Lesson R&S 92
In the last lesson you saw how familiar words can have meanings that you weren’t aware of. So, here we go again!
Email Stress: The New Office Worker’s Plague
Over a third of workers say they are inundated with a never-ending stream of emails and are stressed out by the pressure to respond to them promptly. Some employees check their emails every few minutes, leaving them frustrated and unproductive. Females feel particularly hard-hit by the deluge. Email is an amazing tool, but it’s got out of hand. When a worker breaks off from what he is doing to read the emails every few minutes, he loses his train of thought.
aware of plague
inundated stressed out
pressure promptly
frustrated deluge
tool break off from
A plague is a fast-spreading disease which often results in death: in the title it means something that causes irritation. Normally, a stream is a small river, but here it means a continuous flow of things. A deluge is a flood or heavy rain, but here it means a great quantity of something arriving at the same time. Inundated (with sth) means you’re given so many things that you cannot deal with them. Got out of hand means something became impossible to control. Hard hit means you are badly affected by sth, and stressed out means you are too tired and anxious about sth. When you lose your train of thought, it means you forget what you were planning to say or do. Unproductive means you are unable to get any work done.