Jiaying Hello and welcome to The English We Speak. I’m Jiaying…
Neil …and hello, it’s me, Neil.
Jiaying Neil – what’s wrong? You look a little sad!
Neil Well, earlier, the owner the local coffee shop laughed at me! She said that my purple suit made me look ridiculous – she said I looked like a big grape!
Jiaying Well, I hope you clapped back.
Neil I certainly did not! I just bought my coffee and left. Why would I clap her horrible comment? I don’t want to applaud it!
Jiaying No, Neil! I said ‘clap back’. We use ‘clap back’ to mean reply or retort. So, if someone criticises you, you respond.
Neil Good point! I should have said that if she doesn’t like my suit, I won’t drink coffee from her shop ever again!
Jiaying Yes, you should have clapped back with that! – But now let’s listen to these examples.
Examples When she said his sponge cake wasn’t nice, he clapped back and said she made bad cups of tea.
Don’t clap back at me! I wasn’t trying to criticise you when I said you need to change your t-shirt!
She clapped back by telling him he was the worst driver in the world.
Jiaying You’re listening to The English We Speak from BBC Learning English, and we’re talking about the expression ‘clap back’ which means to defend yourself from someone’s criticism.
Neil Yes! Like the other day when someone said they didn’t like the music you were listening to, and you clapped back and said he had bad taste in music.
Jiaying Haha – yes – I don’t know why he said that – I was listening to it on my headphones!
Neil Well, I have to say you do listen to the music pretty loudly – everyone can hear it – even on your headphones.
Jiaying Are you criticising the loudness of my music?!
Neil No!!! I would never criticise you – I don’t want you to clap back!
Jiaying Good! Anyway, I’m going to go and listen to some music. Bye Neil!
Neil OK, I’ll get some earplugs. Bye!