BBC 英语学习 News Review “爱情荷尔蒙”_科学家们错了吗

The love hormone our scientists wrong.

A new study suggests they might be.

This is news review from BBC Learning English.

I'm Neil and I'm Beth. Make sure you watch to the end to learn vocabulary to talk about the story.

Don't forget to subscribe to our channel, like this video and try the quiz on our website.

Now, the story

our scientists wrong about the so called love hormone.

Decades of research suggest the chemical called oxytocin is linked to love and friendship, but a new study says this hormone might not be necessary for social relationships.

After all, you ve been looking at the headlines, beth, what's the vocabulary?

We have a pen overrated and not so fast.

This is news review from BBC, learning English.

Let's look at our 1st headline.

This is from Spectrum mind Blowing study upends conventional wisdom on oxytocin.

So the headline says that a new study, which is mind blowing, which means incredible, will change the way we think about this love hormone, oxytocin.

And we're looking at the word upend, which means change completely.

It does. Yeah, let's think about it literally.

So it's made up of up and end.

Now I have a mug here.

Um, if I upend it, then water or coffee might come out.

Yes, we're lucky there's no water in there.

If there was, it would be quite dramatic.

And that's important to this word upend.

It describes complete changes, dramatic changes, not little ones.

That's right. So according to this headline, this study completely changes or appends what we think we know about the love hormone.

Now, this word upend is also used a lot for situations.

If we think about covid it really upended everyone's plans for a few years.

Yep. OK, let's look at that again.

Let's have a look at our next headline.

This is from Gizmodo oxytocin's Reputation as the Love Hormone Might be Overrated.

Okay, there's a similar theme in this headline to the 1st one, but we are looking at the word overrated.

Yes. So the word overrated means that something is not as important or not as good as people think it is.

So in this headline, it's saying that the idea that oxytocin as the love hormone might not be as accurate as people think.

Can we break this word down?

Neil? Yes, we can. It's got two parts over and rate.

Rate means to say how good you think something is, and over is a prefix, which means more than you put them together.

Overrated means something's not as good as people say.

Yeah, so we can use overrated for lots of different things.

If you think about music, books, sports, people, maybe these are things everyone else thinks are amazing, but you think, well, then not so good.

These are overrated. Yeah, like those superhero movies.

They are so overrated. Everybody loves them.

I think they're boring. I think they're really good.

Anyway, a note on spelling and pronunciation.

So overrated has 2 H in the middle, but this doesn't affect the pronunciation.

Now, we also have the opposites of this word, which is underated, and that means that people don't realize how good something is.

OK, let's look at that again.

Time for our next headline. This is from France.

24 Love Hormone Not so fast?

New study suggests yes. So this headline is similar to the previous too.

It's talking about this love hormone, oxytocin.

And perhaps it's not as important as scientists previously thought.

We are looking at not so fast.

Now, those words separately, I understand, but when you put them together, or what's the sense?

Yeah, this is a great expression, so we often use it to say that people shouldn't make a decision too quickly, or that maybe things are a bit more complicated than you think.

Now, here it's asking people to think again about oxytocin.

Yes. And that's a metaphorical use, but we can use it literally.

Yeah, we can. So a more literally example might be a teenager that says to There paren'ts I'm going out.

But they say, not so fast.

You haven't finished your homework yet?

Yes? And we have lots of other expressions with a similar meaning.

Can you tell us? Yeah, we have.

Hold on a sack. Wait a minute.

Hang on. We use all of these in the same way.

Are we finished now? Now? Not so fast.

Let's have a look at that again.

We've had up end completely changed the way we think.

Overrated. It's not as good as you think it is.

And not so fast. Slow down.

Wait. Remember, there's a quiz on our website at bbc learning english dot com.

Thank you for joining us. And goodbye.

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