Confessions of the Linguistic Spy

Photo credit: monstermakethis.com

On Sunday night we came back from Green Man music festival in Wales. My husband went to take some of the stuff to our flat while I continued unloading the car. In a few minutes he came back with a slightly worried look, saying that we were really lucky our neighbour was in, as he had managed to lock himself out (and there’re only two flats in the house!). Well, if our neighbour wasn’t in I would have been, ahem, quite angry – after two days at the festival, a hike in the mountains and a 2-hour drive, hungry, sweaty and exhausted. That’s precisely why I always insist on taking both sets of keys!

When I asked my husband a couple of hours later if he knew the English verb for what he had just done, he said he wasn’t interested in learning the verb for something he would never do again! That’s quite a statement, if you ask me!

Anyway, depending on your location and that of your key you either:

• lock yourself in = you are inside and the key is outside
• lock yourself out = the key is inside the flat/house and you are outside (hopefully not for long!)

Let’s hope you won’t need to use this verb much!