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Catch Word #208 – Through the roof

Episode description

What can you say when you see or experience something that is spectacular and beyond
what you expected? In this episode, Andrew and Jeremy share two expressions for you to
use during just such an occasion.

Fun fact

An expression used in this episode, TGIF, is so common that it was borrowed by the
founders of the popular restaurant chain TGI Fridays.

Expressions included in the study guide

 Through the roof

 Off the charts

 TGIF

 Phonetic

 Perspective

 Yikes

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Transcript

Note: The words and expressions that appear in bold text within the transcript are
discussed in more detail in the Detailed Explanations section that follows the transcript.

Andrew: You’re listening to the Culips English podcast. To download the study guide
for this episode, which includes the transcript, detailed vocabulary
explanations, real-world examples, and a quiz, visit our website,
Culips.com, C-U-L-I-P-S.com.

Hello, everybody. My name is Andrew.

Jeremy: And I’m Jeremy.

Andrew: And you’re listening to Culips.

Hey, Jeremy.

Jeremy: Hey, Andrew, how are you doing?

Andrew: I’m not bad. How are you?

Jeremy: Feeling a little tired, but good.

Andrew: It’s Friday. TGIF.

Jeremy: Yup. TGIF.

Andrew: Do you have any big weekend plans?

Jeremy: Not really. Usually I just relax on the weekend. Spend time with my family,
maybe go to the beach.

Andrew: Oh, that sounds pretty good.

Jeremy: I live in California and I live pretty close to the beach, so we like to go to the
beach on the weekend.

Andrew: Awesome. Well, enjoy that.

Jeremy: Thank you.

Andrew: Today, Jeremy, we are going to do a Catch Word episode, right?

Jeremy: Great.

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Andrew: And Catch Word is our series where we teach all of our listeners how to use
some interesting or useful—and hopefully interesting and useful—English
vocabulary. And today we’re going to learn how to talk about things that are
higher, better, more expensive, this kind of thing, than normal. OK? So
better than normal, more expensive than normal, like this.

Jeremy: Extremes, right?

Andrew: Extremes.

Jeremy: Some kind of extreme, OK.

Andrew: Absolutely. Just before we get started, I wanna remind all our listeners that
the study guide for this episode is available for download right now on our
website, Culips.com. So if you want to study along with the study guide,
please visit Culips.com to give it a download.

OK, let’s take a look at today’s first expression, which is through the roof.

Jeremy: Through the roof.

Andrew: Through the roof. And here, through is spelled T-H-R-O-U-G-H, through.

Jeremy: Very strange spelling.

Andrew: Very strange word. I think probably our listeners hate this word, and I think
actually English native speakers hate these T-H-O-U-G-H words, too.

Jeremy: When I was a kid, I always made mistakes with this word, these kinds of
words. I spelled it T-H-R-O-O when I was a kid, throo, right? Throo.

Andrew: Throo. Yeah, unfortunately, the English alphabet isn’t as phonetic as that.
But what can we do? It is what it is. So, through the roof. Mmhmm. This is
an interesting expression here, through the roof. Jeremy, could you
explain what it means?

Jeremy: Well, in this expression, the roof represents some kind of limit or maximum
or expectation. And when something goes through the roof, it exceeds
that limitation. It exceeds that expectation or that maximum.

Andrew: Absolutely, and we use this expression often to talk about things, often
related to business, actually, like prices or rates. Like a rate of sales,
measurements.

Jeremy: Tax, tax rates.

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Andrew: Tax rates, yeah, you could complain, like, oh, the tax rates are through the
roof this year. Meaning that they got higher really quickly, right? When
something goes through the roof, it’s a sudden and very extreme rise.

Jeremy: The image I imagine in my head is a rocket, a small firework or a small

rocket shooting up, shooting up through my roof out into the sky. That’s
what I imagine.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s like you lit some fireworks off inside your house by mistake and
they shoot out the roof of your house very quickly.

Jeremy: Yes, yes.

Andrew: They went through the roof.

Jeremy: Yes, exactly, that’s what I imagine.

Andrew: Now, there’s a secondary definition for this expression too, and that
definition is to become very angry, right? So sometimes you’ll hear
somebody say something like last night my brother was really stressed out
and he went through the roof. He went through the roof.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Andrew: And this means he became angry very quickly. He lost his temper. So,
everybody, just keep an eye out, sometimes you’ll hear the same
expression but it can have two different meanings. They’re both similar,
right? Because they’re talking about an extreme occurring, but one is an
extreme rise in value or price and the other one is an extreme rise in anger.
So if somebody goes through the roof, they become angry. If something
goes through the roof, then it rises in value or price. I think this is how you
can make the distinction.

Jeremy: Yeah, another common example is cholesterol levels or someone’s

heartbeat or something like that. These health measurements can go
through the roof as well. Higher than expectation, higher than they should
be, higher than some maximum, right?

Andrew: Now, Jeremy, I’d like to get your opinion on this, because when I hear this
expression through the roof, it’s always negative.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Andrew: Oh wait, is it always negative? If your cholesterol levels are through the
roof, if your taxes are through the roof, if gas prices are through the roof,
these are all bad things, right? But could we use this in a positive way, as
well?

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Jeremy: With sales I think it can be a positive thing. They can say, you know, this
company just opened this year and already their sales are through the
roof.

Andrew: Right.

Jeremy: So if you work for that company, then, yes, it’s a positive thing, but if you’re
a competitor, it might a negative thing, right?

Andrew: Right, depending on your perspective. But that’s great, so we can use this
expression both in positive and negative settings. It’s not especially for
negative settings.

Jeremy: But I think the reason it is usually negative is because we are exceeding
some maximum or expectation and, to be honest, if something goes
through your roof in your house, that’s always a bad thing. You have a hole
in the roof now, right?

Andrew: That’s true.

Jeremy: Maybe that’s part of it, yeah.

Andrew: Well, Jeremy, I think we can move on to some examples using this
expression now. So let’s listen to a couple of examples with through the
roof now.

Jeremy: All right.

Friend 1: I wish I could live on the east side of town.

Friend 2: Me too. I love all of the cafés and record stores that are on Smith street.

Friend 1: It would be closer to work, as well.

Friend 2: Yeah, but I don’t think I’ll be able to afford living there anytime soon. House
prices have gone through the roof recently.

Friend 1: I know, it’s so frustrating.

Andrew: In this example, two friends dream about living on the east side of town.
However, they can’t afford to do it because housing prices have gone
through the roof recently. OK? They’ve gone through the roof, and this
means that the prices, the housing prices in that neighbourhood, have
increased rapidly and are no longer affordable anymore. So they’ve been
priced out, they can’t afford to buy a house on the east side of town
because the housing prices have gone through the roof.

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Jeremy: So they exceeded the maximum that these two friends could afford, right?

Andrew: Exactly. I don’t know about where you are, Jeremy, but in my hometown,
housing prices are through the roof. I assume it’s the same in California?

Jeremy: Oh, yeah. California has become one of the most expensive places, I think,
in the world to live.

Andrew: Yikes.

Jeremy: Very expensive, yeah.

Andrew: Let’s get on to that second example.

Coworker 1: Do you have time for a coffee this afternoon?

Coworker 2: You know, I don’t think so, I’m sorry. You know, my stress levels are
through the roof right now. My boss wants me to finish this presentation by
the end of the day. I haven’t even started yet.

Coworker 1: All right, well, no worries. We’ll grab a coffee another time, man.

Jeremy: In this example, two coworkers are talking about having a coffee together.
However, the two can’t have coffee together because one of the coworkers
is extremely busy trying to finish a presentation that is due at the end of the
day. He says his stress levels are through the roof because of the
deadline. Remember, when something is through the roof, it means that it
rose to a high level very rapidly. If his stress levels are through the roof, it
means he is very stressed out and, because of this, the two colleagues
agreed to have coffee together at a different time.

Andrew: Yeah, this is another very common way to use this expression, is talking
about stress levels. Oh, my stress is through the roof, or maybe talking
about somebody else, too, right? Oh, he’s so stressed out these days,
stress levels are through the roof. Something like this.

Jeremy: Yeah, definitely.

Andrew: All right.

So our second expression in this episode is very, very similar to through

the roof, and it’s actually another one of these prepositional phrase
expressions, and that is off the charts. Off the charts.

Jeremy: Off the charts. Good one.

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Andrew: Off, O-F-F, the charts. Off the charts. So what does it mean, off the
charts?

Jeremy: So this one is similar but, to me, it seems a little more positive, either
neutral or positive. And it’s usually when talking about something that can
be measured, but the level is so high that it cannot be measured.

Andrew: Yeah. Exactly, exactly. I think you’re hinting at the origin of this expression,
actually.

Jeremy: What is the origin?

Andrew: As far as I know, it’s related to medicine and doctors examining patients. So
maybe there’s an unhealthy patient and the doctor checks that patient’s
cholesterol and it’s really high, higher than has ever been measured. The
doctor is looking at the chart in his medical textbook and it’s a number that’s
higher than on that chart. It’s off the chart, it exceeds the value on the
chart.

Jeremy: So it’s like imagining a graph in which the line goes higher than the edge of
the paper.

Andrew: Exactly. You know, there’s a rising line and it just continues off the page.

Jeremy: Yeah, exactly. But I have to agree with you that I do think that we use off
the charts in a positive way, very often. It’s frequent to say something’s off
the charts. And it means it’s surprisingly high. Surprisingly better than
normal.

Jeremy: It reminds me a lot of basketball. For those who don’t know, Andrew and I
have played basketball a lot in our lifetime. And when we were kids, Michael
Jordan was very famous, and a lot of times sports commentators would talk
about his, you know, his score average or his stats or his statistics. And
they would say, oh, his points are off the charts or his something
something is off the charts. It reminds me of that.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. He’s such a good player that there’s nobody else that has
ever got that many assists or that many points. So it’s like a new record, it’s
exceedingly high, it’s never been recorded before—it’s off the charts.

Jeremy: They need a bigger paper or a bigger chart to record it. Yeah.

Andrew: Exactly.

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Andrew: And there’s also a secondary definition with this expression as well, and
that is we could say that something that is off the charts is amazing or
awesome. Like, for example, oh, that new Star Wars movie is off the
charts.

Jeremy: Yes.

Andrew: It means it’s really cool. It’s really fantastic.

Jeremy: This sounds more recent to me.

Andrew: Yeah, I think this is a more recent way. It’s kind of a hip expression, maybe.

Jeremy: Maybe younger people. People younger than us.

Andrew: Yeah, so listeners, keep your ears open for these two ways to use off the
charts. Again, just like through the roof, there’s two related but slightly
different ways you can use this expression.

Well, I think we are ready for some examples using off the charts. So let’s
take a listen to example number one right now.

Friend 1: Oh, man, my phone bill is over $300 this month.

Friend 2: Wow, that’s off the charts. Why is it so high?

Friend 1: Well, I kinda messed up and I forgot to buy a roaming package when I
travelled to Mexico on vacation.

Friend 2: Shoot. That sucks, man.

Friend 1: Yeah, won’t make that mistake again.

Andrew: In this example, we hear about a guy complains about a $300 cell phone
bill. And the bill is off the charts because he used his cell phone while on
vacation without buying a roaming package first. And, you know, if you
travel aboard, roaming can be very expensive and this is what led to that
unusually high, off the charts cell phone bill.

Jeremy: Cool.

All right, let’s listen to the second example.

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Friend 1: Hey, dude, you wanna check out that new sushi joint on 7th street? I heard
it’s off the charts.

Friend 2: Um, yeah, I haven’t had sushi for a while. Let’s do it.

Friend 1: Awesome. Meet up at 7?

Friend 2: Sounds good, sure.

Jeremy: In this example, a couple of friends decided to meet up for dinner at a sushi
joint. The friends decided to visit this particular sushi restaurant because
they heard that it’s off the charts. In this context, off the charts means
awesome or immeasurably amazing.

Andrew: Jeremy, what do you mean, sushi joint? Sushi joint. What’s a joint?

Jeremy: Joint can have many meanings. It usually means where two things meet, so
my elbow is a joint. My knee is a joint. But in this situation, it means a
restaurant or a place where they sell something. And we call restaurants
joints sometimes because it’s where friends meet to have dinner and spend
time together. So in the way that two bones meet at the elbow, two friends
meet at a sushi joint.

Andrew: And we usually say it like that, right? Sushi joint, pizza joint, sandwich joint,
I guess you could say. Something like that.

Jeremy: It’s just for fun, but if you’re not sure how to use it, you can just say sushi
restaurant or sushi place. Sushi place.

Andrew: There you go.

Jeremy: That would be good, too.

Andrew: Very good advice.

All right everyone, thank you for listening. That about wraps it up for us
today. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions even for future
episodes, please get in touch with us. Drop us a line. You can send us a
message via our Facebook page, which is Facebook.com/CulipsPodcast, or
if you’d like to send us an email instead, feel free to do that. Just send us a
message to [email protected], [email protected].

Jeremy: You can find more episodes of the show at Culips.com or wherever you get
your podcasts.

Andrew: We will be back soon with another episode, so stay tuned.

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Jeremy: Bye.

Andrew: Bye.

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Detailed Explanations

Through the roof

Idiom

Through the roof refers to something that exceeds normal expectations. When a person
goes through the roof, they are suddenly very angry or excited.

Here’s one more example with through the roof:

Father: Son, can I ask a favour of you?

Son: Sure thing. What’s up?

Father: Could you please make sure the landscaping team does a good job while
I’m gone?

Son: OK, I can do that. Any special reason?

Father: We’re paying through the roof for their services, so I really want to make
sure everything is well done.

Son: No problem.

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Off the charts

Idiom

If something is off the charts, it is at such a high level that it cannot be measured. Off the
charts can be both positive and negative.

Here’s one more example with off the charts:

Fanny: How was your summer?

Beth: Not good. I went to my hometown.

Fanny: And? I thought you loved your hometown.

Beth: Yeah, but in the summer it’s way too hot and it was a record-setting year.
The daily highs were off the charts.

Fanny: It was the same here, too. Something’s going on!

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TGIF
Acronym, informal

TGIF is an acronym that stands for thank goodness/god it’s Friday. It’s common to hear
either the acronym or the long version in a working environment on Fridays. The
expression both acknowledges the hardship of the ending week and the joy of the
upcoming weekend.

Here are a couple more examples with TGIF:

Erik: Geez, I’m so tired. It never finishes!

Wes: At least, you know, TGIF.

Erik: No, Wes, it’s only Thursday.

Wes: What? No way!

Erik: Look at the calendar.

Wes: Oh no!

Trevor: I’m feeling great today—I don’t know why.

Layla: That’s because it’s Friday.

Trevor: I guess so.

Layla: We have a nickname for you around the office. We call you Mr. TGIF.

Trevor: What? Really?

Layla: Yeah. You’re gloomy and sad all week. All of a sudden, it’s Friday and
you’re the happiest guy in here.

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Phonetic
Adjective

Phonetic is an adjective that relates to sound. In this episode, Andrew says that English
spelling isn’t always phonetic. That means that English spelling doesn’t always match the
way we pronounce the words.

Here are a couple more examples with phonetic:

Kylie: Hey, are you studying Spanish?

Edna: Yeah. It’s fascinating. I like how the spelling is very phonetic.

Kylie: What does that mean?

Edna: The spelling is almost always the way you’re supposed to say the word,
much more than in English.

Kylie: Oh, I’ve heard that.

Christine: I’m sorry. I’m having trouble with your name. How would you say that
phonetically?

Dana: It’s Dana Cloutier. Day-na. Cloo-tee-ay.

Christine: OK, got it. I was unfamiliar with that name.

Dana: Don’t worry. I get it all the time.

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Perspective
Noun

A perspective is a point of view, such as the point of view of a character in a novel. A

perspective is also an opinion. You might have an opinion on something and your friend
has an opposing one. The two of you have different perspectives on the topic.

Here are a couple more examples with perspective:

Ben: I watched this really strange movie yesterday.

Vera: What made it strange?

Ben: It was a love story between a man and a woman, but the entire story was
told from the perspective of their pet dog.

Vera: Did the dog speak?

Ben: No. It’s just that we saw all the action through its eyes.

Vera: That is different.

Zane: I really don’t think we should build a patio in the backyard.

Jill: I disagree. From my perspective, it’s the best use of the space we have.

Zane: I guess that’s your opinion, but I think we can save money with grass
instead of a patio.

Jill: All right. Let me sleep on it.

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Yikes
Exclamation, informal

Yikes is an exclamation people say to express surprise. Synonyms for yikes can be wow,
geez, OMG, or sheesh. Yikes can also convey sympathy for when someone tells you
mildly bad news. It is informal and meant to be humorous.

Here are a couple more examples with yikes:

Mechanic: Sir, I have good news and bad news about your car.

Customer: OK. Give me the good news first.

Mechanic: I found the problem and I can fix it easily.

Customer: Great. What’s the bad news?

Mechanic: I have to order a part from Germany. It’s going to cost about $500.

Customer: Yikes! Can’t you find a cheaper part over here?

Mechanic: I’m sorry, that’s not possible.

Ronda: Oh no! Did you check the weather forecast?

Winnie: No, I haven’t. Is there a problem?

Ronda: They’ve announced heavy rain all weekend.

Winnie: Yikes! What does that mean for our camping trip?

Ronda: I think we should cancel. Camping in heavy rain is not fun at all.

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Quiz

1. Which of the following statements best reflects the expression off the charts?

a) he is pretty good at hockey

b) he scored a lot of goals this season
c) he scored the most goals this season, by far
d) he tried harder than others

2. Which of the following is NOT a definition of TGIF?

a) that’s great it’s Friday

b) thank god it’s Friday
c) thank goodness it’s Friday

3. In which US state does Jeremy live?

4. Which of the following is a good example of your perspective?

a) telling someone the Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world
b) telling someone that Sheila likes hip hop
c) telling someone that cookies are good

5. Which of the following is NOT a synonym for yikes?

a) wow
b) geez
c) maybe
d) sheesh

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Writing or Discussions Questions

1. When does your happiness go through the roof?

2. When does your anger go through the roof?

3. What is an area in which you could say that your skill level is off the charts?

4. Do you have an occupation where you look forward to Friday and the weekend?
What’s your ideal weekend?

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Quiz Answers

1.c 2.a 3.California 4.c 5.c

Episode credits

Hosts: Andrew Bates and Jeremy Brinkerhoff

Music: Something Elated by Broke For Free, Let It
Go by Scott Dugdale
Episode preparation/research: Andrew Bates
Audio editor: Andrew Bates
Transcriptionist: Heather Bates
Study guide writer: Matty Warnock
English editor: Stephanie MacLean
Business manager: Tsuyoshi Kaneshima
Project manager: Jessica Cox
Image: rawpixel (Unsplash.com)

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