Word of the Day: recap

IPA: /ˈriːkæp/ Vietnamese: tóm tắt lại / ôn lại

Hear it: Cambridge Dictionary — recap

Example sentences:

  1. “Let me recap what we covered this week before we move on.”
  2. “Can you send a quick recap of the meeting to the team?”
  3. “The Sunday session is a perfect time to recap all the phrases you learned.”

Top 5 Phrases of the Week

#PhraseDay / ThemeVietnameseExample in context
1push backMon / Technicalphản đối / trì hoãn lại”The team decided to push back the release because of unresolved bugs.”
2hallucinateTue / AIbịa đặt (nói về AI)“The model started to hallucinate facts that weren’t in the training data.”
3spin upWed / Architecturekhởi chạy / triển khai nhanh”We need to spin up a new microservice to handle the increased load.”
4circle backThu / Communicationquay lại bàn sau / theo dõi thêm”Let’s circle back on this after the standup — I need more context first.”
5leverageFri / Careertận dụng / khai thác lợi thế”She knows how to leverage her backend skills to move into a staff-engineer role.”

Pronunciation Guide

Practice sentence:

“Let’s recap the week — we pushed back on the AI feature that started to hallucinate, spun up a fallback service, and agreed to circle back once we leverage the new monitoring data.”

Phonetic breakdown:

WordPhoneticStress
recap/ˈriː.kæp/First syllable — REE-cap
push back/pʊʃ bæk/Even — push BACK
hallucinate/həˈluː.sɪ.neɪt/Second syllable — ha-LOO-si-nate
spin up/spɪn ʌp/Even — spin UP
leverage/ˈlev.ər.ɪdʒ/First syllable — LEV-er-idge

Tip: In fast speech, “circle back” often sounds like “SUR-kul-bak” — the two words blend together. Practice it as one smooth phrase.

Exercise 1 — Choose the Right Phrase

Choose the best phrase (push back, hallucinate, spin up, circle back, leverage) for each situation:

  1. Your manager asks you to deploy a quick test environment for a demo. You say: “I’ll __________ a staging instance in about 10 minutes.”
  2. A junior dev asks if a third-party AI API is reliable. You warn: “It sometimes __________ plausible but completely wrong answers.”
  3. A stakeholder wants a feature by Friday but the design isn’t ready. You respond: “We’ll need to __________ on that deadline — we’re not ready.”
  4. You have open questions from a meeting but not enough info yet. You say: “I’ll __________ once I’ve reviewed the logs.”
  5. You want to use your DevOps background to move into a new team. You say: “I can __________ my infra experience to add value on day one.”
Show answers
  1. spin up
  2. hallucinate
  3. push back
  4. circle back
  5. leverage

Exercise 2 — Translation Challenge

Translate these Vietnamese sentences into natural English using this week’s phrases:

  1. “Chúng tôi cần tóm tắt lại những gì đã học trước khi chuyển sang chủ đề mới.”
  2. “Mô hình AI đó đã bịa ra một tên tác giả không tồn tại.”
  3. “Hãy triển khai nhanh một container để kiểm thử môi trường staging.”
  4. “Anh ấy biết cách tận dụng mạng lưới quan hệ của mình để thăng tiến trong sự nghiệp.”
  5. “Chúng ta sẽ quay lại bàn về vấn đề này vào cuộc họp tiếp theo.”
Show answers
  1. “We need to recap what we’ve learned before moving on to the next topic.”
  2. “That AI model hallucinated an author who doesn’t exist.”
  3. “Let’s spin up a container to test the staging environment.”
  4. “He knows how to leverage his network to advance his career.”
  5. “We’ll circle back to this issue in the next meeting.”

Bonus Idioms

1. “wrap up”

Vietnamese: kết thúc / hoàn thành / tóm gọn lại

Examples:

  • “Let’s wrap up this review session — we’ve covered a lot today.”
  • “Can you wrap up your part of the demo in under five minutes?“

2. “hit the ground running”

Vietnamese: bắt đầu ngay lập tức với tốc độ cao / nhập cuộc nhanh

Examples:

  • “She hit the ground running on her first day — already fixed two bugs before lunch.”
  • “With your background, you’ll hit the ground running on this project.”

Mini Dialogue

Setting: Two engineers doing a quick Sunday async check-in before the week starts.

Linh: Hey, before the new week kicks off — can we do a quick recap of where we left things?

Nam: Sure. So we had to push back the API migration because staging kept throwing errors.

Linh: Right. And the AI assistant we were testing started to hallucinate user IDs that don’t exist in the database.

Nam: Exactly. I’m going to spin up a fresh test environment tomorrow morning to isolate the issue.

Linh: Good call. Let’s circle back after your findings — maybe Tuesday standup?

Nam: Works for me. We can leverage the logs from last week to narrow it down faster.

Linh: Perfect. I think we’ll hit the ground running once we have that data. Let’s wrap up here.

Weekly Challenge

Your 2-minute action:

Open a notes app or grab a piece of paper. Write one sentence for each of the 5 phrases from this week — in a real context from your own work. Don’t translate from Vietnamese first; start in English. Then say each sentence out loud once.

Example: “I had to push back on the feature spec because the requirements were unclear.”

That’s your recap done. See you next week!

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