Mirror Words

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Gold Forest English podcast. My name is Jordan and to today I want to talk about words that can be reversed.

So, start with an example so you can understand what I'm talking about. In English we've got a word which is overwork. Overwork. So overwork is a verb which means to work too much working too hard. You're doing a lot of work and you're using all of your energy and lots of time and it's making you feel… maybe physically unwell, exhausted or sick. Or maybe mentally upset or depressed or stressed. You are just doing too much work and not enough relaxing. That word is overwork.
If we reverse that word, we get work over, so overwork change to work over. Work over is a verb which means to attack someone. So, for example, “the boxer was badly worked over during the final round of the match.” Somebody - the other boxer - attacked him and was very violent with him. The work over can be to attack a person violently and maybe for a longer time. Work over can also mean to examine something very carefully and put a lot of attention onto something. so for example, “let's work over this document before we present it to the boss.” So you could work over the document to examine it very carefully, checking for mistakes, checking for places that could be improved. So these two parts of the word we've got over and work - very different meaning if we reverse them: overwork, working too much, working too hard work over, maybe attack someone or examine something very carefully. So in English we've got these words which can be reversed and then the meaning changes.

Another example of this is oversleep and sleep over. So, oversleep is a verb which means to sleep for too much time and you miss an appointment. You miss something. You were planning to do something, but you couldn't do it because you were sleeping, so for example, “I missed my bus because I overslept.” So overslept…overslept in that one is the past tense of oversleep - sleeping for too long and you miss something. If we reverse that word, sleep over. Sleep over is a phrasal verb which means to sleep at somebody else's house. Often with children, sometimes with adults, you are sleeping over at some one's house and your daughter- “my daughter is sleeping over at a friend's house tonight.” She's staying with her friend over the night time. So oversleep: sleeping too much and too long and sleep over: going and staying at a friend's house or sleeping at somebody's house for the night.

Let's have a look at one more example… um on my on the blog on the website, goldforestacademy.com I've got a full blog post with more examples, but we'll have a look at one more together, here.
Let's talk about the word outlook. Outlook. Outlook is a noun. It's talking about a view of the future. For example, “the economic outlook of this country is not very good”. We are experiencing some economic issues and I think in the future, the economy will be suffering. It will be difficult. or it could be “the outlook of his business is very promising.” I think he's made some good choices and I think his business will be good in the future. So outlook is this noun; it's a view of the future - what you think the future's going to be like. So that's outlook and if we reverse it, we've got look out, which is a very common phrasal verb as a warning “look out there's a car coming!” It's a warning phrase which is very common in English we use “look out” similar to “be careful.” Talking about this immediate danger. So that's outlook and look out.

There are many examples of this type of language difference in English with reversing words, and I've got some more examples on the website, as I said. So if you're interested, go and take a look at that blog post on the website.

All right. Thank you very much for listening just a little vocabulary lesson today. Something that I thought was a bit interesting: these reversing words.

Okay, thank you very much. I will see you in the next episode. Goodbye.