Catch Word #292 – Stick to your guns

0:00Hello, everyone, and welcome to Catch Word, the Q-lips vocabulary series where we teach you idioms, phrasal verbs, expressions, and more that will help build your English vocabulary and improve your English listening skills. Catch Word is all about word power. And in today's lesson, we are going to teach you, and we is me and Indiana, by the way, I should say hello, Indiana. Hello, Indiana. How's it going? Hey, Andrew. I'm well. How are you doing today? I'm good. And in today's episode, everyone, we're going to teach you two English idioms that we can use to describe moments of persistence and refusal to change one's mind. Persistence means like keep going, keep going. So these two expressions, which are stick to your guns and double down, we use these idioms in these kinds of situations where we need to be persistent or when we refuse

1:04to change our mind. And sometimes they can be positive and sometimes they can be negative. We'll get into all of the details and explain them fully and give you some examples and teach you how to use them in your everyday speaking in just a moment. But before we get started with the lesson, let me tell you about the study guide for this episode. In the study guide, you will find an interactive transcript plus detailed explanations and examples of some of the key vocabulary that you hear Indiana and me use in our conversation. Plus, there's a quiz and some prompts that you can use for speaking and writing practice and much, much more. Now, to get the study guide, you do have to be a QLUPS member, but you can sign up for an affordable price on our website, QLUPS.com. And when you're a member, not only will you unlock the study guides for all of our over 1,000 episodes in our library, plus you'll also get to join our weekly speaking classes. You'll get our member

2:07only series, the fluency files. You'll get ad-free audio, so you don't have to listen to announcements like this one. You can just skip ahead and get to the good stuff, get to the lesson right away. And more. So, guys, check out our website, QLUPS.com. You can sign up and become a member today and hit the next level with your English fluency with QLUPS. Okay. And with that announcement out of the way, Indiana, let's get started with this lesson. So, I'll let you do the honors, as always, introduce the first key expression for this lesson, which is stick to your guns, stick to your guns. Could you tell us what this means? Yes. So, first, let's start off with a visual to help remember this expression, stick to your guns. So, sticking to something is maybe staying close to or holding on to something, and of course, guns or weapons. So, if you imagine somebody on the

3:08battlefield in a war and they're fighting and it's getting a little dicey, the enemy is closing in, but they're deciding, all right, doesn't matter, I'm going to fight and I'm gonna keep shooting, right? I'm going to stay with my guns. I'm not gonna flee. I'm sticking to my guns. So, that person would be possibly persistent, like you said, persevering or maybe a little stubborn. And you can use this expression coming from that imagery. This is an expression we use when we talk about somebody who's refusing to change their opinion, their plans, their decisions, especially in a difficult situation, like here, you know, in an example where this expression comes from, you're in a war, right? Your life is on the line, but you're still sticking with your decision to fight. So, if I stick to my guns, I'm staying with my decision about something, even if there's a lot of pressure on me. Yeah, excellent, well said. So, this word stick, the verb to stick. It's like

4:13something is sticky, right? Like a substance, maybe gum, you know, probably everybody has had the unfortunate experience of stepping on gum on the sidewalk, and then it sticks to the bottom of your shoe, right? It's like when something is sticky and it's attached, that is this verb to stick. So, in the literal sense, the imagery that you described, Indiana, you could imagine a soldier fighting a war and sticking to his guns, meaning that he's not quitting the fight, right? He's out there shooting his gun and in battle and not running away. So, that's like the imagery behind this expression, but that's not what we mean when we use this expression in everyday conversation. When we use it in everyday conversation with the idiomatic meaning, it just means to refuse changing your mind or changing your plan or decision. You've got your mind made up, which is another idiom that we use to mean that you've made your decision and you're not changing your mind. So, we can also change this expression to fit the situation that we're talking about, right? So,

5:19if our subject is a woman, we could say she is sticking to her guns or if it's a man, he's sticking to his guns, et cetera, et cetera. We can change the pronoun for the situation that we're talking about. Now, maybe we should talk about when we use it. What kind of situations would you use this expression in Indiana? Stick to your guns. I think you might say it about somebody when you're impressed with or surprised by their resilience and decision to stick with, go with their original decision or opinion. So, let's say, I don't know, somebody has decided they're going to switch careers suddenly and they really want to move into a different job, have it start a different career, but it's going to be really hard for them and everybody in their life is saying like, this is really not a good idea. This is really sudden. It's going to be difficult for you to change your job, but this person is like, no, I'm going to do it. This is what I want to do. So, you can

6:23describe that person as sticking to their guns, right? Wow, she really stuck to her guns and made that decision to change careers, right? So, if you're maybe impressed with or surprised by somebody's stubbornness or resilience in this, like even in the face of criticism from other people around them or pressure not to do something sticking with your guns, this is what you could say this person. This is how you could use that expression. Yeah, and that's a good point that you just brought up that this is, in my opinion, and I'm curious to see if you feel the same way Indiana, but in my opinion, this is a positive thing. If you stick to your guns, it's showing that you don't crack, right? Like, even when somebody is criticizing you or saying you shouldn't do that, you should do this other thing, but you don't change your mind. You're like, no, I believe in what's right for me, and I'm going to do this and I'm not going to listen to anybody else's opinion. I'm going to stick to my guns. I'm going to do what I think is best for me. To me, this expression is almost like a sign of

7:26respect. Like, even if we don't agree with this person's decision, we still respect that they have made up their mind and they are going to do what they believe in. So to me, that's like a little nuance to this expression that we're respecting somebody's resolve, respecting that they've made up their minds and they're never going to change it. I would agree with Andrew. I think I would tend to use this expression positively. Yeah, I'm impressed by somebody's ability to stick to their guns and not give in to pressure. Absolutely. And I would also add that something important about the usage of this expression is you wouldn't just say she stuck to her guns if she made a decision that everyone else agreed with or she received no criticism or backlash for, right? Even in the face of criticism or disagreement from other people, you're making a decision. That's when we can

8:29use this expression, not just an easy decision to make. We can also use it when the pressure doesn't come from other people, but just comes from life or even from yourself. Like, for example, this year, my wife and I have decided to eat out less. So to try and save some money on our food budget and just cook at home and eat at home more often because it's often healthier and it's cheaper. And yeah, so we can save some money and just be healthier by eating at home more often. However, it's very tempting to go out and eat at restaurants sometimes, especially when we're both very busy at work. We don't have time for cooking and cleaning the kitchen and all of these things. So in that kind of situation, the temptation or the pressure is not coming from other people. Like, nobody's telling us, oh, you should eat at restaurants more often. That's not happening.

9:30It's just like the convenience, the temptation of going to a restaurant is very strong. So we're trying to stick to our guns. We're trying to not go and eat at restaurants as often. However, there is always that temptation of the convenience of restaurants, which makes it sometimes difficult to just stay at home and eat home-cooked meals. So yeah, that just shows that the pressure or the temptation could be from other people or not always from other people. Sometimes it can just be from life itself. Excellent point. I agree. Okay, well, I think we have talked about this enough. Why don't we jump in and listen to a couple of conversation examples where we can hear this expression, stick to your guns used in a natural way. And for our first conversation example, we're going to hear two college roommates talking and one of them is trying to give in the other to skip studying and go to a party. So we have a peer pressure situation here.

10:34Let's eavesdrop in and take a listen to their conversation right now. Here we go. Come on. Just come to the party for an hour. Everyone's going to be there. I can't. You know, I have that huge history exam on one day. I really need to study tonight. Just wake up early tomorrow and study. It's Friday night. You know, I want to, but I've got to stick to my guns. If I go out, I know I won't wake up early tomorrow. Have fun though. In this conversation, we heard two college roommates talking and one of the roommates was trying to get the other one to go out to a party. However, she stuck to her guns and said, I'm not going to the party because I have an exam on Monday. And if I go to the party, I'm not going to get a

11:35good night's sleep. I'm not going to be rested. I'm not going to be able to study and that will negatively affect my chances of doing well on the exam. So even though she was in that situation where her roommate was pure pressuring her and trying to get her to go to the party, even for just an hour, she stuck to her guns and didn't change her mind and was persistent, right? Persistent, meaning that she wasn't going to change her mind for any reason at all. She was dedicated to studying for that evening. Okay, in Indiana at college, which roommate were you? Were you the one that would go to the party or the one who would stick to her guns and stay home and study? That's a tough question. In my college experience, everyone I knew had a sort of saying study hard party harder. So I think I would have actually been both.

12:35Yeah, I usually didn't need too much convincing to go out to a party. If one of my friends was like, come on, let's go out just for an hour. Good idea. Okay. Let's go to example number two. And in this situation, we're going to hear a couple who is at a car dealership and they are discussing their car buying strategy before they talk to the salesperson. I know every country around the world is different, but in North America, when you go to the car dealership, it's often this like dance between the customer and the salespeople about the customer trying to negotiate a very low price and the salespeople trying to negotiate a high price. It's not like you just walk into the dealership and you see the price tag and you pay that amount of money. There can be a lot of bargaining and negotiation at a car dealership. And a dealership is the name of the store where cars are sold. There can be a lot of negotiation at a dealership in North America.

13:40So you need to have a good strategy before you go to the dealership so you can get a low price for your new car. And that's what the couple is talking about in this example. So again, let's eavesdrop in and listen to what they have to say. Here we go. The salesperson is definitely going to try and sell us the upgraded model with the other seats. Yeah, I know. They always do. But we agreed our absolute maximum budget is $20,000. Okay, don't forget that. Exactly. I'm with you. We have to stick to our guns. If you try to push us over 20,000, we just got to walk away. Exactly. In this discussion, we see a couple at the car dealership and they're discussing their maximum budget for the car they want to buy. And of course, as you said, Andrew, salespeople can be incredibly pushy at car dealerships. And if you don't stick to your guns, if you don't stick to your original budget, you might end up

14:45going into debt just for something like leather seats, which I don't know about you, but I'm not sure that's worth it going into debt for. So this couple has decided, nope, that we have to stick to our guns. That's it. No going over a budget where we've made our decision and we're sticking with it even in the face of pressure. And I can definitely relate to this situation. Although I have never purchased a car at a dealership, when my husband and I were looking for our house and we were working with a realtor and we wanted to make an offer on our house that we have now, we really had to have a long discussion about the maximum budget and pick something really firm and final. And we had to agree to each other kind of promise like, okay, even if the other person, you know, they're going to offer 5,000 more, some other bitter for this house, somebody bidding for the house if they offer a little more. And the seller comes to us after that and says, how about this much more? Even if it's just a little over a budget, we have to stick to our guns.

15:48We can't go over it. So we had this exact conversation except about a house instead of a car. And that is a great situation where you should be sticking to your guns and where you can use this expression to describe somebody sticking to that original decision. Yeah, that's a great example. And I think you're right that we use this expression often in business situations, in sales situations, in negotiation situations where you have an idea going into it, maybe a number or a figure or a condition, right? Like a condition for your contract. Maybe you're signing a contract for a new job and you're like, I must get two weeks paid vacation. If they don't give me that, then I'm not going to sign this contract. You like stick to your guns, right? When you go into that kind of situation with an idea already about what you want and you decide to never change your mind, then that's sticking to your gun. So often we use it in these kinds of sales and

16:48contract negotiation situations, exactly. All right, very good. Why don't we transition now into our second key expression for this episode, which is a fun one to say. It's really fun to say. It is double down, double down. And this is a verb. So it's to double down in the dictionary form. And Indiana, I know that this expression originally comes from the card game Blackjack, but you and I were chatting before we hit the record button for this episode. And we both have never played Blackjack before. So we're just going to tell you guys that the original meaning, the original literal meaning of double down comes from the game Blackjack. But since Indiana and I don't know about this game, we won't try to fake it and say that we understand. So let's skip over the origin and just get to the idiomatic meaning. And again, Indiana, could you do the honors and tell us

17:50how we use this expression in our regular everyday lives? For sure. So this is quite similar to stick to your guns. This is an expression that you would use when you have decided to do something or you've said something or made a decision and you're facing criticism or a challenge or even like you other people around you or you realize that it's a bad idea what you've chosen to do. But instead, instead of giving in, instead of accepting that maybe this wasn't a good idea or maybe you're in the wrong, you become doubly more determined, two times more determined, you could imagine this as to continue with that original original decision. So this expression really is quite similar to stick to your guns, but we tend to use it in a negative way when we're saying that the decision to stick with this is really foolish or not a good idea and this person

18:52is just being stubborn, frankly. So you might see this expression used in personal relationships. Let's say there's a married couple and one spouse is criticizing the way the other spouse did the dishes. Oh look, there's still some soap on the dishes in the drying rack or there's still some food on the dishes. You should have cleaned this better. And instead of just accepting this criticism, accepting that, okay, this person really didn't do the dishes that well, the other partner is like, well, I think it looks clean. No, I mean, this is clean as a whistle. This is so clean. What are you talking about? And instead of just accepting the faults, they're doubling down on it, right? They're not accepting that and they're being very stubborn. So it's definitely typically used in this negative way as opposed to the previous expression that we looked at. Yeah, exactly. And the thing that's a little bit difficult to understand with

19:53double down is I think in the moment, double down usually has a negative meaning. It's a negative connotation and negative sense to it. However, when time passes and we're looking back, you know, we say hindsight is 2020, like from our present perspective in the present, if we look back at history, often we can say, oh, yeah, he should have done this or he should have done that because like, now we know how things worked out, right, from our perspective in the present. So in the moment, sometimes we say, doubling down is usually a negative thing. And it's like, you shouldn't do that. And it's probably you're probably making a mistake by doubling down. However, when we look back in history, sometimes we can see that doubling down was actually a good decision. And like, maybe, I don't know this, the CEO of a company decided to double down and hire more employees. And maybe

20:55all of the shareholders said, that's a terrible idea in this economy. We can't hire more employees. If we do that, we're going to lose a lot of money and this company is going to go bankrupt. But after several years have passed, that turned out to be a great decision. And because they hired more employees, they were able to be more productive in the company and grow and the stock price went up. And so now that we're looking at that decision that happened a few years ago from the present moment, we can say, oh, it was such a good idea that the CEO doubled down and stuck to his guns and didn't change his mind. So sometimes this is the confusing thing. In the present, when you double down, it's usually a negative thing. However, from the perspective of the present, looking at the past, sometimes we use double down to be like a really good thing. It was awesome that he didn't change his mind when everybody else told him to do it because he was able to grow the company by sticking to his guns and by doubling down. So guys, just when you hear this expression in the

21:58future, when you're listening to English or watching English TV shows or movies and this expression comes up, just kind of keep that shade of meaning that nuance in mind because I think that could be helpful for you to know. And just another example of the negative doubling down that I was thinking about. In a recent episode, we were talking about problematic artists, right? When musicians or directors or actors get in trouble for saying something that was really offensive or doing something that we would see as wrong, we were discussing like, what should you do as a fan of the art? What, yeah, what is your, you know, should you keep engaging with that art? We were talking about that in a recent episode and we were talking about how if somebody just apologizes straight away, you know, for doing something wrong, I think you and I generally would agree like, okay, well, I think I can forgive that person. They recognized that they did something wrong and they want to change and move on from it, right? They want to make it

23:02right. But when somebody doubles down on an offensive comment, right? When they double down, say, oh, no, that's not what I meant. You're crazy for thinking this is offensive. I'm completely right about this. Then that can be really like, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth like, okay, this person's just so stubborn and they don't want to change, right? So I can imagine like somebody as celebrity saying something and then refusing to apologize it, that's like, oh, they're doubling down on that. That's how I would probably use this expression. Right. Yeah, they're making excuses instead of just owning their negative behavior and apologizing for it. So yeah, that's another great example of when we use double down just in our regular everyday lives. Okay, guys, so I think it's time to move into some conversation examples. Please keep our explanation about the meaning in mind as you listen to them and it will help you to understand them. And in our first conversation, example here, we are going to hear about a cooking disaster. So a married couple are in the kitchen

24:06cooking together and the husband is trying a new recipe that is just going terribly wrong. So let's listen in and hear how this conversation goes. Here we go. Wow, that smells interesting. Are you sure you followed the recipe? Yeah, but I think I accidentally added a little too much chili powder. This is really spicy. Oh, I guess we can just throw it out and order pizza. No big deal. No, no way. I can fix this. I'm just going to add some sugar and maybe some peanut butter to balance the heat. And it'll be delicious. Come on, you're not really doubling down on this. Are you? You know, I hate spicy food. And now it's going to be spicy sweet and taste like peanuts. Come on, let's order a pizza. All right, in this example, we heard a couple cooking together in the kitchen and the husband

25:09messed up. He added too much chili powder into the recipe. And because of that, it was really spicy. And his wife doesn't like spicy food. So she said, you know what, let's just throw out the food. It's ruined and we'll order a pizza. No big deal. But instead of just saying, okay, yeah, sorry, I made a mistake. Let's just order pizza. The husband doubled down. He said, no way. I'm not throwing this out. I'm going to fix it. I'm going to add sugar. I'm going to add peanut butter, which is crazy. I don't know what dish he's cooking, but adding chili sugar and peanut butter is probably going to result in something that's not so tasty. So he is doubling down and saying, no, I'm going to fix this. And so yeah, we saw the husband being really stubborn, right? He made a mistake, but instead of admitting the mistake, and instead of just trying to fix it, he doubled down and yeah, persisted in what he was doing and didn't want to change his mind at all. And so yeah, that's a great example of doubling down.

26:17All right. So let's transition into our final example for this lesson, everyone. And in this one, we're hearing two co-workers in the office discussing about their CEO's new unpopular policy. So yeah, let's eavesdrop in and hear what they have to say. Here we go. Did you see the angry emails going around about the new dress code? Nobody wants to wear a suit and tie every day to the office? Yeah, everyone is complaining to HR. I figured the CEO would drop the idea once he saw how unpopular it was. Nope. He doubled down. He just sent out a company-wide memo saying that anyone that's not wearing a tie by Monday is going to be sent home. Wow. That is definitely going to ruin office morale. In this scenario, we have a few co-workers complaining about their very stubborn CEO's new policy,

27:20expecting everybody to be dressing in very professional business attire, like a suit and tie, when it's clear that the company culture is a lot more casual and nobody is happy about this. So they said he doubled down when even with all the angry emails flying at him from all of the the irritated irate employees, he's still stuck with his original decision that he made for whatever reason. This pair of co-workers are very critical of his choice and are saying that he doubled down in a negative way. They do not think he should be doing this. And I wanted to add here that if the opposite scenario happened, like if the CEO immediately said, oh, I'm sorry, everybody, you know, it was an oversight. This wasn't a good idea. I didn't realize that it was important for everybody to wear more casual clothing and I'm going to revise my decision here. You could say that he folded under pressure or just he folded and he changed his mind, right?

28:25So when you quickly change your mind under pressure, you might say that he folded. I think this is also related to gambling or card playing. This is a poker term, yeah, to fold. It just means when you're playing poker and you get some cards that are not very strong and you're like, I'm going to lose. So you just sort of give up and sit out for that round. That is folding. So yeah, when you fold under pressure, it's the same thing. You're like, you get some pushback, right? You say to the employees, hey guys, we're going to have a new dress code. Everybody has to wear a suit and tie to the office and all of the employees complain. They're like, no way. We don't want to do this. And then you're like, oh, okay, I'm going to listen to you. You don't want to do it. It's okay. We can just wear casual clothes in the office. That would be folding. But then in the example, we heard doubling down, right? The employees pushed back, but the CEO still said, no way, we're doing it my way. That's doubling down. So yeah, those are the two opposite expressions that we can use for

29:25those different situations. And yeah, Indiana, interestingly enough, they both come from gambling. A lot of gambling expressions in English. There's so many expressions in English coming from sports, particularly baseball. And yeah, it seems like gambling is a big one too. So it's a good resource for idioms as being interested in sports and gambling. All right. So everyone, let's wrap up this lesson here. Just before we let you go, we should review and compare these two expressions. So they are both similar stick to your guns and double down in the fact that they describe a refusal to change your mind, a refusal to back down or a refusal to retreats. And we usually use them both in situations where there's some pressure or some friction or maybe a problem to overcome. However, they are different in that sticking to your guns is about holding your ground and not

30:27giving up and defending your current mindset or your current opinion. However, doubling down is more like when you stubbornly refuse to admit a mistake or you stubbornly refuse to change your mind. And often this will make a bad situation even worse. So if you just keep those similarities and differences in mind, that will be helpful, I think. And of course, really the best way to make sure that you can use and understand these expressions correctly in the future is by doing a lot of English listening. These are really common idioms. And if you listen to a lot of English, if you watch TV shows and YouTube videos and listen to podcasts and read books, you are going to hear these expressions undoubtedly in the future. And by hearing them again and again and again in different contexts and different situations, that will help you to understand them fully and to be able to understand them when you hear them. And then eventually to be able to use them naturally

31:30in your English speaking as well. So as always, spend time with English and the good results will follow. Okay, Indiana, thank you for helping me co-host this lesson here today. Absolutely, Andrew. It was fun to talk about these expressions. And speaking about talking about these expressions, guys, you can head on over to our discord community where we'll be continuing the conversation about this lesson. And if you want to make some example sentences using these expressions, that would be a great way to do it. Plus, we'll be having a speaking class about this lesson as well. In fact, several speaking classes about this lesson at times that are convenient for listeners from around the world. And you can check the link in the description for this episode to see our speaking class schedule. And if you're a Q-lips member, we would love to have you join us for the speaking class, where we'll be talking about these expressions and practicing them with some small group conversations. And yeah, it's a great way to improve your English speaking skills with

32:33Q-lips is by joining our small group classes. All right, everybody. Thank you for listening all the way to the end. Have a great day. Take care. And we'll talk to you in the next brand new Q-lips episode. Until then, goodbye. Bye, everybody.