You're listening to Away with Words, the show about language, and how we use it.

I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett.

We got an email from Razool.

He lives in Iran, and he's been listening to us there in the city of Machad for several years for help in learning English

and he wanted to ask a question about the expression fat chance. He writes, the word fat implies a sense of abundance and biblically speaking I've heard that fat people were considered blessed in the past

But what has happened to this idiom that when we say fat chance we mean no chance? Oh yes that's a very good question. It is a really good question.

When you say fat chance you don't really mean that something is likely right?

Right, right. You can't stare English directly in the eyes.

It's like looking too closely at the sun.

You have to shield yourself from it.

We have the other things like that English.

We say, big deal. And English. We say big deal. And there's something in the tone

that you, the way you signal that big deal. Right. Right, because you could say, this is a really big

deal, I need you to pay attention to it and

that sounds like you meant it yeah if I say smart move you know that I didn't

mean smart move you know I meant dumb move, right? Yeah.

And so some of it's tonal that if you're only reading these expressions,

you won't pick it up, probably,

unless the context is very good.

If you're hearing it at a podcast,

you probably will get some of it. Face to face,, you probably get a lot of it.

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