This mini episode teaches you the useful expression “Let bygones be bygones.”
Episode 147 of the Everybody ESL podcast is a mini episode that teaches you the useful expression “Let bygones be bygones.” Send your questions about English and your suggestions for future episodes to EverybodyESL@gmail.com! (And let me know if you’d like to record the introduction to a future episode.)
The expression I want to teach you today is “Let bygones be bygones.” Do you know this expression? Have you ever heard it before? Well, I want to tell you what it means and how to use it. But first, let me spell each of those words, so you know exactly what it is I'm saying.
Let bygones be bygones. That’s let, l-e-t. Bygones, b-y-g-o-n-e-s. Be, b-e. Bygones, b-y-g-o-n-e-s. Let bygones be bygones. What is a bygone? Well, as a noun you will really only ever hear bygone in this expression, Let bygones be bygones. A bygone is a thing from the past. It is a thing that has already gone by. It has already passed by. It has already happened. That's what a bygone is: it is something from the past, something from a past time. And this expression means “Let a disagreement or a hurtful thing from the past stay in the past.”
Imagine that you have had a bad argument with a friend of yours, and both of you feel very angry. And after being angry with each other for a while, one of you says, “Let's let bygones be bygones.” What that means is “Let's just forget all of those hurtful or harmful or difficult things from the past—the reason why we had a fight or a disagreement—let's forget all of that stuff. Let's leave it in the past.” That's what it means to let bygones be bygones. It means “Let us just forget all of those difficult, hurtful things from the past. Let's allow them to be in the past and to stay there in the past.”
So, “let bygones be bygones” is another way of saying, “Start over. Forget the past. Get along once again. Forget about a disagreement or our difficult times together.”
Well, that is “Let bygones be bygones.” Now if you are in a difficult situation, and you want to move past it—you want to get along with somebody again—you can use this useful expression.