This is an All Ears English podcast episode 2003, how to up your English vocabulary game.
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How can you use the phrasal verb run up in three different ways?
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Hey there, Aubrey.
How's it going?
Hi, Lindsay.
I'm great.
How are you this fine morning?
I'm feeling pretty good.
Pretty good.
The sun's shining in Denver, so all good.
That always puts everyone in a good mood, right?
A little bit of sunshine for sure.
I think so.
Yeah.
Especially when it's not too hot.
It's just like yes, because right now we're in springtime and getting into summer, but not quite there yet.
Not in the heat of summer yet.
So it's great.
But I do have a question for you, Aubrey.
Are you ready?
All right.
Let's hear it.
Yeah.
All right.
Have you ever run up a large bill at a restaurant without knowing it?
So the bill arrives at your table and it's like a thousand dollars or something crazy.
Has that ever happened to you?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
So I do have a really funny story about this.
The main one I can think of is when I was engaged to my husband.
We were looking for a fun place to have like the wedding luncheon.
And we wanted to have it at a cute restaurant.
So we went to this French restaurant with our parents to sort of check it out.
And we asked the server to recommend a couple things for us to try.
And he recommended the seafood salad.
And he said, it'll be enough for all of you to share, right?
There were six of us.
And we're like, great, that sounds great.
So he brought it and it was the most gigantic salad you've ever seen.
It was like as big as the table and had so much seafood in it, like lobster, claws and crab and everything.
We were like, oh wow, this is bigger than we expected.
It was fantastic.
It was delicious.
We ate it.
And when the bill came, because we didn't ask, you know, oh, how much is it?
And he didn't let us know.
Right.
Just for that salad, $500 for a salad.
We were shocked.
Oh, you got into trouble.
Oh my gosh, that's insane.
We're both like these college students with no money and you know our parents were planning on footing the bill, which means like paying for the bill.
I think they both were like boggle-eyed, just just surprised.
Yeah, you would sort of think at that price and they would give you a heads up.
They would give you a heads up and that was just the opportunity to check out the restaurant.
Did you end up booking the restaurant for the actual event?
We did actually.
Yes, it was.
And it was actually What was really surprising about the cost of the salad.
It was everything else.
It was a nice place, but it was pretty reasonably priced.
The salad wasn't on the menu so there was no way to know what, But we just had.
People could choose salmon or chicken or a vegetarian option for the luncheon.
And we were able to book the entire... place, which was really beautiful.
It was really beautifully decorated and it was quite reasonable.
Okay.
So luckily our parents were still on board in spite of the crazy price salad.
Oh, I love that story.
So you really ran up a $500 bill.
Okay.
Interesting story.
Thank you for sharing that with us.
And of course that was just the salad.
So the whole bill is probably like closer to a thousand.
Wow.
Okay.
That's a lot of money to spend one meal at a restaurant for sure.
And I wonder if our listeners noticed here, Aubrey, what I said.
I said, have you ever run up, right?
To run up a large bill.
That's what we're talking about today.
Exactly.
This is a really interesting phrasal verb and we got a great question about it.
So we want to share that and share all the different meanings for run up, because there are quite a few.
We use it lots of different ways.
Yes.
But first we want to remind you guys right now if you are not currently following this podcast.
You want to because we release four days a week on this show.
And it's just easier when it drops into your queue.
The new episodes will let you know when that episode is ready.
So go and hit that follow button.
If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, CastBox, wherever you listen, hit follow.
Okay.
Yes.
And you never know when there's a bonus.
So you'll miss those if you're not following.
So make sure to follow the podcast guys.
So where did this question come from?
Aubrey, how did we get this question?
So Sandy sent it to us.
She manages our social media in China, Billy Billy and some of the social media networks there.
And she forwarded us this amazing question.
Shout out to Sandy.
Thank you for sending us your great questions.
Yes.
I love it.
So I'll go ahead and read the question, Aubrey, and then we can answer it for our listener.
Are you ready?
Yes.
All right.
Would you please talk about the word up?
Sometimes it says run up or walk up.
I feel that up could be removed, but it is more native.
Looking forward to hear from you soon.
I am Michelle, by the way.
So someone, some listener named Michelle in Michigan.
China.
Thank you for the question.
Yes.
Awesome.
Thank you, guys.
Wherever you find our podcast, if you follow us on social media, leave us questions.
We love these specific questions to answer in an episode.
Thank you, Michelle.
This is a great one.
Yes.
So what are we getting into?
How are we going to answer this question for Michelle and all of our listeners?
Because it is a good one.
It is great.
And there's a lot here.
So today we're going to divide this and talk about run up today, because it has several different meanings.
And then be sure to follow, because in a future episode we'll cover that other phrasal verb walk up.
Okay.
I love it.
I love it.
So let's start with the first.
All right.
So where do we start, Aubrey?
You lead us.
Lead us through.
Okay.
So the first meaning means to go up like in a building, like go upstairs, right?
And you can, you can remove up.
Here it's slightly more informal.
With ups, you can either just say I'm going to run to her office, and same meaning, I am going to run up to her office okay, it's very native and natural.
I likely would say I'm going to run up to her office right, you can drop it and it means the same thing, okay.
But this always means when you're going up, physically up right, Exactly.
Going upstairs, going up a level, going up the elevator.
You're going to a floor above you in a building.
I'm going to run up.
Okay.
So just because we're moving to the next floor, we don't have to say up.
You could take it out.
Is that correct?
What I'm hearing?
Exactly.
Right.
There are multiple ways to say this.
You can just say, I'm going to go to their office.
I'm going to go upstairs.
Right.
But this is very native and natural to use this phrasal verb and say I'm going to run up or in a home.
He ran up to his bedroom.
Instead of saying he went upstairs to his bedroom, like we often will use run up.
Yeah.
I run up, he ran up.
Yeah.
And it gets trickier in a place like Midtown Manhattan, right?
If you say I'm going to run up to the coffee shop, does that usually mean you're going up the...
The avenues or not the avenues, the cross streets.
Right.
It basically means like to go uptown.
Right.
When you say I would never say if I were already uptown and I was, I'm going south downtown.
I wouldn't say I'm going to run up to the coffee shop.
It is sort of a geographic thing.
We also use it this way.
Right.
And, you know, we can, of course, say he ran over to the coffee shop or he ran to the coffee shop.
But if it's headed uptown, headed north, usually we often will say run up.
He ran up to the coffee shop.
And if we're headed west or east, we over.
I guess you would say over.
Yeah, that's when we'd say over, right?
And if it's downtown, right, if we're headed south, down.
He ran down to the coffee shop.
Even if it's just like a street or two downtown, we wouldn't say up.
Interesting.
I love it.
That's fascinating.
Especially interesting in New York City, a place like a city that's a grid like that.
It's a perfect grid.
And we know when we're going up, down, across downtown.
However, we're doing it.
And we use it for cities, for locations as well.
My family's in Idaho.
And if I'm coming from Arizona, which is south, they would say are you going to come up this summer?
Meaning, are you going to come visit, right?
But because it's north, they would never say, are you going to come down?
I would say, are you going to come down to Arizona?
So we use this with north-south too, using up and down.
Right.
Or, for example.
So we're getting into it now, but I flew to LA this past weekend to visit family and- you know, LA is south of Denver.
And so, getting on the plane, the guy says oh, we're going to take you down to, down to, you know, LA today, in an hour and a half.
So even on a plane, we're looking at geography and thinking going up, going down.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That pilot would never say we're going to take you up to L.A.
No, because it's south of here.
Right.
It'd be up to Washington or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Interesting.
OK, so let's move on to the second use of run up.
Mm hmm.
And this is instead of going physically yourself upstairs, we also use it to talk about taking something upstairs.
So you might say, I ran the report up to his office.
And this is often separated, right?
I'm not going to say, I ran up the report to his office.
We'll always put the direct object, split the phrasal verb.
I ran the report.
I ran the project analysis upstairs, upstairs.
Okay, so the key phrasal verb here is run something up right, physically moving it to a higher level.
Yeah, exactly.
And to just compare the first, where we're talking about ourselves we don't separate that ever would always say i'm going to run up.
In English we don't say I'm going to run myself up to the office.
We do that in French and Spanish.
So this is difficult often for language learners.
But in English, we say, I'm going to run up if I'm talking about moving myself physically.
And if I'm taking something else, I'll say I'm going to run that thing.
Ooh, this is actually a quite high level episode.
When I first glanced at our outline I thought it.
You know it's straightforward, but it's actually pretty high level.
So guys, you're going to want to listen to this episode a couple of times.
And again, make sure you hit follow to get episodes like this one, but go back and listen to what we just said, because numbers one and two right.
Are the two examples are the categories are different, but similar.
So be careful.
Right.
That's what's interesting.
You would sort of possibly think oh, we don't need to separate these because we're still something's going upstairs.
But the grammar is different if you are going upstairs yourself or if you're taking something upstairs.
So that's why we have to look at these separate so that we understand how to use them.
Let's give a couple more examples to hopefully really solidify this.
Second example.
So he's, did we say this one already?
I'm not sure.
He's going to run the meeting notes up to her.
So clearly this the person that she is on another floor above him.
Right.
So he's going to run the meeting notes up to her.
Yeah, exactly.
That means he's physically taking them.
You would never say this if you're like sending an email or whatever.
But if you have these meeting notes and you need to either take the elevator or take the stairs up a floor, this is how we would say that he's running the notes up or he's going to run the notes up.
Yeah, I love that.
What's the last example?
And the last one, this might be just in a house.
Can you run this up to your sister?
So whatever it is, can you run this food up?
Can you run this laundry up?
Means.
I'm handing you something and I'm asking you to take it up to another person to take it upstairs.
Interesting.
Okay.
I love it.
I keep pointing up.
If you guys are watching on YouTube, every time I say up, I'm like pointing up.
Maybe that'll be on the YouTube thumbnail, right?
Up.
Yeah, right.
Me pointing up.
That would be really perfect.
All right.
Number three, the third category here for our listeners is what?
This is the one you used at the beginning of the episode when you asked me if I've ever run up a bill.
It means to increase or allow something to pile up.
So we often talk about it with debt or bills or maybe a score in a game, right?
Sports teams would say, for example, the baseball team ran the score up in the third inning.
It means they got a lot of hits.
They increased the score.
Yeah, this is the one that is more figurative.
It's not physical necessarily, right?
It's just a rapid increase of something.
And you're right, Aubrey.
It usually is about debt. charges get kind of getting into trouble a little bit.
Right.
Right.
We might say she often runs up charges on her telephone bill.
That means she's adding she's making a lot of charges and allowing that to pile up.
Exactly.
OK, let's get into it here.
Is there another episode that's somewhat similar that we should send our listeners to for any reason?
Yeah.
As I was planning, I thought about the idiom to run up the flagpole, which we covered very recently.
If you missed it, go check it out.
It's episode 1944, new or no longer.
And we talked about business English slang with David Burke.
And we talked about that idiom.
And if we still use it to, it just means to like run an idea, to give an idea to someone who is like a decision maker.
Yes.
But we you and he had a great conversation about that.
So be sure to check that out.
Yeah.
Check out David's podcast.
I'll have to catch up with him.
I know we collaborated a few months ago.
I haven't heard from him in a while.
So hopefully his new podcast is launching.
Great guys.
Go check out his show.
Good stuff.
All right.
So should we do a role play?
Yeah, let's do it in this role play.
You and I are at an NBA game.
Oh, cool.
Cool, cool, cool.
Okay.
Wow, they really ran up the score this half.
Seriously.
Hey, I'm going to run up to the snack shop.
Want anything?
No, thanks.
But can you run this up to the trash for me?
Sure.
No problem.
So we got all three in there.
You know what I think about when I think about run this up?
I think about internships.
Can you run this coffee upstairs for me?
Right.
Absolutely.
The intern that you're bossing around.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I feel bad.
There's a lot of movies in the 90s where I feel like this is less common now that internships are more legitimate.
But I feel like we went through a period in the aughts, in the 90s, where internships were just people were working for free.
It was like free labor.
And people were doing things like running coffee up to the, to the C-suite or whatever.
It was, not getting actual experience.
It's kind of bad.
Did you see the film Emily the Criminal on Netflix?
I've heard of Aubrey Plaza.
It's pretty new.
I really loved it.
But this happens where she goes to interview for this job and she's super excited.
And then she discovers there's no salary.
It's just an internship.
And she's like so frustrated because this is really the job she needs to advance her career.
But she needs money.
So she really like, no.
And she sort of gets speech about like it's like how dare you, how dare you ask me to do this role and not be paid a reasonable wage?
And it's kind of true like yeah yeah, I don't think companies can get away with that anymore as much as they could in the odds.
Things are changing.
So that's good.
Yeah.
Let's go through this role play.
The first one we used was that third meaning to increase or like have something pile up.
And here it's with a score at a sporting game to see said, wow, they really ran up the score this half.
That means they got a lot of points.
Yep.
They increased it.
And then you said, seriously, hey, I'm going to run up to the snack shop.
That means that you physically are going to the snack shop.
And it's exactly and it must be Up, right?
So like maybe we have floor seats, let's assume in this imaginary.
Fancy life.
And so I would be going up the stairs to get to the snack shop.
Otherwise, if it were below us, then I would have said I'm going to run down to the snack shop.
Yes, I love that idea, Aubrey.
We're sitting at courtside seats next to famous...
Actors and actresses, I'll go for it.
It's our role play, right?
Exactly.
We could do what we want.
Those are very expensive seats, guys.
So that's why we'll just pretend here.
And then the last thing I said, no, thanks.
But can you run this up to the trash for me?
So, because you're going up there to the snack shop, which is above the courtside seats, I ask you to take this thing up to the trash, because the trash is also up there.
Exactly.
And yeah, this is very native, natural that we would say this way.
And you can also, of course, say, can you take this to the trash for me?
But we would often say this.
Can you run this up?
Can you run this up to the trash for me?
So you're going to hear it.
I'm excited.
Now you guys know all of these different meanings of run up so you can use them and understand them when you hear them.
Super high level episode today.
So you know, for the takeaway today guys, listen again, you know, listen again tomorrow to this same episode, as well as tomorrow's episode, of course.
But this is the kind of episode you need to hear these examples multiple times because it is pushing your level into that, probably that C1 level, right, Aubrey?
We're really getting up there near native, you know, fluency level here.
Love it.
Absolutely.
Right.
Especially where it does have three different meanings and the grammar is a little different depending on what the context is what you're talking about.
But I love it.
I definitely, yeah, these examples and this role play will help clarify.
So yeah, I agree.
Listen to the episode again, make sure you're clear on this and then use it.
Use it in conversations to ask people.
Yeah.
Like this is a perfect conversation.
If you're at a game with somebody, use it.
It's true.
I mean, we don't officially... own the word or own the understanding until we've used it.
We can memorize the dictionary, but we don't own those words yet until we use them to connect, guys.
So go ahead and connect.
Good stuff.
All right, Aubrey.
Talk to you very soon.
Have a good one.
You too.
Bye.
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