AEE 2720: Are You Spiteful? How to Discuss Revenge in English

This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2720. Are you spiteful? How to discuss revenge in English. welcome to the all ears english podcast downloaded more than 200 million times are you feeling stuck with your english we'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection not perfection with your american host aubrey carter the ielts whiz and lindsey mcmahon the english adventurer

coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA. And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe.

Have you ever done something out of spite? Today, we share details about three interesting ways to talk about revenge and one phrase using the word spite that might throw you off.

You can be technically correct in English and still not sound natural. Maybe your sentences are grammatically right, but something feels stiff, a little robotic, not quite how a native speaker would say it. That's nuance. Fluency lives in collocations, phrasal verbs and word choice, not just grammar rules.

If you keep using the same safe phrases, it may be time to stretch. Find out your level and what vocabulary skills you're missing in our free two minute quiz. Go to allearsenglish.com slash fluency score. That's allearsenglish.com slash f-l-u-e-n-c-y-s-c-o-r-e.

Hello, Aubrey. How's it going today? I'm great, Lindsay. How are you doing? Well, as you can hear, my voice is a little off today, but no problem. We can definitely still create a great All There's English episode, and I am excited to be on the mic with you today, Aubrey.

Yes. I'm excited to be here as well. I was telling Lindsay before the episode, I'm curious if listeners feel the same. I actually kind of love when someone has a little bit of a scratchy voice.

I feel bad for you. Sometimes it's harder to speak, but I've heard lots of podcasts where it's the same, right? Their voice is kind of going out and I kind of love it. Yes.

I mean, this is our job, right? We have to show up to work no matter what. Our voice is kind of our instrument, as they say. So there you go. That's probably part of it, right?

I have respect for someone pushing through. And I just think it's kind of fun. Anything different, anything out of the ordinary is kind of fun. Anything different is fun.

Yeah. Mix it up a little bit here. Yay. So Aubrey, have you ever done something out of spite? Yeah. out of spite tell me what you did i wanted when i was younger i feel like this happens a lot kids are a little more spiteful they want revenge if something goes wrong and i remember i was probably like 12 years old so not that young right and um somebody had like been mean to me at school i can't even remember the details but i was upset with this kid

And so we toilet papered them. In Idaho, this is a big thing where you take all these rolls of toilet paper and you go to their house late at night in the middle of the night and you throw it in the trees and over the house and then they wake up and there's just toilet paper everywhere. It's terrible.

And I did that once out of spite. Sometimes you do it playfully, just like, oh, this is funny. But I was like, I remember I was really upset with this kid. And so we went to their house and I was being very spiteful.

Okay, so watch out for Aubrey here with the toilet paper. Luckily, I've grown a little, you know, I don't know that I'm, I wouldn't call myself spiteful now, things will happen. And I don't feel like I need to get revenge. I won't do things out of spite, usually, but when I was younger.

Yeah, I wouldn't put it past me. Well, when we're kids, we don't know how to handle our emotions, right? Like we don't know what to do. And that's one of the things that we might try to do.

And did you recruit your friends to do that? Or did you do it by yourself? It was like a sleepover. I had like four or five friends sleeping over and we all went.

And in Idaho, we had to walk like two miles at like 2 a.m. on these old dark roads. I did not live in the city where there were streetlights. It was pitch dark.

We were walking by the light of the moon. And no one had a phone with a flashlight. I think we maybe took a little old school flashlight, but it was pretty sketchy. My kids wanted to go toilet papering this summer.

I was like, I don't know. These roads are dangerous. It's so dark. Yeah. No, maybe that's a bygone era, right? I mean, I don't know. Things are changing for sure.

But this is great. So I asked you, have you ever done something out of spite? Yeah. What are we talking about on the show today, Aubrey? We got this great question on YouTube about spite and some of the expressions we use it with.

So I'm excited to dive into this. You want to read the question for us? Yes. So the listener says, thank you so much for every single interesting episode.

This is my favorite podcast ever. I love Aubrey's tattoo. Yeah. I love that. They saw, they probably watched on YouTube when I had a henna tattoo and then I used it.

Yeah, that was really fun. I had a full sleeve. Yeah, very good. Anyway, I have a question about a conversation I had with my native speaking friend. During the conversation, I heard the word spite.

She explained that spite means a kind of mean revenge against someone, but I couldn't fully understand it. Could you tell me what it means and how to use it in real life situations? I'm excited to hear about it in another episode. Thanks.

Well, thank you to this listener, Aubrey. Yes, this is such a great question. And I can imagine this word is especially confusing if you hear the expression in spite of, in spite of this, and you know, the meaning of spite. That's

Different. That's like an idiom that it has a totally different meaning. So we're going to dive into that as well today. So yeah, this is a great question, guys.

Definitely come to YouTube if you want to watch the podcast on video. Great place to leave comments and questions. Or if you're listening wherever you listen to podcasts, be sure to hit follow. You got it.

So Aubrey, let's dive right into this for our listener that asked this question. And for everyone else, I think this is a high level phrase that our listeners definitely need to know how to use it, right? Because as you said, there's a few different configurations here. Exactly.

Exactly. Yes, that's exactly right. So first, spite can be a noun, and it's almost always collocated with out of spite, that you do something out of spite, right? And this is that desire to upset or hurt or annoy someone because you're angry with them.

It is about revenge, and it's mean-spirited. Oh, for sure. So for example, he refused to invite his brother out of spite. Have you ever done that? Just kind of not invited someone because you're in a fight with them.

So they feel they're excluded from something. I have absolutely done that as well when I was younger too, but sometimes you'd throw a party or a get together. And if there was someone, if there's someone you have bad blood with, you're not going to invite them. You don't want them there.

And it is, you're kind of excluding them out of spite because you have, you know, hurt feelings. And it's kind of the ultimate punishment because we know people value human connection, right? That's a very evolutionary thing. It's not cultural.

It's not local. It's global. Everyone values that. So to be pushed out is the ultimate punishment in a way. Right. Yeah. And I feel like this is when we hear spite used the most often when there are deep connections, right?

Family relations, friendships that are close, and there's been some kind of fight or argument. So then you're doing things out of spite. If you're excluding them or something's happening because you have strong hurt feelings, you wouldn't really do something out of spite to someone you don't know very well because you don't have that relationship. There's justification or reason for revenge.

Exactly. I totally agree. The next one is she deleted the photos out of spite after their argument, right? Another one. I've heard of this with social media.

Someone has like photos with a friend on Instagram or Facebook. And if they're really upset with that friend, they might delete the photos they have of them together out of spite. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Uh, okay. So that's the noun out of spite usually comes in that chunk. Like you said, Aubrey out of spite. So what else? All right. Then we have spite as a verb, which means to, you know, it's just the verb of that action to deliberately hurt or annoy someone because you're angry with them.

So you might say, he texted her just to spite me. We might hear this with relationships, right? If you have a relationship that's not amicable between exes, for example, then one of them might do something and you think it's out of spite or they're doing it to spite you. Yes.

So to spite you or out of spite. Okay. So this is again, the verb form to spite someone, right? To spite the person. He bought the car to spite his brother.

So maybe this is a car his brother has always wanted. And there's clearly bad blood here. If you're doing something to spite someone, it's not kind. It's not funny.

It's not a joke. It's mean-spirited. And so maybe he went and bought it because he's really mad at his brother to lord it over him. He had a rivalry with his brother.

He's angry. He's jealous of his brother, maybe. Okay. Yeah, that's an important point, Aubrey. It's not playful. It's not joking. It is mean-spirited.

Anything that you're doing or using this term indicates someone has done something mean, right? And when you're 12, whatever, you're learning in life, right? But for adults, as we get older, I mean, it is mean for sure. Yeah.

And it sort of shows a level of immaturity. I think most people would agree generally, because if you're in a fight, if there is something wrong... The mature thing would be to let it go or work it out, right? There are things we could do when we are taking actions out of spite to spite someone.

That's kind of the immature route, right? I feel like a bonus word for today that we should throw out there is the word vindictive. Yeah. Right? That's kind of the same idea if you're a vindictive person.

And I can think of some very high level government employees who might do things like this right now in the current administration. Vindictive people will punish, right? If something's been done to them, they will punish that person in different ways or that state, for example, or country. Yes, that's such a good point, right?

If a person is vindictive, they do things to spite others. Right. They're just intentionally trying to make them angry. And yeah, it's rare when someone is a mature, responsible adult, but if not, right, if they're a vindictive person and they like to seek revenge, then we might see this even in adults, even in politicians, unfortunately.

They can go off the rails for sure. It's crazy. So anyways, that's a great side bonus, guys. Write that one down. Aubrey, what's next? Let's go into spiteful next.

So this is the adjective, right? That's very related. If you are doing things to spite others, this is a synonym for vindictive that you just shared would say someone is spiteful if they are vindictive, right? For example, it was spiteful of him to spread rumors about his coworker, right?

So you're accusing someone of doing things out of spite if you call them spiteful or vindictive. Yeah. I'd say this is the one I use the least out of all of these. What about you, Aubrey?

I agree. It's not super common, mostly because most people aren't spiteful. In our daily adult life, luckily, we don't come across tons of people that are spiteful. It's rare because it's such a negative quality.

No one's going to be like, I love that he's spiteful. No, that's not a good trait. It's true. I feel like sometimes, I mean, this is getting into the emotional side and I don't really know what I'm talking about here, but I feel like when someone is extremely spiteful as an adult, they're kind of like a stunted growth situation.

Like they never grew up emotionally. Do you know what I mean? Yes. I think you're exactly right. That's what we notice. We're sort of surprised in this type of behavior in an adult.

And that's kind of what it feels like. You didn't have the opportunities to learn the negative impacts of this as a child. And so you have not realized that like, oh, this is not a way we should behave in order to connect with others. Exactly.

Or maybe you were raised in a situation where you felt you had to defend yourself and that was the only thing you could do. I mean, I'll get really deep here into psychology, but we won't go too long on this thread. But yeah, it's true. Like you don't see it very much among adults, this trait.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. And then finally, we do want to cover this in spite of, this is usually a linking phrase, a transition phrase that is so not related to the actual meaning of this verb and noun spite that I could see this being what, and this is actually the most common use of it in this chunk.

We'll say in spite of this, in spite of that. So that's what's really, I think, causing the confusion about the meaning of these words. Yeah. So for example, in spite of his lack of experience, he did an excellent job.

That means even though something might have prevented it. Same meaning as despite. We'll say despite his lack of experience means the same as in spite of his lack of experience. And this is super common.

We use this at work, at school, right? You'll hear this all the time. Yeah. I actually think, Aubrey, we should do an episode on the construction of even though, in spite of, and other ways to say that same thing in a sentence.

That's a great idea. I think that'd be great. These contrasting linking phrases. Yes. Guys, hit the follow button right now to get that coming up soon.

We will do our best to add that to our queue. Okay. Awesome. Love that. And then another example here, just to say they had a great time in spite of the terrible weather.

So this is such an interesting construction. Think of all that you're sharing here to share that something went well in spite of something else, right? Situation wasn't perfect, but we made the best of it. This is a really useful phrase for that.

Yeah. Really good stuff. Who are you in your native language? Confident, funny, opinionated. Now, who are you in English? If you feel smaller, quieter, or less expressive, that's not because you're bad at English.

It's because fluency is tied to identity. When you're unsure, you hold back. And when you hold back, people don't see the real you. You don't need perfect grammar.

You need clarity about what is holding you back. In just two minutes, you can discover your English level and what's slowing your progress for free. Go to allearsenglish.com slash fluency score. That's allearsenglish.com slash F-L-U-E-N-C-Y-S-C-O-R-E.

All right, Aubrey, we are back from our break. Let's deploy these in a real role play. Shall we go for it? Yes, we're co-workers in this role play and we just found out that one of our colleagues quit unexpectedly.

I'll start us out. Okay. Did you hear that Sarah quit? Yeah, apparently she did it to spite her boss. Seriously? I guess they had a huge argument and she wanted to make things difficult for him.

Oh, I didn't know that. Sounds like a really spiteful thing to do, but I guess we don't know the whole story. True, true. She vented to me last week, but I was hoping that in spite of her frustrations, she'd stick around.

All right. Good. Interesting. You can imagine how this could happen at work if someone is passed over for a promotion, for example, that they felt like they deserved.

And maybe they're in charge of a big project and they know if I quit right now, I'm going to leave everybody in the lurch. If they do that, they're being spiteful, right? They're leaving out of spite. And not a good idea for your professional career.

Right. That's definitely something you're leading with emotion there instead of thinking through like, okay, you know, what would be the responsible thing to do? Yeah. We definitely highly recommend thinking through any decision like that, not making that spur of the moment, middle of the night decision.

It could really hurt you for recommendations in the future. Right. Sleep on it. Give it a day or two. Yeah. Try to calm down before you make these big life-changing decisions.

Yeah, for sure. Okay. All right. So here you asked, did you hear Sarah quit? And you said, yeah. I said, yeah. Apparently she did it to spite her boss.

So here we're using this as a verb, right, Aubrey? Exactly. That verb to spite someone, meaning you are being vindictive. You are doing it in order to get revenge.

Yeah. Nice. Nice. Yeah, obviously. Exactly, guys. We're doing this as a demo. We're showing you all these different versions that we've learned so far in the episode.

This is what we do in our role plays here at All Airs English, right? Exactly. And then you said, true, she vented to me last week, but I was hoping that in spite of her frustration, she'd stick around, right? You didn't want this coworker to leave, maybe because you want to continue working with them, or you recognize, like what you were saying, Lindsay, that this is not a good career move to do something out of spite like that.

For sure. All right. Good stuff. So don't be spiteful. We don't recommend it. Right. But if you know someone in your life who is spiteful, this is rare.

But if it happens, now you have the words to describe it, right? Yes. And I love we were able to dive into these different chunks because when you see that phrase, in spite of something, it has such a different meaning than this noun, this verb, spite that means to do something, mean-spirited. Mm.

So important to know. Aubrey, what's another episode we should check out? Yeah, don't miss 2718. Scroll up if you didn't hear this one. Dicey English vocabulary for precarious situations.

A great question about some of this vocabulary, these adjectives we use for risky or dangerous situations. All right. Sounds good. Good stuff. And thanks for being on the mic together.

Hopefully tomorrow my voice will be a little bit better. Fingers crossed. All right. You have a good day. Talk soon. Bye. Thanks for listening to All Ears English.

Would you like to know your English level? Take our two minute quiz. Go to allearsenglish.com forward slash fluency score. And if you believe in connection, not perfection, then hit subscribe now to make sure you don't miss anything.

See you next time.