Hey everybody, welcome to another phrasal verb episode.
I hope you're doing great.
I hope you're ready to learn some more phrasal verbs.
In today's episode, we're going to look at two phrasal verbs, back away and back down.
So, back away.
What does this mean?
Back away means to move away from something or someone in a backward direction.
For example, I backed away from the man when I saw something that he had a knife.
So in this sentence I'm saying that I was close to this man maybe, and then I saw that he had a knife in his hand or whatever, and then I started to move backwards from him, To move away from him in a backward direction.
So I backed away from this man.
Okay?
And the other phrasal verb is back down.
What does this mean?
This means to withdraw from a commitment or a position.
So for example, I could say she backed down when she realized her argument didn't make much sense.
Her argument, her reasoning didn't make much sense, and so she backed down, like she said oh okay, I'm not going to fight anymore.
I'm not going to argue anymore.
So she withdrew from her position in that argument, okay?
So that's back down, all right?
So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about a couple different things here, and I'm going to use these two phrasal verbs again and again while I talk about these two different things, so that you can hear these phrasal verbs repeated in natural sentences.
First I want to talk about some different wild animals that I've encountered or that I don't want to encounter in the future.
The first one that comes to mind is rattlesnakes.
I've had to back away from a few rattlesnakes in my lifetime because I live in an area where there are rattlesnakes in the nature places around here.
So it's somewhat common for people to encounter rattlesnakes from time to time if they do a lot of hiking around here.
And this has happened to me recently where I went hiking.
I'm walking on the trail and suddenly I see a rattlesnake.
And sometimes this rattlesnake is just minding his own business, meaning something.
He's not really concerned with me.
He's just doing his own thing.
But sometimes it starts looking at me and maybe it's even coiled up.
When a snake is coiled up, that means its body is turned around in circles, right?
It's like in circles and it's, Maybe you're ready to strike at me.
To strike at me means to jump forward and attack me, right?
So in those cases, I've had to back away from these rattlesnakes.
Usually, it's just a rattlesnake that I see by the trail, and then I don't want to get closer.
And so I just slowly back away and go somewhere else, right?
Especially if it looks like it's coiled up and ready to attack.
In that case, I definitely back away immediately, and I don't want to be attacked anywhere near there.
Rattlesnakes are venomous, so if they bite you, that's not good.
These are actually dangerous snakes.
There are many snakes here where I live that aren't dangerous, and if you can identify them, then you don't necessarily need to back away when you see them, when you cross paths with them.
When you cross paths with someone or something, this means that you run into each other or you encounter each other somewhere.
So if you cross paths with a snake that isn't venomous, then you don't necessarily have to back away slowly and be really careful.
But many people here don't know the difference between venomous snakes and snakes that aren't venomous.
So I think for many people, if they see...
Any type of snake here, they will back away and not want to be there.
And recently, just less than a month ago, I was hiking early in the morning near my house.
And I encountered a pack of coyotes.
So there are also a lot of coyotes in this area.
These are like these dog-like animals that are a lot smaller than wolves.
And they live... in desert climates.
These are coyotes.
So I was hiking and I encountered this pack of nine coyotes, and they were on the hill right above me and I was ready to back away.
I stomped I froze and I was about to back away, but then they ran away.
They fled.
Fled is the past tense of flee.
When you flee, this means that you run away.
You're running away from some danger.
So they fled.
They ran away even before I could back away and before I even really knew what was happening.
And so coyotes are sometimes scaredy cats.
We use this phrase scaredy cat to describe someone or something that is easily scared, so sometimes coyotes can be scaredy cats.
When they see a big person or whatever.
They will definitely come after your small dogs and they're not scared of small dogs and they'll try to eat small dogs.
But big dogs and big people will often seem scary to these coyotes.
So even though there were nine of these coyotes and just one of me, they were scared of me so I didn't need to back away from them.
They ran away from me.
So I was thankful for that.
And another type of animal that I've been seeing very recently around here around my house is skunks.
You know, these animals that spray this thing that smells very disgusting, right?
These are skunks.
And I think that there are a family of skunks living close to where I live here, because I've seen them several times recently and i'm not scared of skunks in the sense that they're dangerous to me, but i don't want to get sprayed and smell horrible, right?
So if i see one of these skunks and i'm close to them, i'll probably back away.
I'll probably just slowly back away and try not to threaten it and make it feel scared, because I don't want it to try to spray me.
So, even though these skunks aren't dangerous in the same way that rattlesnakes are, For example, I would still back away from these skunks and try not to bother them.
If I encounter them and we cross paths and I see them very close to me, I'll probably just back away.
So that's another one.
And there are some animals that I've heard that you shouldn't back away from because they'll start chasing you.
I don't remember which animals those are.
Maybe you know.
But I think there are certain animals where, if you back away, it's like giving them the signal to come chase you.
So I don't know which animals those are, but I've heard of this before, so I think it's true.
But at least for the animals that I mentioned earlier, Those are the ones that I would back away from if I encountered them somewhere outside.
So now let me talk about one other thing.
Let me talk about soldiers when they're at war, when they're involved in a war.
So here where I live, there are different places where you can go and see some different monuments and memorials to soldiers who have fought in wars for the United States.
And these monuments and memorials talk about the bravery of these soldiers and they celebrate the bravery of these people who fought for the country.
And really what is meant to be celebrated is the fact that these soldiers didn't back down in the face of danger, right.
They had to fight against other people in circumstances and conditions that were not good, and they still fought and didn't back down in the face of danger.
They didn't back down from the different challenges that they faced during these wars.
Of course, sometimes these soldiers were attacked from all sides.
The enemy was on their left, on their right, in front of them, behind them, but they didn't back down right.
This is something that people celebrate when a soldier is facing death.
They're facing horrible danger and, instead of giving up, they don't back down and they continue on.
They continue fighting.
So, of course, many soldiers die in war, and some soldiers had to see their friends and their fellow soldiers die right in front of them in war, in battle, and then these soldiers continued on and didn't back down, even though they just witnessed their fellow soldiers be killed.
That's a pretty awful situation to be in and I think many people would feel like backing down in that situation.
When you see people dying around you, it's probably hard to have the courage to keep on fighting and keep on doing what you're doing.
I imagine that there is the temptation to back down and to quit and surrender, but obviously there have been many soldiers that didn't back down even though the enemy was killing a lot of their fellow soldiers.
Right, and sometimes soldiers are in situations where They see the enemy winning the battle.
They see the enemy getting reinforcements and more soldiers are coming to help the enemy.
And it's very clear that the enemy is going to win that battle.
But many soldiers still don't back down in that situation.
That's something...
That obviously takes a lot of courage, right?
If it looks certain that your enemy is going to win because there are more of them than you and they have better weapons than you, or maybe they have a better position than and they're able to attack you better from their position.
If you're in that situation, it's likely that you'll feel tempted to back down.
But of course, many soldiers don't back down even though they probably know that they're going to die soon, that they're not going to survive this battle.
They don't back down, and They continue on.
That's something that is hard to think about for a lot of us who haven't been in war before.
It's hard to imagine being in that situation where you know you're losing the battle.
It sounds very depressing.
It sounds like a very hard situation to be in.
And it's something that would cause many people to back down and try to surrender and do that.
But of course, many soldiers have died because they didn't back down in those situations.
And so nowadays, soldiers are honored when they put themselves in danger and they don't back down.
And they ended their life still fighting, not backing down.
That's something that people celebrate, of course.
So I think oftentimes, when you see certain memorials dedicated to particular soldiers or whoever, in many cases it's because these people displayed courage bravery, they didn't back down and they probably had many situations where that could have caused them to back down and could have caused them to give up and quit and surrender.
But the fact that they didn't back down, they kept on going.
That has kind of made them people to be celebrated now, because of the character that they showed, the bravery, the courage that they showed, the fact that they didn't back down, regardless of all of that.
Okay, hopefully you were able to hear these two phrasal verbs repeated many, many times.
And hopefully now you feel a little more comfortable with the meaning of these phrasal verbs and maybe how to use them.
And so I hope this was helpful for you.
And remember that it's important for you to start listening to real English, spoken fast, not slow like I'm speaking now, but fast, in a natural way.
And you can practice with that by using my advanced podcast episodes.
So if you become a Listening Time family member, you'll have access to my advanced episodes in which I speak at normal speed.
So the link to sign up is down below.
And you can also use my US Conversations podcast to practice listening to two people talking instead of just one.
The link to that is also down below.
All right.
Thank you so much for listening to this phrasal verb episode, and I'll talk to you in the next one.
