You’ll never guess what has happened to me! －ちょっと、聞いてちょうだいよ！－

In a conversation with my wife recently, I used the expression “a drama queen”.  She didn’t know what it meant, and incorrectly guessed that it meant someone who was an expert on dramas, someone who watched a lot of movies etc.  I can see the logic in her guess but it was wrong, so I thought I would explain the term, as it is a useful informal English expression which you probably won’t find in your textbooks. 

Do you have any friends who always seem to be in the middle of some kind of crisis?  Every time you meet them, they tell you some over the top story about a problem that they are having.  Well, they may be an extremely unlucky person, regularly experiencing extraordinary difficulties that the rest of us don’t.  But probably they are a drama queen.

Despite the word “queen” usually referring to a female, a drama queen can be a man or a woman.  It means someone who exaggerates their stories and makes ordinary situations sound like melodrama.

For example:

A:  I can’t believe she hasn’t called me back.  She hates me.  She’s doing it on purpose to hurt me.

B: Oh, stop being such a drama queen.  She is probably just busy.

Vocabulary:

a term – An expression; word; phrase etc.

to be informal – To be casual.  If a word is informal, it is used in daily conversation but not in newspapers etc.

a crisis – An immediate and very difficult problem.

to be over the top – To be exaggerated; for some action, response etc. to be too much or too strong for the situation.

to be extraordinary – To be very unusual; more than ordinary.

melodrama – A kind of drama that is very exaggerated, emotional, or unrealistic.  Television soap operas are usually melodramas,.