The ancient Egyptians first drank their wine out of elaborate goblets. While the ancient Greeks messed around with ceramic drinking cups. But Australians found a better way, a silver receptacle that looks like it contains specimens for medical testing. For decades, Australia's have wondered who is responsible for this little spew generator. But a quick look at Wikipedia tells us it was Thomas Angove. Angove was an Australian winemaker who had bottled his wines for many years before deciding: You know what? Stuff that! Let's put it in a bag.
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 flippin' 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.
What's going on, guys? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English.
I am pepped up. I am incredibly energetic at the moment, because I just finished my third coffee for the day and decided to record this podcast, so bear with me. Sorry if I speak a little too quickly today.
Welcome to this podcast, guys. This is the Aussie English Podcast, the number one podcast for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English or who want to get to an advanced level in English. Okay.
So, how have you guys been? What's been going on? How has your week been? I hope you guys have been killing it. I hope you've been doing really well. I hope you've been levelling up your English.
So, the intro scene there, guys. The intro scene was from The Feed on SBS. This is a TV show on SBS in Australia. A great place to go and learn Australian English as these guys are a media outlet. They cover a lot of interesting stories in Australia. So, you can check them out. The link will be in the transcript to watch this video, but you can just search 'The feed SBS', okay, and you'll find it.
Anyway. So, the intro scene was talking about goon and the Hills Hoist clothesline. I wonder if you guys have heard of either of those things. And the presenter there was Ray Martin, and that guy, I swear he must be an Australian national treasure as this guy has been around as long as I can remember on news, TV shows, presenting these kinds of interesting stories.
Anyway, so 'goon' is... in Australian culture, it is the wine that you get in a bag. Right? It comes in a cast... Cast? A cask? Think its 'casked' wine. See, I don't know. I don't drink this stuff. But I think it's casked wine or cask wine, but it comes in like a silver plastic bag that looks like a pillow that has a tap on it so you can drink from the goon bag. And yeah, it's just very very common with young Australians who like to drink cheap wine.
And the Hills Hoist. The Hills Hoist clothesline. I wonder if you guys have seen this around Australia. This is that weird looking clothesline that spins and is in the shape of a sort of cross or umbrella that you can put clothes on, but we'll talk about that in the Aussie English fact.
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All of that spiel aside, guys. Welcome to the podcast episode. We will do a joke before we get into the expression. So, the joke for today, the joke is:.
Which days to pirates hate going to the gym? Which days do pirates hate going to the gym?
Peg day. Do you get it? Peg day.
So, pirates who lose their legs get what we call 'a peg leg' where they have like a wooden stump attached to their leg, and we call that 'a peg leg' in English. So, back in the day, when pirates, you know, were obviously on ships, on galleons, they were fighting one another with cannons, chunks of wood were flying around when cannonballs smashed into the side of boats. Often this would lead to people losing their limbs, losing their legs, and they would quite often get a fake wooden leg put on that was called 'a peg leg'.
Which day is sort of renowned to be the worst day to train at the gym? Leg day. It tends to be the one that everyone hates. Leg day.
So, which days despite its weight training at the gym? Peg day.
So, I choose this joke because it had the word 'peg' in it and that was in the expression today, or at least a variant of the expression.
So, the expression today is "to take someone down a notch or two". But this can also be "take someone down a peg or two", and you can also hear different verbs like "bring someone down a peg or two" or "pull someone down a notch or two".
So, this is one of those interesting expressions in English that can vary, but the basic idea is forcing someone downwards one or two... what would you call it? Like, units, notches, or pegs.
Okay. And it comes from Elena who suggested this in the Aussie English Classroom. Great job, Elena. It was a good expression. And I looked forward to doing this episode today as a result.
So, let's go through and define the words in this expression, guys.
'To take'. So, in this sense, 'to take', taking someone down a notch or two, 'to take' here means to remove someone from a particular place, right. But we can also use other verbs, as I said, like 'bring' or 'pull'. Right? So, it's just that idea of moving someone, but for this expression, we're using 'take'.
'To take down'. Obviously, this means the same thing as 'take', but it's emphasizing that it's happening in a downwards direction. So, you're removing something downwards, you're moving something downwards.
'Someone'. This is an unspecified person.
'A notch'. 'A notch' is an indentation or incision on the edge of a surface. So, for instance, if you carve a little indentation into the side of your bed into the wood, you've put a notch in your bed. Maybe you take an axe and you cut a little bit into a tree, you've put a notch into a tree, like, the tree trunk.
And 'a peg' is a short pin or bolt typically tapered at one end, so it's kind of shaped like a cone, you know, it goes from thick to thin, that is used for securing something in place, for hanging things on, or for marking a position, right? 'A peg'. So, maybe you have to put a peg into the ground when you go camping. That's that little metal thing. 'A peg'. You hammer it into the ground. Or maybe when you're putting clothes on the clothesline, you use a peg to hold the clothes up, right. That is 'a peg'.
So, the definition of the expression 'to take someone down a notch' or 'to take someone down a peg', 'to knock someone down a peg', 'to bring someone down a peg', 'to pull someone down a notch' or a peg, and again, you can say this as 'a notch' or you could say it as 'a notch or two', 'a peg' or 'a peg or two'. This means to reduce or damage someone's ego or pride, right? To humble someone, to humiliate someone, to deflate someone's perceived ego, right. How arrogant that person is, you're bringing them down. You know, you're kind of putting them in their place. That's another good expression to use. So, if you find someone really arrogant and you sort of do something, say something, or something occurs to show them that they shouldn't be arrogant, you're taking them down a notch, you're taking them down a peg or two.
So, where did this come from? It was used as long ago as the 1500s, so the 16th century and it was common in religious texts.
So, both 'notch' and 'peg' in this idiom allude to a series, where a notch means indentations, and a peg is referring to like a wooden knob, and these we used to raise or lower something. So, specifically, 'a peg' alludes to the pegs used to lower a ship's colours, the flags on a ship. They would obviously use pegs to hold the colours up or down. Or they may have used notches. Right?
So, it's a very old expression but it's used all the time in English.
So, let's go through three examples of how I would use this expression.
Example number one. Imagine you own a small business selling gym equipment things like dumbbells, barbells, racks, weight lifting machines, treadmills, all that sort of gear. One day you receive an email from a lawyer of a much larger competitor company and the company or the lawyer is telling you that one of your products that you sell has the same name as one of theirs or the same design as one of theirs, and as a result, they're going to take you to court and sue you for it.
So, they're doing this as a bully tactic to try and control the market and get rid of you as a competitor. If you do go to court, though, and you face them, and they end up losing the case, you will have humbled them, you will have reduced their ego, you will have deflated them a little bit, and so, you've taken them down a peg or two. You've pulled them down a notch or two. You've knocked him down a notch or two. Right?
So, hopefully they won't be so cocky next time and try bullying you and your business. You brought them down a peg or two.
Example number two. Imagine you're an athlete competing in athletics. You're a sprinter and you like to run the 100 and 200 meter races. So, before a certain event, you're training with your competitors, and one of them is particularly arrogant and keeps boasting about how much he's going to whoop everyone's arse, how much he's going to dominate everyone, he's going to win, he's going to slam everyone in this race, right? He won't even have to try.
If on the day of the race, though, you or someone else in the group taking this guy on, competing against this guy, ends up beating him, you'll have brought him down a peg or two. You'll have taken him down a notch or two. So, you will have taught him a lesson, you will have made him humble, you would have reduced his ego, you know, you will have humiliated him a little bit, and hopefully, that'll teach him to respect his opponents and show a little humility in future. You may have knocked him down a notch. You may have taken him down a notch.
Example Number three. So, imagine you are new to a certain high school and it's full of spoilt rich kids, right, brats that have rich parents who spoil them rotten, give them everything that they want in life, they don't have to work very hard, they don't have to try.
So, you're not from a rich family yourself, but you're incredibly hard-working. You like to study and you like to do well academically at high school. So, these kids are always teasing you about not being one of them and not being one of the rich kids, and suggesting that you're poor and stupid.
Until one day, you get the highest mark in the class, you know, it could be French class or maybe science or religion or English, whatever the class is, you get the highest mark and get given a prize, which makes all the other kids jealous. So, when you receive that prize, it really shuts those kids up, and it brings them down a notch or two, it teaches them a lesson. You know, you've taken them down a peg or two when you humiliated them by winning that prize and showing them how smart you were.
Hopefully, though, you'll keep your ego in check too and don't rub it in their face too much, right. You don't want to be a show off.
So, there you go, guys. Hopefully now you understand the expression 'to take someone down a notch', 'to take them down a notch or two', 'to knock them down a peg', 'to knock them down a peg or two'. You'll hear this with verbs like, 'take', 'knock', 'pull', and 'bring'.
It's one of those expressions in English that changes how it's said quite a bit, but the basic meaning is there, pulling someone down a position or two, right. To reduce or damage someone's ego or pride, to humble or humiliate them, or to deflate their ego. Right?
So, as usual let's go through a little listen and repeat exercise where you guys can practice your pronunciation.
Again, if you're working on your Australian English pronunciation, copy my accent as well as you can. If you're not, use the accent that you're doing, but just say these words after me, maybe focus on intonation and that sort of thing. Okay? Let's go to.
To
To take
To take someone
To take someone down
To take someone down a
To take someone down a notch x 5
I'll take her down a notch.
You'll take her down a notch.
He'll take her down a notch.
She'll take her down a notch.
We'll take her down a notch.
They'll take her down a notch.
It'll take her down a notch.
Good job, guys. Remember, if you are trying to perfect that Aussie accent, your Aussie pronunciation, learn things like collocations and the pronunciation of these different sounds in English, make sure that you sign up to the Aussie English Classroom at www.AussieEnglish.com.au. It's just one dollar if you sign up before the 1st of April for your first 30 days. Get in there, go through the courses, guys, do the pronunciation courses, the speaking courses, the expression courses, the interview courses, and your English is going to skyrocket. So, get in there, work hard, let's do this together.
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So, today in the Aussie English fact I wanted to talk about the Hills Hoist. I wonder if you guys have heard about the Hills Hoist.
So, the Hills Hoist is a famous kind of clothesline in Australia. The famous Australian Hills Hoist. It was fashioned in 1946 by a man named Lance Hill for his wife Sherry. Now, he did this because Sherry wanted something to hang her washing out on to dry, so her husband designed this rotary clothesline.
Can you describe what it looks like? Now, that's a good question.
Google search this. That might be the best bet to be certain about what this thing looks like. Okay? Hills Hoist. H I L L S space H O I S T.
So, if you Google search this, you will see something that looks like kind of the shape of an umbrella where it is on a stand, a single pole, and at the top of this shape there is kind of like a cross of metal poles where clothesline or close wire goes from each end of the pole to the next pole on either side of it. So, it creates this kind of wire looking square on a pole that rotates.
And it uses a rotating gear system to extend it upwards or downwards so that clothes can be more easily put on to the clothesline, it can be then raised up to dry, and then lowered down again to have the clothes removed, folded, taken inside.
Although, many Australians think that Lance Hill's invention was the first of its kind, a uniquely Australian invention, this is not the case. And I was included in this group of Australians who thought this before researching the Hills Hoist here.
So, at the same time that Lance Hill released the Hills Hoist, there were other variants being released too, for example, the Arc Weld Windmill.
However, 20 years earlier than this, in 1925, the James Hardie company created what they called the Drywell, but this was also not the first rotary clothesline either.
11 years earlier again, in 1914, a company called Adelaide Iron Founders created a rotary clothesline mostly comprising timber and iron fittings, but instead which could be rotated or tilted to the side to be loaded with laundry, instead of load up and down like the Hills hoist or Arc Weld windmill.
By sheer coincidence, in the same year, 1914, an American contraption also called Hill's made its appearance on the market. It was called The Hills Champion Clothes Dryer. Despite having the same name, Hills, it was an American company that had nothing to do with the Australian company, Hills Hoist.
The story doesn't end here, however. Discovered in my hometown of Geelong is the oldest known rotary clothes line in Australia. The very first one ever produced still sitting in the backyard of the nephew of Gilbert Toyne who created the device in 1912.
Gilbert Toyne had 13 children, which as you would expect resulted in a lot of washing, and in order to lessen Mrs Toyne's burden his rotary clothesline was the solution.
Even today, the clothesline has plastic pegs sitting on its wires showing that it has been in use for over a hundred years.
But to my shock horror, it turns out even this clothesline wasn't the first one to be invented. Not by a long shot.
It actually turns out that in the Journal of Scientific American dated to February 17th, 1855, an impressive 57 years earlier still, James R. Higgins created his Clothes Drying Machine, a not-so-dissimilar design, comprising a metal cross with lines on it for clothing to be hung out on, which could be lowered and elevated via a rotary gear.
So, there you have it. Next time someone tells you about the Australian Hills Hoist being the first of its kind, you can tell them that, actually, an American guy named James R. Higgins beat us to the punch and designed it 90 years earlier.
So, I hope you enjoy this episode, guys. I hope you've learned a little bit about Australian culture, and I hope next time that you're out and about in Australia, wherever you are, you keep an eye out for a Hills Hoist clothesline. And if you see one, take a photo and send it to me, because I would love to see where you find them. Okay. They're everywhere.
Anyway, that's it for today, guys. Thanks so much for joining me and I'll see you next time. Peace.
G'day, mate. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Aussie English Podcast. If you wish to support the podcast and help me keep bringing new content, you can do so via my Patreon page. Remember, it's my mission here at Aussie English not only to help you understand Australian English, but to speak it like a native. If that's your goal, make sure you enroll in the Aussie English Classroom, guys, where you'll get all the bonus content for today's episode designed to improve your English even faster. Have a ripper of a day and I'll see you in class.