think we've mentioned before Phar Lap, right? This is probably Australia's most famous horse, Phar Lap.

P H A R space L A P. So, why is he such a famous horse?

He's famous because he was doing really well in races during the Great Depression in Australia, in, I think, the late 1920s, early 1930s. And he was a huge source of celebration and motivation for the Australian public. He won 37 races and set a heap of records that may never be seen again. They may never be seen on the racetrack again and broken.

He won to such an extent, he was forced to carry 68 kilos as a handicap in the 1931 Melbourne Cup and most notably in the Melbourne Cup of the Year 1930, he ended up winning the MacKinnon Derby Day Cup, the Melbourne Cup, he won Oaks Day and then he won the Fishers Plate on the last day. So Phar Lap will always be a household name in horse racing.

However, there are also three other huge names that have crept up to sit alongside Phar Lap in the past two decades, almost 100 years after Phar Lap's rise to fame. So, these three horses are Makybe Diva, Black Caviar and Winx.

I wonder if you guys have heard of these horses before. So, let's go through a little bit about each one. Makybe Diva was famous in the early 2000s at the 2005 Melbourne Cup. She was running to win it for the third year in a row and completely dominated the field. She decimated the competition, she definitely gave them a run for their money. She's the only horse in history to ever win a race in four Melbourne Cup weeks. And upon her retirement from racing in November 2005, Makybe Diva was the highest stakes earner in Australian horse racing history, finishing with winnings of more than 14 million dollars.

Black Caviar. Now, Black Caviar was named world champion sprinter in 2010, 11, 12 and 13. Black Caviar was undefeated, winning 25 out of all 25 of her races, and she ended up earning nearly eight million dollars.

And then finally, we have Winx. Winks is arguably the best ever racehorse in Australia because of earnings alone. She earned over 26 million dollars and won 33 consecutive races between 2015 until her retirement in 2019 and was ranked as the best racehorse in the world in 2016, 17 and 18.

So, there you go, guys. There's a little bit about horse races, horse race history in Australia. I hope you enjoyed this episode and got a lot out of it, and until next time, all the best.

G'day, mate! Thanks for listening to the Aussie English podcast! If you'd like to boost your English whilst also supporting the podcast and allowing me to continue to bring you awesome content, please consider joining the Aussie English Academy at www.aussieenglish.com.au. You'll get unlimited access to the Premium Podcast as well as all of my advanced English courses. And you'll also be able to join three weekly speaking calls with a real English teacher. Thanks so much, mate, and I'll see you soon.