and his name was Ajman Braham. He told me this story. And I liked the story very much and I asked him, “Ajman Braham, can I use this story while teaching my students English?” And he said, “Yes, sure, Alex, you can do it.” So that is why you have this wonderful, fantastic and extremely instructive story to learn.
So let’s jump into the vocabulary lesson.
Our fist expression for today is to make a good dinner. It comes from the sentence: “That dog will make a good dinner.”
So the lion says to himself, “That dog will make a good dinner”. The lion thinks to himself that the dog is good to eat. This is a healthy dog. Actually, it looks like healthy. The dog doesn’t look sick. And the dog is easy to catch and easy to eat. And that is why the lion thinks if he catches the dog, he can cook the dog and then can eat the dog. So he thought, “That dog will make a good dinner.” So the dinner is going to be nice, fantastic and very tasty.
But from the story we know that the dog is a mind-reader. He reads the lion’s mind. Oops!
You see. So as you already understand the dog can read one’s mind. So a mind-reader is someone who can read one’s mind. The dog can understand the lion. He can understand what the lion is thinking about now. He can read his mind. He can understand his thoughts. Actually, it is not difficult for the dog to see what the lion is thinking about and what he wants to do. The dog is a mind reader.
And then you see the dog questioning himself. He is asking himself “How can a dog escape from a lion? It’s very difficult. They are very big, very strong, and very fast.” the dog thought. But that dog is a very smart dog. I think he is a Buddhist.
Okay, our next word is to manage. You may know this word, but one more time let me talk a little bit about this useful word. To manage. To manage means to succeed in doing something. So the dog succeeds in finding some bones. He gets lucky. He finds some bones. The dog manages to find some bones.
The next word is unafraid. The dog sits in front of the bones with his back towards the lion totally unafraid. Unafraid simply means brave or not afraid. The dog is brave, right? He is not afraid of the lion. The dog is totally unafraid.
He sits with his back towards the lion and that means the dog cannot see the lion, of course. He sits so that he cannot see the lion. He can see the bones, yes, which are in front of him, because he is sitting in front of them, but he cannot see the lion because his back is turned to the lion. The dog sits with his back towards the lion.
Our next word is to pounce. To pounce actually means to be ready to quickly jump on someone from behind. The lion was about to attack, to jump on the dog from behind. The lion was about to pounce on the dog.
In this lesson we also have the word vicious. Vicious means extremely cruel, unkind and violent. So the dog is extremely violent. The dog is extremely cruel and unkind. He is a vicious dog.
Okay. So here we have an expression to get away with something. We use this expression when you managed to do something (usually bad) and you are not caught, you are not punished. In our case, the dog makes the lion believe that he is vicious. The dog manages to make the lion believe that he indeed eats lions. And he does it by tricking this lion. The dog uses a trick. He pretends to be vicious and he cheats the lion. That is why the monkey says, “I am not going that dog to get away with tricking this lion”. So the monkey says: “I am not going to let the dog cheat the lion.” As you understand the monkey wants the dog to be punished. The monkey wants the dog to be caught.
And the monkey runs to that lion and he says, “You’ve been tricked. You are a fool. This dog cannot eat lions. He has just set it to scare you away!”
Let me talk about this sentence “You’ve been tricked”. This means that the dog has cheated you. The monkey says, “You are a fool.”, which means you are not smart. You are silly. And it is easy to cheat you. Or simply to say, it is easy to make you believe that the dog can eat lions. And finally the monkey says, “He has set it to scare you away.”
So now let’s focus on the expression to set something. Here to set something means to organize something so that you believe that it is true, when it is not true.
Let me philosophize a little bit here. So the dog manages to find some bones, and he sits in frond of the bones. Actually, he pretends to be brave. He pretends to be extremely violent and super unkind. Because he wants the lion to believe that the he is really vicious and he really can eat lions.
But the monkey tells the lion that you don’t have to believe that dog. He is a good actor. He has set it to scare you away.
Here we use the expression to scare someone away. To scare someone away means to make you feel so afraid or so worried that you run away. So again the monkey says that the dog is a great actor. He is a great pretender. You should not believe him. He is cheating you. He is trying to make you feel so afraid, so worried that you run away from him.
And so the lion gets upset and he gets wild, right? And he is ready to eat, to kill the dog. And the lion is going to eat that dog, as I said. And the monkey said: “Ah, I can’t wait to come with you to watch.”
Our next sentence is I can’t wait to do something. What’s it mean? What it means is I really really really really want to do it now and I don’t want to wait and I can’t wait. Actually, the monkey says, “I can’t wait to come with you to watch”. In other words, now we have to go now. Let’s go. “I really want to come with you, and I really want to watch you eat the dog”, the money says.
And our last word for our vocabulary lesson is damn. You may know this word from movies or talk shows. Some people use this word a lot. I am talking about the people who are rude, impolite and the people who use bad language. So the dog wants to know where that damn, bad, rude, vicious monkey is. The dog says, “Where is that damn monkey? He promised to bring me another lion.” Oops! By saying that he lets the lion understand that the monkey has brought him here to be eaten. The monkey is extremely bad and cruel. The monkey is vicious, not the dog.
The moral of the story, I mean the lesson what we can learn from the story is mind your own business. Don’t get into other people’s business, because you may get hurt. You may get into troubles or you may pay a high, very high price.
This the end of the vocabulary lesson for “A Dog and a Lion”. The vocabulary gives you a quick little lesson about some of the words and phrases. And it also liberates you from and it liberates from the story. It certainly gives you that freedom you need to express yourself better and to feel more confident when you speak English. Moreover it surely helps you to get automatic respect from people every time when you speak English.
Okay, I will see you in the next lesson.
The Mini-Story Lesson
Hello, my superstar student. This is Alex again. Welcome to the mini-story for “A Dog and a Lion”. Are you feeling good? Are you moving your body? Breathing deeply? Smiling big? Good posture? I hope so. Let’s get started.
