Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Proverbs 168 . The proverb today is a bad penny always turns up. Okay . Let's take a look at the note here. You may hear this proverb reworded as a or the bad penny always comes back. Okay. So you get hear it as the bad, or a bad penny always comes back or the bad penny always comes back or the bad penny also turns up. So both of them could either take an "a" or" the. " All right . Let's continue. This proverb basically means that an unpleasant unwanted or bad person or thing usually will appear or come back, especially at the most inappropriate times or times when you kind of wish they didn't. All right. Let's go. Let's continue here. The proverb dates back to the Middle Ages and even in Roman times. Yeah . I heard that in Roman times when they started to run out of you know, money basically, sometimes they were not putting all the right metal into, into the coins that they were supposed to be you know whether their value of whether they were silver a gold or or or maybe you know copper or whatever it was that they they were made out of. And then after some time they started to what we call 'coin clipping. " So let's continue there. After a while some coins were considered to be bad because they were debased by coin clipping. So basically even though it says this amount of it a little piece of the coin was missing so it maybe really didn't have the value that was supposed to be on it or the face value. Small pieces or edges of coins were cut off and after you know after a long time maybe they were collected and probably sold for scrap metal. You know, after a lot of these little pieces were collected they might have been sold for scrap metal , so that somebody can make some extra money. I guess. A bad penny by itself can also refer to a worthless or disreputable person. Okay. Let's continue. All right. We have a couple of examples and I think these are both a/b parts. So example number one. I thought that annoying customer must have moved away I didn't see him for a long time. All right. That's what A said. And B said you know , how it goes a bad penny will always show up. So they always come back again. Or number two here. I thought Jane didn't invite her good-for-nothing ex-husband. Yeah . We often, we often use that as like an adjective . Somebody is a good for nothing. So yeah basically they're not a very productive person or you know maybe they have a lot of bad qualities. To the wedding , and B answers nobody invited him but it is not surprising he found out and came anyway. A bad penny always turns up. Okay. So this is the way you may hear it used. Anyway, I hope you got it . I hope it was clear. Thank you for your time . Bye -bye.
B1 US penny bad proverb coin clipping metal English Tutor Nick P Proverbs (168) A Bad Penny Always Turns Up 21 0 anitawu12 posted on 2019/11/11 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary