Cruise tragedy: Italian shame

Image source: Roberto Vongher @ wikipedia

Costa Concordia: Italians buy t-shirts with 'Get back on board, for ----’s sake!' logo

Italians show anger at the Costa Concordia cruise ship captain, Francesco Schettino, with t-shirts screaming "Get back on board, for ----’s sake!" and the creation of Facebook pages and Twitter hashtags.

It has come to symbolise the entire disaster – the furious command barked down a phone line by a Coast Guard official to the captain of the Costa Concordia to get back on the ship and take command of the mass evacuation.

“Get back on board, for ----’s sake,” screamed the official, Gregorio De Falco – a phrase that has now gone viral among Italians on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.

Source: Daily Telegraph


Vocabulary:

to scream / a scream -

a hashtag -

for f***'s sake / for God's sake / for pete's sake -

to bark / a bark -

to run aground -

the crew -

soul-searching -

to label -

a show-off / to show off -

to hail -

what/why/how on earth ...? -

a portrayal / to portray -

to tap into -

sun-tanned / a (sun)tan -

13-storey -

to recall -

sternly (adv) -

to speak up -

shenanigans (n) -

to drag  -

mud (n) -

to drag (sb's name) through the mud -

straight-talking (adj) -

carelessness (n) / careless (adj) -

pomposity (n) -

a nudge / to nudge -

a rudder -

to sink (sank, sunk) -

the laughing stock -

a scapegoat -

for the sake of... -

to hide (hid, hidden) -

to seek to do stg -

to be full of yourself -

vociferously (adv) -

to tarnish -

to set up (a group) -

a coward -

to gamble / a gamble -

leaked (adj) / to leak -

a villain -

to mock sb -

to deny stg -


The words in bold italics are those that I think are more common or are simply worth learning. That doesn't mean to say that the other words are useless.

Vocabulary practice:

Find the words (from those in bold) that have the following definition:
  1. to "speak" like a dog
  2. to risk
  3. the Titanic did this
  4. you need to do this when someone can't hear you
  5. the "staff" on an aeroplane or boat
  6. a person who is very afraid of stg
  7. a brown colour you can get in summer
  8. to say that you didn't do stg that a person accuses you of
  9. the number of "levels" a building has
  10. to put stg in a place where it can't be seen
  11. a person who likes to demonstrate to others their abilities or possessions
  12. to pull stg that is very heavy
Read and listen to this report on the tragedy.

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