English Vocabulary Lesson THANKSGIVING All the English Vocabulary you need to celebrate

Thanksgiving. It’s just around the corner and 
today we’re going to go over a brief history of  

thanksgiving in the United States, and we’re going 
to study some vocabulary related to this holiday,  

and also learn about some of the traditional 
thanksgiving foods. And you’ll even see some  

clips from a past family thanksgiving. And 
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Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November 
every year, so the date changes from year to year.  

Typically, schools and some businesses close 
on Thursday and Friday for a four-day weekend,  

which is just glorious. Thanksgiving is 
basically a meal. History tells us that in 1621  

the Plymouth colonists and a group of native 
Americans, the Wampanoag, shared an autumn harvest  

feast that is believed to be one of the first 
thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies.  

Days of thanksgiving were celebrated throughout 
the colonies and later, the states. In 1863,  

president Abraham Lincoln 
made it a national holiday.

Okay, let’s go over a few 
words and pronunciations there.  

Lincoln. Notice the second L in his 
name is silent. The first N is not the N  

sound, nn– but it’s the ng sound ngg– made with 
the back of the tongue. Ling– can– Lincoln.

Then you release that into the k for 
a quick k schwa N ending. Lincoln.  

President Lincoln. President Lincoln officially 
made thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863.

We had a few other words there you might not know. 
Colonists and colonies. A colony is someone who  

settles in or colonizes a country where they 
weren’t born. So people came over from England,  

they weren’t planning on going back. To colonize 
America, to set up a new life and community there.  

Colonists set up and lived in colonies.

I also used the phrase autumn harvest 
feast. Autumn is just another word for fall,  

it’s one of the four seasons. The T is 
a Flap T and the N is silent. Autumn.

Harvest is when you gather a crop that you’ve 
been growing, the food is ready to be picked,  

and you harvest it. So that’s a verb, harvest, the 
act of gathering or picking your crop. And then  

it’s also a noun, the food that was harvested. 
The harvest this year is bigger than last year.

Finally, the word feast. This is a big 
meal. This can also be a verb or a noun.  

Feast is the act of eating a big meal, 
and as a noun, it’s the meal itself.  

And thanksgiving is a feast. People 
stuffing themselves and eating too much.

One of the images you’ll often see associated 
with thanksgiving is a pilgrim, or a pilgrim hat.  

A pilgrim refers to one of the group of people 
who originally colonized America. But the word  

also has a broader meaning, someone who journeys, 
often to a sacred place for religious reasons.  

This kind of a journey is called a pilgrimage. 
But in this context, pilgrims refers to the  

early colonizers who came from England, settled 
in, can you guess the area? New England. And the  

men wore hats like this with a buckle on it and 
it’s become a symbol of thanksgiving in America.

And of course, turkey, which is the main 
dish at a typical thanksgiving meal.  

Another symbol of thanksgiving is a 
horn-shaped basket called a cornucopia.  

Overflowing with autumnal foods. Oh, did you 
notice I used the word autumnal, as an adjective.  

Autumn, the noun, means fall. And autumnal 
means relating to or suggesting autumn.  

Notice the stress is on the second 
syllable and the T is now a true t.  

Autumn, it was a Flap T. Now, autumnal, with 
a true t. Also, we now say the n. In autumn,  

the N is silent. But in autumnal, we say both the 
M and the n. Isn’t it funny? Autumn. Autumnal.

Now let’s get down to foods. Turkey is the 
main dish. There are all sorts of ways it  

can be prepared. Deep fried, grilled 
whole, smoked, or roasted in the oven.  

That’s probably the most common. Several years 
ago I livestreamed some of my thanksgiving dinner,  

and the quality isn’t great, but 
I do have some footage of the food  

and the general chaotic feel of gathering 
so many family members at one table.

The turkey platter looks so nice with those 
greens. The home-grown sage, it looks amazing.

The turkey platter looks so nice with those 
greens. A platter is a big dish for serving,  

and we’ve got another Flap T there. 
Platter. Platter. Now at this point,  

the turkey has been carved. That’s the 
verb we use for cutting up the turkey,  

taking it from a whole turkey into smaller 
pieces that you can eat. It’s been carved. 

The next dish you’re going to have at almost any 
thanksgiving meal is going to be mashed potatoes.

We have mashed potatoes. Were these 
made from scratch, from real potatoes? 

I think so.
That’s amazing. 

I love mashed potatoes. I just did a video 
on ED endings and this is one of the cases  

where we would usually drop the ED ending in 
pronunciation. Here, it’s a T and we usually  

don’t say T between two other consonants. So it’s 
not mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes. But we say:  

mashed potatoes, dropping the T sound altogether. 
If you want to know why and you want to know more  

about the ED endings, click here or see the link 
in the video description. Mashed potatoes. I asked  

if they were from scratch. This means made from 
the beginning, the most basic ingredients, in  

this case, whole potatoes. That’s different than 
making mashed potatoes from a box of dried mashed  

potato flakes. Sweet potatoes or a casserole made 
from sweet potatoes is another very common dish.

This was a sweet potato casserole. 

And it’s good.
And it’s good. Oh, it’s good!

Casserole is one of these words that can 
be pronounced as two syllables. Cass–  

roll– or three syllables: cass– 
er– ol– casserole or casserole.

Casserole can refer to the 
dish the food is prepared in.  

Something like this, deeper sides, often with 
a cover. Or it can refer to the food inside,  

a food which is mixed together and 
baked like a chicken casserole that has  

vegetables and a creamy dressing. We had a lot 
of tater tot casserole in my house growing up.

Now there are lots of other 
foods that most people will have  

at their tables. Let’s take a look at 
everything we had this particular year.

David, what are you working on over here?
Dried corn. What does dried corn mean? 

Uh, you have to ask mom.
Okay. 

It’s dehydrated and you 
reconstitute it with cream. 

Okay, interesting. Okay. And 
then we have the gravy here.

The dehydrated corn dish is something totally 
new to me. It’s a tradition in my husband’s  

family and I had never had it before. Never even 
heard of it before. This is something I love about  

thanksgiving. Each family has its own traditions 
about what dishes to include and how exactly  

to prepare them. The last thing we saw in that 
green pot was gravy. This is a sauce made from  

juices, from cooking the turkey, but also 
gravy has an idiomatic meaning. It means money,  

easily gotten, or something extra, an 
extra benefit. For example, I could say,  

for my business, I make most of 
my money from running my academy,  

and putting in that work. The money I get from 
YouTube ads, that’s gravy. It feels extra. I don’t  

count on it in my budget because it can go up or 
down so much. So anything I get from it is gravy.

So here’s the thanksgiving table.  

You can tell this was shot a long time ago 
because I don’t have very much gray hair. I was  

about eight months pregnant with my first son, and 
you can tell I’m pretty tired. Anyway, the table,  

the thanksgiving table. My sister-in-law always 
hosts thanksgiving. This means it’s at her house,  

and she does a lot of the planning and 
coordinating for it. And she really makes  

such a beautiful table each year with an 
interesting centerpiece. That’s what’s on  

the middle of the table for decoration. And it’s 
pretty common to drop the T in that word center,  

and just say center, centerpiece. Here, listen 
to how my sister-in-law invites us to the table.

We’re live.
Let’s take our seats.

She said ‘let’s take our seats’. Take a seat 
is a more polite way to say sit down. Please,  

take a seat. Before the meal, it’s common for 
everyone to say what they’re thankful for,  

or to say a prayer, depending on the religious 
beliefs of the group, or for someone to say a  

blessing or to sing a song or have a toast. We 
we’re gathered here to be thankful together,  

and I’ve asked Becca to say a blessing, 
but first, I would like to cheers Audrey.

and Leon. Cheers!

Yes. Thank you!

My husband’s family loves to 
sing, and we sing a hymn. A  

hymn is a song usually praising or 
in honor of God or maybe a nation.  

In this word, just like autumn, the N is 
silent. We sang a hymn, and here it is.

And then it’s time to dig in. I’m going to  

show you what food went around 
and what ended up on my plate.

So here we have turkey and sweet 
potatoes, also called yams.

Okay, so that’s not actually 
true. Sweet potatoes and yams are  

different things. Though they’re similar.

And the mashed potatoes are coming around. 
There’s red wine, there’s white wine. 

What is it?
Uh, this is stuffing. 

Do you know if it has meat in it?
No meat. 

No meat. I would love a scoop. 
Could you, could you scoop me  

some stuffing? How much would you like?
Not too much because there’s not that much room  

in the body for food.
That’s good, thank you.

Stuffing is another classic must-have thanksgiving 
dish. Usually it’s made up of cubed bread and  

herbs. The name ‘stuffing’ comes from the idea 
that you stuff it into the turkey to cook.  

That way, the bread absorbs a lot 
of the tasty juices from the meat.  

But it can also be baked in an oven in a dish, 
and another term you’ll hear for this is dressing.

Jeff, what’s that?
Some sort of bean, fried onion, casserole… 

Green bean casserole?
Lisa made it, it’s really good.

Green bean casserole. It’s mixed with cream of 
mushroom soup, in this case, my sister-in-law  

made the soup from scratch. She didn’t use soup 
from a can, and she fried onions to go on top.  

It was so good. Now, just before eating, I 
went over everything that was on my plate.

My phone keeps turning off 
because it’s overheating.  

So I’m just going to finish by showing you my 
plate.  

Here’s what we have. We have dinner roll, 

mashed potatoes and gravy, olives, two 
kinds of sweet potato dishes, a corn dish,  

turkey, stuff, green bean casserole, stuffing is 
hiding under there, and two kinds of cranberry.

I haven’t mentioned cranberry yet. A 
cranberry relish is a jelly of some kind,  

it’s also very traditional at thanksgiving 
and it’s one of my favorite parts of the meal.  

Looking at this makes me feel kind of sad because 
I know we’re not going to have anything like  

that this year with the coronavirus. 
We’re not getting together like this.

A traditional dessert at 
thanksgiving is a pumpkin pie.  

I love to buy a small sugar pumpkin, 
roast it and make a pie from that,  

that’s definitely making the pie from scratch, 
if you don’t use canned pumpkin. I actually made  

a video a while ago while I made a pumpkin pie and 
you can see that by clicking here. It’s pretty old  

but we went over some great words, 
pronunciations, and idioms in that one.

Okay, what food did I miss? What are the 
traditions in your family or that you’ve  

seen that you cannot believe I left out? What 
feast do you have in your culture that reminds  

you of thanksgiving? And most importantly, 
what are you thankful for this year?  

Let me know all of this in the comments below.

If you’re new to Rachel’s English, I make 
videos on the English language every Tuesday,  

primarily to help non-native speakers of American 
English feel more comfortable and confident  

speaking English. I also have a bunch of courses 
in my online school Rachel’s English academy,  

where you can train to take your English 
communication skills to the next level.  

Check it out at RachelsEnglishacademy.com

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