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:
- to "speak" like a dog
- to risk
- the Titanic did this
- you need to do this when someone can't hear you
- the "staff" on an aeroplane or boat
- a person who is very afraid of stg
- a brown colour you can get in summer
- to say that you didn't do stg that a person accuses you of
- the number of "levels" a building has
- to put stg in a place where it can't be seen
- a person who likes to demonstrate to others their abilities or possessions
- to pull stg that is very heavy
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