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JCDenton Posted 18 years ago
Vocabulary

Please help me with slang..:-(

0Hi my EnglishForward friends,02br
00Please what does it mean if I say about someone that he is 01b00short of his 20? 02b00I''m really courious about it. I heard this expression in a movie where a truck driver was explaining to the FBI agents why he had stolen a big amount of money from his employer. He said:02br
01b00.02b02br
01b00.02b02br
01i00I got my second moving violation in a month. (no problem)02i02br
02br
01i00I had this punk-ass super. (really ugly slang, but no problem again. He is talking about his superior.) 02i02br
02br
01i00He's looking to put me on probation, all right? (no problem)02i02br
02br
01i01b00And I was six months short of my 20. (????)02b02br
02i02br
02br
01i00So I...needed a short-term bridge loan. (no problem)02i02br
02br
00Many thanks in advance for your clarification. Because I was really confused after I heard that highlighted sentence. 02br
00thank you.02br
00with regards02br
00JCD0-
  

Top answer

0Now I'm not completely sure, but I would guess he was six months short of a time frame after which he would not longer be on probation, maybe 20 months. 0-

— Anonymous

  • 0Now I'm not completely sure, but I would guess he was six months short of a time frame after which he would not longer be on probation, maybe 20 months.
  • 0-
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5 Answers
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0Now I'm not completely sure, but I would guess he was six months short of a time frame after which he would not longer be on probation, maybe 20 months. I might have to watch the movie for more context though...0-
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0 Was the speaker middle-aged? It could mean that he was six months away from the date when he would have worked for the company for 20 years. (oh, what fun we're having with verb tenses) This date might be important because it's when his pension or other retirement plan would become "vested," that is, he would be entitled to contributions the company had made on his behalf over the previous 20
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0He was six month's short of being there for 20 years. 0-
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0Ok, many thanks to all of you. There wasn't any other context, just this. I just though that "01b00be short of twenty02b00" is some kind of slang. But according to your replies it isn't. Perhaps it was really meaned as that he was six month's short of being there for 20 years (like DellMobile and SusanKay said). His super/superior wanted to put him on probetion, because o
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0 I thought about you last night - we watched 01i00Michael Clayton 02i00(great movie!) and at one point the protagonist's brother, who is a police officer, says something like, "I'm eighteen months away from my twenty, and now my pension's in jeopardy..." Although he didn't say "short of," it definitely seems like the same idea. 0-
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