Hello again and welcome back to Lulu's Happy Hour. Before I got the flu, we started the topic talking about numbers. We barely covered half and one. So today let's go back to that topic. The key word of the day is again numbers where we are going to talk about two three four and five. They are all very simple numbers but lots of stories behind them, lots of interesting expressions that you might be able to use in your daily speech.
I don't know if you still remember in the first episode of this number series we talked about prefixes for half and one. We had semi-, hemi- and we also had mono- and uni-.
So with the number two we start with the prefix which is bi-. The simplest word would of course be bicycle, two cycles, so bicycle. And nowadays we also talk about becoming bilingual. Lingual, languages, tongues. Bilingual is someone who speaks two languages very well. About the word two itself, one of the common expressions is in two minds about something. If you say I'm in two minds about this job, that means you cannot really decide whether to take it or not. It's like you have two minds and they don't agree with each other. In two minds, cannot decide.
A very interesting expression in English says: It takes two to tango. Tango is a kind of dance. Essentially means that it takes two people to do something. And this thing can be good, and also can be bad. For instance, you can say I can't possibly finish this on my own, it takes two to tango. But you can also say It takes two to ruin a relationship. When the relationship fails, it's never just one person's problem, both sides should take responsibilities.
Another very interesting expression you probably hear a lot in TV and movies is the idea of number one and number two.
Especially in colloquial use. Well, it's originally kids'language. Number one and number two, it's an indirect way to describe what you need to go to the bathroom for. In English it becomes number one and number two.
Moving on to three, the prefix for three is tri-. You probably immediately thought of bicycle and then tricycle. Two wheels is a bicycle, three wheels is a tricycle. And also we can have triangle, three angles, the shape is a triangle. Many of the romance comedy is based on love triangle, three people in love.

In sports, we have triathlon, where you have to compete in three different activities. About the word three itself, in English, there is a saying goes, two's company, three's a crowd. Two's company means two people they can be very happy together, they can keep each other company, but three's a crowd, a crowd is a group of many people. So usually when you say two's company, three's a crowd means two people is enough. Add one more, the third person would be one too many, and the third person is sometimes called A Third Wheel. Think about a bicycle, a bicycle is good enough with two wheels. It's unnecessary to add in another. The third wheel is usually the person that really shouldn't be there. For instance, you can say it's your date night with your boyfriend, I don't want to be the third wheel, so I'm not gonna go with you. In Chinese, we say 事不過三，usually means I will not let you do the same thing three times. In English, you have two different expressions about the third time. The first one is called third time is the charm, this means the third time you try to do something, it will work, you will succeed. For instance, you called someone twice, they didn't pick up, so try another time, third time is the charm. Or you take the test twice already and failed twice, your friend would say try another time, third time is the charm.
The more similar expression would be Three strikes and you are out. This is originally related to baseball, I don't know if any of you play baseball. I'm not going to go into details. Three strikes and you are out essentially means if you make the same mistake the third time, the result will be very serious.
In the US legal system, there is the idea of three strikes law. The third strike, you will receive more severe sentencing. In day to day life, we sometimes say three strikes to warn other people that we are only going to tolerate your mistake twice, the third time we will no longer be friends. Probably you've seen it in some TV or movies, and people say strike two. This is the idea of three strikes and you are out.
From three to four, the prefix becomes quadri-. You probably know the word quadruple or the word quarter. Quarter is one fourth of something. A quarter of an hour is fifteen minutes. A quarter of a year is three months. They are always one fourth of something. A music related word having to do with four is the word quartet. Interestingly in Chinese when we think of curse word , we think of 三字經是罵人的。But in English it's four-letter word, think of some of the four-letter words. For example the F word, the word starting with F. That is a four-letter word. Shouting four-letter words essentially you are shouting curse words.
We finish off with the number five. Thinking of five, probably one of the famous words is Pentagon. Pentagon is a shape with five sides. But also pentagon in the US, 五角大樓也叫做 Pentagon.
We finish off with a common expression using five. This is the also popular high five, to open your palm and raise your right hand and slap the other person's palm. Sometimes people say give me five usually to celebrate, for instance, our team has won, high five or give me five.
So in this second episode of the numbers series, we have covered two three four and five. Some of the interesting expressions and words, we will do one more episode for the series that covers larger numbers.
In the end, I still would like to say, if you like my program, please don't forget to follow and subscribe and feel free to share my program with your friends. I'll see you next time, bye!

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