Transcript of AE 991 - Expression: Caught With Your Pants Down

G'day, you mob, and welcome to Aussie English. I am your host, Pete, and my objective here is to teach you guys the English spoken down under. So, whether you want to sound like a fair dinkum Aussie or you just want to understand what the flipping hell we're on about when we're having a yarn, you've come to the right place. So, sit back, grab a cuppa and enjoy Aussie English. Let's go.

G'day, you mob. How's it going? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. I am your host, Pete, and it is a pleasure to bring you another expression episode. So, today we're going to be going over the expression to be "caught with your pants down". Not a good place to be "caught... With your pants down".

It's been a while, guys. I have had this horrible sore throat, voice that's been screwed up. I've been coughing like crazy. I don't know where it came from, my kids or family, but I've been enjoying that whilst in lockdown the last few weeks. And it's just been brutal, my voice has been so horrible because of this cough that I haven't been able to record anything decent in about a month now.

So, I've had to rely on the backup of all the other material. Anyway, that's what I've been up to. It's just been crazy, just been hoping and hoping and hoping and drinking a lot of water, so that my voice comes back, and I can keep creating content for you guys.

All right. So, guys, before we get into today's news story, don't forget, if you want access to the transcripts and the downloads and the detailed video lessons for these expression episodes, the transcripts and everything, obviously, for all the other episodes on the podcast, make sure you check out the premium podcast, which you can find at AussieEnglish.com.au/podcast. Anyway, let's get into this week's news story. Slap the bird.

Okay, so a pair of nude sunbathers had been fined $1,000 each for breaching covid-19 public health orders after being startled by a deer and becoming lost in the Royal National Park, south of Sydney. Whilst most Sydneysiders were obeying the recent lockdown and staying at home. Two men, aged 30 and 49, were caught buck naked, enjoying their day at a remote beach at Otford.

Suddenly, a deer popped out of nowhere, jumped out of the bush and scared the crap out of the men who subsequently panicked and ran off into the surrounding bushland. Despite having no clothes. One of the men had his phone in his backpack and managed to call for help. The State Emergency Services, or SES, and a police helicopter came to the rescue and found the two men wandering through the bush completely stark naked.

The two men were rescued and then given a hefty $1,000 fine for breaking the rules, though they should have received another $1,000 fine each for just being morons. Police Commissioner Fuller appeared on the news, furious with the situation and said...

It's difficult to legislate against idiots.

Hopefully the two men have learnt their lesson from this situation where they were caught with their pants down. So, there you go, guys. What a crazy story. We covered this recently in the Goss' when my dad and I chatted about this story, but I had to include it because it went so well. It dovetailed nicely. It really combined well with the expression, "caught with your pants down".

So, before we get into that, though, let's go through a little joke. Okay, so today's joke, I've got a few, I've got a few. This one's a little bit crass, but it's humorous, it's popular and I always heard this as a kid, usually from my dad.

What do you call a deer with no eyes? Oh, no idea. What do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs? Still no idea. What do you call a deer with no eyes, no legs and no genitals? Still no fucking idea. So, this is a good joke, this, you know, everyone seems to hear this joke growing up. The idea being, you know, no idea, I don't know anything. But it's a deer with no eyes, a no eyed-deer.

Then you have a still no eyed-deer. Right. A deer that can't move, it's still. And then you have a- You've got still no fucking idea, "fucking" being obviously an expletive, an exclamation that you can use to mean, like, you know, to intensify something, but also obviously literally means to have sex. So, if the deer is still, it has no eyes and it's not having sex, it's a still no fucking eyed-deer. Anyway, I think you get the joke.

So, before we get into the expression, let's go through the different words in the expression and break them down. So, "to catch someone", if you "catch someone", you intercept and hold someone or something that's been thrown, propelled or dropped. Right. So, a basketballer might catch a ball and then go for a slam dunk. But we can also use "to catch someone" to mean to capture that person.

So, you could say a policeman captured a criminal, a fisherman can go out and catch a fish. But you can also be "caught doing something". So, you could be caught with your hand in the cookie jar. Right. To be caught red handed. And as you'll see, to be "caught with your pants down".

"With" this means having or possessing something. So, you are "with" that thing. I am with my friend today, and we're at the beach, right. We are together. We are- I don't know. I guess, we have one another. We possess one another. "Your", you'll know what "your" is. Possessive pronoun for "you". Right. Your dog, your hair, your car.

"Pants", these are trousers, the clothing that you wear on the bottom half of your body, over your underwear, over your stockings, maybe if you're a woman. I don't know, I don't wear stockings. They cover your legs. Then lastly, "down" is at a lower position. So, if your pants are down, they are, well, "down", right. Around your ankles. They're not up.

If you're "caught with your pants down", I think you probably already understand how this expression is used. If you're "caught with your pants down", it is to be caught unawares in a situation where you are vulnerable, right. You are completely unable to react, to respond, to do anything about it.

So, it can also be used in a literal way where the person is, you know, if they've literally got their pants down and are partaking in a certain activity. They- Maybe they have their pants down and they're going to the toilet. Maybe they have their pants down and they are having sex with someone. So, they are literally, in that case, "caught with their pants down" because they've been caught unawares in a sort of compromised situation.

And it's kind of similar to caught red handed. The expression caught red handed is associated with being caught in the act of committing a crime. Right. But for caught with your pants down, it's not associated with a crime as such. It's associated with a compromised or embarrassing situation. All right. So, the origin of this was interesting.

The basic idea with this expression is obviously that you've been found or seen with your pants down, which is usually something you don't want other people to see. Right. Whether you're going to the toilet or having sex or changing, usually you don't want to see, well, you don't want people to see you when your pants are down. But there are three suggested origins.

The most popular is related to the death of Caracalla or Marcus Augustus, who ruled the Roman Empire from the years 198 to 217 A.D. whilst on an important trip, he needed to urinate on the side of the road. His guards continued on for a short distance and turned their backs on him in order to give him a little bit of privacy.

Whilst the emperor was relieving himself, though, a man named Julius Martialis took advantage of the situation and ran in and stabbed Augustus in the back, murdering him whilst his pants were down. Martialis tried to run away, but one of the guards caught him, shot him with an arrow and killed him. So, here Marcus Augustus was obviously "caught with his pants down". So, interesting story.

Who knows if it's really the one that is where this expression comes from. As usual, guys, let's go through three examples of how I would use this expression in English. Okay, so imagine that I've been out all morning working in my car and I am, you know, just busting for a piss. I really have to go to the toilet and do number one, really have to pee. So, I get home and really have to go to the toilet.

I rush straight into the toilet, head straight for the bathroom, and whilst I'm relieving myself, right, whilst I am urinating, my son just runs in, bursts in, opens the door and starts saying things to me. Hey, dad. What are you up to, Dad? Hey, Dad. I've been "caught with my pants down", right. I've been caught in an awkward, compromising situation where I don't want my son or anyone else to really see me, usually.

I'm not an exhibitionist. I don't like peeing in public. I like doing it in the privacy of my own home. But I've been "caught with my pants down". Example number two, imagine you are one of two countries that are at war. One decides to invade the other country overnight. Okay. And it comes up with this audacious plan to trick the enemy so that it can invade successfully.

So, it plans to send a large part of its army somewhere as a kind of diversion whilst the rest of the army invade and take control of the country that they're attacking. So, they put this plan into effect. They, you know, carry it out and the enemy ends up falling for it, following the diversion army, trying to protect itself. As a result, the rest of the invading army enters the country and "catches it with its pants down".

It "catches the government with its pants down". It was caught unawares. It was caught in a compromised situation. They had no army at home. It was in a bad situation. The invading army took over. That country was "caught with its pants down". Example number three, imagine you're a teenage kid who just got a new job at a pizza shop making pizzas. Right.

So, you usually work late, and you get home in the early hours of the morning after the shop sort of closes up and you've cleaned the floors, you know, you mop the floors, you've swept, you've had to close up. It's like 3:00 a.m. in the morning.

When you get home, the house is incredibly quiet and you walk downstairs and the door to your parent's bedroom is open and you end up hearing something, looking in and seeing them caught in the act, right, they are in the middle of doing something that they would never normally do when kids are home. They thought it was the middle of the night. They didn't realise you were getting home late. You end up seeing them out of the corner of your eye.

This may or may not be a true story. You've "caught your parents with their pants down", both literally and figuratively. You've caught them in a compromised position, a situation that they would have liked to have avoided. You've "caught them with their pants down".

So, as usual, guys, let's go through a little pronunciation exercise where you can listen and repeat after me, practise your pronunciation, focus on intonation, connected speech, everything like that. Okay, let's go.

"To. To be. To be caught. To be caught with. To be caught with your. To be caught with your pants. To be caught with your pants down. To be caught with your pants down. To be caught with your pants down. To be caught with your pants down. To be caught with your pants down. I was caught with my pants down. You were caught with your pants down. He was caught with his pants down. She was caught with her pants down.

We were caught with our pants down. They were caught with their pants down. It was caught with its pants down." So, something we can probably talk about in this episode instead of connected speech is intonation. So, I wonder if you listen to that exercise again, if you can hear which words are being emphasised and which words aren't being emphasised.

So, if I were to say the phrase "I was caught with my pants down", which words in that phrase do you hear being emphasised, where I'm putting the stress on those words, right. Where the intonation is, I guess lifting. "I was caught with my pants down". It's words like verbs and nouns and adjectives. Okay, so things the important words. "I was caught with my pants down. I was caught with my pants down".

May even just be "caught 'n' pants", but you'll hear that a lot in English, and the best way to learn to do this yourself is by listening, doing shadowing exercises and recording yourself and analysing if and when you do this. Okay, so it's just reflective practise.

Listen to it, listen out for it, try and replicate it using shadowing techniques, record yourself doing those shadowing techniques, analyse yourself, see where you're going wrong, see how you compare to the person you're imitating, that you're shadowing and then repeat this process and eventually it'll just become natural. You won't even have to think about it.

So, anyway, guys, before we finish up, I thought that we could talk about obviously an Aussie fact. And this Aussie fact is deer in Australia. I guess I'm talking about deer, because I forgot to mention at the start a similar expression to "caught with your pants down" is "to be like a deer in the headlights".

So, that's the idea of a deer crossing the road, looking straight into the headlights of a car and the car just hitting the deer. Right. Because it's frozen. Doesn't know what to do. It's kind of shocked. It is "a deer in the headlights". So, it's kind of similar to "caught with your pants down" where- That might be your reaction, right. When you're caught with your pants down, you are like a deer in the headlights.

Anyway, let's talk about deer in Australia. So, deer are a type of mammal, these are ungulates. They're kind of like cows or sheep. They are indigenous to all continents across the globe except for Australia and Antarctica. They're not native to Australia, but they were introduced from Europe in the 19th century as game animals for people to hunt.

We've got six different species of deer that roam through the bush in Australia, the fallow deer, the red deer, the chital deer, the hog deer, the rusa and the sambar deer. Today, deer are found throughout many areas of Australia and cause a plethora of environmental problems, a whole bunch of environmental problems. They're mostly found in grassy forests through the country as opposed to, say, the deserts or the monsoon tropics in the north.

So, they're usually found along the east, the south and the southwestern regions of the continent. Deer numbers have been booming in recent years. In 1995, there were only four populations of Red Deer known in Australia as an example. But by the year 2007, there were an astonishing 65 populations that had then been identified. So, these animals were exploding in numbers and in populations.

Where deer are in high numbers the problem is that plant species end up being damaged a great deal. They get predated upon by the deer, they get eaten and we end up with much lower diversity for the native plant species. So, young trees are destroyed, and they're never given a chance to grow, to be large trees. Invasive weed species are also given a chance to enter these environments and thrive.

They compete with kangaroos and wallabies for food and generally add to grazing pressure in all areas that they're found. As hoofed mammals, ungulates, their feet contribute to erosion and degrade water quality in creek and river systems as they erode the banks. They also carry and spread a number of nasty diseases that affect other livestock in Australia.

And in order to control the deer numbers in Australia, most of the time we use shooting and trapping as opposed to poisoning. So, there you go, guys. Hopefully you've learnt a little bit about invasive deer species in Australia whilst also learning how to use the expression "caught with your pants down". I hope you enjoyed this episode. Don't forget to sign up for the Aussie English podcast, if you want the bonus content.

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