Why did he put "thing" after "arm"? Can't I just say "the arm"?

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

Usually, in the UK, we use thing as a placeholder for something. As this is a small section of a longer conversation it is difficult to know what "thing" is referring to. However I can infer that there is some sort of rumour or gossip about what Paul Rudd did to "the arm" and that is the "thing" that the interviewer is referring to. As the sentence is constructed you cannot simply remove "thing". If you did the sentence would need to be reconstructed. "Did you really touch the arm" would work fine.

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12/21

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