Tech Slang in English: Geek, Nerd, Cutting Edge (Audio)
Taught by Katie Wood — Cambridge CELTA · Cambridge DELTA · Cambridge-accredited Teacher Trainer
Recorded and taught by a team of British and North American English teachers, based in Oxford (UK) and Barcelona (Spain).
In this episode: Katie tests Clare and Tom on nine technology idioms: cutting edge, silver surfer, blow a fuse, geek, nerd, boot up and more, in 20 minutes of unscripted English.
Katie opens this one with a small lie. She tells Clare they're going to talk about her favourite topic, and Clare's reaction is instant: "Oh no it's not computers!" The topic is computers and technology, and there are four expressions to guess. Clare gets the first two straight away, has honestly never heard the third, and then hits a very familiar wall: "Oh Katie, why do you ask me things that I don't know how to explain?" Nine expressions, two conversations, no rehearsal.
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The workbook for this episode has more practice, with answers, and the full transcript. See what’s in the workbook
What you'll hear in this episode
In Zapp! English Colloquial 2.12, Katie describes nine colloquial expressions about computers and technology and two people try to guess them, with nothing rehearsed. Clare is given four, among them cutting edge and to blow a fuse; Tom is given five, including nerd, geek and to boot up. After each conversation, a teaching section checks the meanings and gives a model sentence to repeat.
The episode is built around two guessing games. In the first, Katie describes an expression and Clare tries to name it. "Cutting edge" and "on the same wavelength" come easily — and Katie points out that guessing the second one proves the point. Silver surfer is new to Clare: "Ah I've never heard this one before." She works out why silver is used for older people, connects it to grey hair, and offers a related phrase of her own — "a silver fox" for a good-looking older man. Then comes to blow a fuse, which sends them into a genuine detour about what a fuse actually does before Katie explains it and Clare admits the only thing that really sets her off is bad driving at a roundabout.
The second conversation is with Tom, who is told it's his favourite topic too. He guesses nerd immediately, describes someone who thinks about nothing else — then stops mid-sentence: "ooh that sounds like me!" Two minutes later he's insisting "I'm not a nerd or a geek." He tries "Like a whizz kid" before landing on geek, and asks a question learners often want answered: "is geek worse than nerd?" There's also to boot up, all singing all dancing — "You can fly a spacecraft with it" — and to push someone's buttons, where Tom immediately flags that there are two contexts, one of which Katie says she wasn't thinking of.
Quick facts
Zapp! English Colloquial 2.12, Computers and Technology, is a free English vocabulary lesson on colloquial expressions, at intermediate level (B1). It runs 19 minutes 59 seconds and teaches nine expressions through two unscripted guessing games, each followed by a meaning and pronunciation task. The workbook, with the full transcript, a graded glossary and two exercises, is part of the €39 all-in-one pack.
| Episode | Colloquial 2.12 – Computers & Technology |
| Pack | Colloquial 2 |
| Level | 2 |
| Duration | 19 minutes 59 seconds |
| Speakers | Katie, Clare, Tom |
| Audio | Free |
| Workbook | Included in the all-in-one pack (€39) |
What you'll learn
Zapp! English Colloquial 2.12 teaches nine colloquial expressions that come from or are about technology: on the same wavelength, a silver surfer, cutting edge, to blow a fuse, to push someone's buttons, a geek, a nerd, to boot up and all singing all dancing. You learn what each one means, how to say it and when it is used, including where boot up still fits.
The useful pattern here is that English keeps borrowing from machines to describe people. A fuse blows, so a person blows a fuse. Radios share a wavelength, so two people agree. Machines have buttons, so somebody who annoys you pushes yours. Once you see the transfer, the meanings stop being arbitrary.
You'll also hear how close relatives get separated. Clare's first guess is "to have a short fuse", which isn't the answer Katie wanted — and the two of them work out the difference on the spot: a short fuse describes your character in general, while blowing a fuse is a single moment of anger. Katie sums it up neatly: if you have a short fuse, you'll blow your fuse very often. That kind of live repair is exactly what textbooks skip.
There's usage information too. Tom explains that boot up now sounds technical — something he'd say to a programmer, and a word that was used far more in the nineteen nineties. And Tom's warning about push my buttons having a second, sexual reading is the sort of thing you want to know before you use a phrase at work.
After each conversation, a Meaning and Pronunciation task asks you the meaning, gives the answer, then gives a model sentence to repeat after the beep.
The expressions covered
- on the same wavelength (1) – think about something in the same way, to understand another person's opinions because they are the same as yours
- a silver surfer (1) – an older person who uses the internet
- cutting edge (1) – technology that is very new
- to blow a fuse (1) – to get very angry very quickly
- to push someone's buttons (1) – to do things that you know will make someone angry
- a geek (2) – a person who is very interested in computers and other people think is boring because of this
- a nerd (2) – a person who is very interested in computers and other people think is boring because of this, may also be unfashionable
- to boot up (1) – to turn on the computer and make it ready to work
- all singing all dancing (1) – can do lots of different things, has all the latest features, very advanced
What's in the workbook
The workbook for this unit contains the full transcript of both conversations, so you can check anything you missed — including the parts where Katie and Clare talk over each other.
The glossary grades each expression 1, 2 or 3 for how informal it is. Level 1 is safe in most situations; level 2 is for people you know well; level 3 comes with the warning not to use it with your mother-in-law. Here, geek and nerd are both marked 2, and the rest are 1 — useful when you're deciding what's safe to say at work.
There are two written exercises with answers. Practice Exercise 1 gives you six sentences with a broken idiom in each — "grey surfers", "pull my buttons", "break my fuse" — and asks you to correct them. Practice Exercise 2 is a matching task: six sentence halves, six endings, including "She will blow…" and "My computer…".
The workbook is part of the Zapp! English all-in-one pack, which covers every episode for €39.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Common questions
Is the audio scripted?
The two conversations in Zapp! English Colloquial 2.12 are completely unscripted: Clare and Tom do not know which expressions Katie is going to describe. Only the teaching sections, which set up the tasks and give the answers, are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
Is "geek" or "nerd" an insult?
In Zapp! English Colloquial 2.12, Tom asks Katie whether geek is worse than nerd, and she says she thinks the two words are fairly similar. Both describe someone people find boring because they only talk about computers. The workbook glossary grades both 2: informal, best used with people you know well.
What's the difference between blowing a fuse and having a short fuse?
Blowing a fuse is one sudden moment of anger, while having a short fuse describes your character in general: you are someone who gets angry easily. As Katie puts it in Zapp! English Colloquial 2.12, a person with a short fuse will blow a fuse very often.
Do I need the workbook to follow the audio?
You do not need the workbook to follow Zapp! English Colloquial 2.12: the audio is free and works on its own. The workbook, part of the €39 all-in-one pack, adds the full transcript, the graded glossary and two written exercises with answers.
Is "boot up" still used?
Tom says in Zapp! English Colloquial 2.12 that he would still use boot up, which means to turn a computer on, but only in a technical or work context, for example when talking to a programmer. He adds that it was used a lot more in the nineteen nineties.
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