English Expressions: Kill them with your kindness

Dialogue

Harry: Hey Donald! You aren’t really with it today! What’s wrong?

Donald: Oh! Those loud neighbors! They’re giving me sleepless nights. They’re renovating their kitchen and making a great racket!

Harry: Why don’t you talk to them and ask them to keep it down?

Donald: Well, I did but I’m going nowhere. We seem to have reached a standoff.

Harry: Why don’t you change your tune and kill them with your kindness?

Donald: How do you mean?

Harry: Consider treating them to a meal or bring some gifts for their kids.

Vocabulary

With it: alert; responsive.

Racket: (noun) an unpleasant loud continuous noise

Keep it down: to be quitter.

Go/get nowhere: make no progress.

Standoff: a situation in which agreement in an argument does not seem possible.

Change one’s tune: express a very different opinion or behave in a very different way.

Kill someone with kindness: to be enormously kind to someone.