January 19, 2017　=========

☆  sabotage  ダメにする

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This week’s useful phrase includes this one: I hope I don’t sabotage my diet! This is a really common thing for people (OK, mostly women, I guess!) to say. When you sabotage something, you do something to deliberately stop it from being a success. So, if you say you are sabotaging your diet, what you mean is that you have probably eating healthy food and exercising, but suddenly you are eating cake or drinking too much alcohol.

Sabotage is a common verb to use when talking about goals. So, the example above is a weight loss goal. However, if you have a goal to live abroad for a year, you might sabotage your goal by spending money instead of saving money for your trip. Or you might sabotage your goal of improving your TOEIC score by spending time watching TV instead of studying. Have you sabotaged a goal recently? How did you sabotage it?

Bye,

Chris