Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Idioms 278. The idiom today is heads will roll. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If someone says that heads will roll, it means that those that are responsible for failure or wrongdoing will be severely punished. It will be very seriously punished. All right. Let's continue. It often implies. That someone will be fired. Yeah. Usually when we hear it nowadays, they say heads are going to roll. I mean that probably a number of people may be fired for whatever, whatever bad thing happened. Let's continue. This idiom alludes to the idea in former times when people were punished for some crimes, some were literally decapitated. They really cut their head off. Okay. Of course. The image is of a rolling head. So after the head got cut off. Maybe whatever it was cut off from , it may fall and roll on the ground. So of course the images of a rolling head after it has been kind of off. Let's continue. The earliest example of its use , dates back to 1858 in the newspaper, " The Indiana Herald. " However many people believe the term was popularized by Hitler. So Hitler made it you know , made it more famous. Hitler himself. Here is his quote. "If our movement is successful, there will be a Revolutionary Tribunal which will punish the crimes of November 1918 . " I think he's talking about a reference to ... there were the agreement after World War one where you know Germany was blamed for World War one and they had to pay a lot of very high taxes for war reparations. And that's what eventually led to Germany going into hyperinflation. And because Germany went into hyperinflation and you know, the economy totally kind of went haywire or collapsed that's what led to Hitler being elected. So that's what he means here." Then decapitated heads will roll" So whoever agreed to that or you know, finally agreed to that if they caused us to go through all this chaos. Those heads are going to roll. All right. Anyway we have three examples to show how we use it today. Example number one. Once we discover who is responsible for the scandal, heads will roll. Well people will be fired. Or number two. When the boss is informed about what happened here. Heads will roll or heads are going to roll. So again a number of people are going to be fired. Okay and the last one we have here. If we lose this contract, heads will roll. Yeah. Maybe there's a very important contract to the company. So if they lose it , you know , some, some people are going to get fired. Okay. Anyway, I hope you got it. I hope it was clear. I hope it was informative. Thank you for your time. Bye- bye.
A2 US roll hitler fired punished germany war English Tutor Nick P Idioms (278) Heads Will Roll 49 0 anitawu12 posted on 2019/09/30 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary