Cut corners

Hello and welcome to The English We Speak, where we explain expressions used by fluent English speakers so that you can use them, too! I'm Feifei, and I'm joined by Georgie. How are you?

I'm very well, thank you, Feifei. How are you?

Well, I'm a bit annoyed. I had some decorators paint the living room, but there are bits missing and they've not done a great job tidying up either. They really cut corners.

Oh, that is so annoying. But Feifei, you've just used an interesting phrase – cut corners. So why don't we learn that in this programme?

Let's do it, Georgie. Well I think it would be useful to first think about this phrase literally, don't you think?

Yes, I agree. So, let's imagine an athletics track – it's oval-shaped with multiple lanes. Now, if you're running in the outside lane, you run a longer distance, don't you?

That's right. So, after the start of a race, runners usually want to cross to one of the inner lanes so that they can run the shorter distance and make it easier – they take a shortcut – and the best place to do that is in the corner of the running track.

Exactly, so the runners are cutting corners to make things easier. So that's the literal use, what about metaphorical?

Well, it's similar. If you cut corners when doing a task, you take a metaphorical shortcut – you do it in an easier, quicker or cheaper way. But often, this means that the result is not as good, like what happened with my decorators.

Yes, cutting corners has quite negative connotations, like you're not doing something properly. Let's hear some more examples.

The client we're hosting this reception for is really important to us, so we can’t cut corners on this. It has to be perfect. You can't cut corners with health and safety. You need to do things properly or someone could get hurt. I was under a lot of time pressure for this project, so I had to cut a few corners. I hope that's OK.

So, cutting corners is about taking the easy, quick or cheap route, which means that sometimes the job is not done properly. Are there any phrases which mean the opposite?

There are. So instead of cutting corners, you can 'go the extra mile' or 'go above and beyond'. Both of these mean more than just doing things properly, they mean you do more than what's expected of you.

Well, we hope our listeners feel that we go above and beyond with our English language teaching. Let's recap. We learnt 'cut corners', which means you choose the easiest, quickest or cheapest way of doing something, which sometimes means you don't do it properly.

Join us again next time. Goodbye!

Bye!