You're listening to the A to Z English podcast.
Welcome to the A to Z English podcast.
My name is Jack, and I'm here with my co host, Sochil.
And today we are going to do an idioms episode that is related to the holiday season.
And so, Sochil, our very first idiom is ring in the new year.
So what does it mean to ring in the new year?
Ring in the new year is a phrase used to mean basically welcoming the new year in.
And I guess that it got its name from some of the traditions that we have around the new year.
So we usually stay up until midnight from December 31 until January 1, and we do a countdown of some sort.
And, you know, the.
In New York, the ball drops to signify the new year, and everyone kind of watches it on tv, and there is like a loud ringing noise as the buzzer and the countdown.
Yeah.
What do you think, Jack?
I think back in the day, like, the kids had like, these ringer.
I think they had like, ringers, like a belt, like bells, like jingle bells type things or something where you shake it and it's like, ding, dong, ding, you know?
So I think they literally used to ring in the new year.
Like, at the moment of the new year, people would start ringing bells, or maybe a church bell would ring or something like that.
And so I think that from all the ringing, it became an expression to like, oh, instead of bring in the new year, we ring in the new year by ringing bells and to signify that the new year is starting.
So all it means is to celebrate the start of the new year.
That's all it means.