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  • Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origin 63. The word origin today is

  • lame-duck. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If someone is described as a

  • lame-duck, the speaker is being critical of that

  • person. So they're criticizing them. They might be mocking them or making fun of

  • them. Of that person because he or she is no longer successful or basically he's

  • lost a lot of power. Nowadays, it is used with politicians who have little real

  • power left because he or she is at the end of their term. Okay, and will not be

  • returning. Other politicians or adversaries realize there is no point to

  • deal with him or her anymore because someone new will take their position or

  • their power very soon and any new deal may not even be honored by the new

  • person or maybe it'll be totally cancelled by them. Yeah. The new person. The

  • origin of this phrase actually comes from the stock market. Believe it or not.

  • Yes and was used to refer to investors who could not pay their debts. Yeah. There

  • was a time in the stock market where they allowed investors to buy stocks on

  • credit. So if they really ran into trouble and they bought too many stocks

  • and they couldn't cover them. They got wiped out and they they couldn't honor

  • you know what they was supposedly bought anymore. So they couldn't honor you know,

  • their debts and it just came down to that. So those, those investors referred

  • to as lame ducks. Okay. All right. Lame duck was another term often used.

  • Yeah. Because you know, we use we still today use bull and bear. But all three

  • used to be used at one time. The reason why someone with no money or

  • assets was called a lame duck is related to the British game of cricket. Okay. You

  • know, crickets a little bit like baseball. There is a batter or in, in

  • cricket they call him a batsman and he tries to hit the ball and maybe he could

  • run between it's really just like two two areas and then he could score runs

  • just like in baseball too. So there are a lot of similarities, but there's still

  • very different games. But anyway. Let's continue. So if a batsman didn't score

  • any runs in you know, when he was up, his score of zero was thought to resemble a

  • duck's egg. So it looked a little bit oval so it looked like a duck's egg. So

  • that's why they started calling these investors lamb ducks. Because they didn't ...

  • they didn't have anything anymore. They had zero left. Okay and so that's

  • basically it. So it's strange. That's where we get lame duck from. First it

  • was from the idea of the stock market and from the stock market it came from

  • the idea of the British game cricket. Anyway, so let's give one example here. He

  • can no longer get any of his policies passed from his agenda because he has

  • become a lame duck after losing his re-election bid. Okay. Anyway, I hope you

  • got it. I hope it was clear. I hope it was informative. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.

Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origin 63. The word origin today is

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