Hey everybody, welcome to another phrasal verb episode.
I hope you're doing great and I hope that you've had a good week so far and that you're ready to learn another phrasal verb.
We're just going to look at one phrasal verb today, but I'm going to go over two meanings that this phrasal verb has.
We'll look at two different usages of this phrasal verb.
And that is the phrasal verb back out.
And you could also have the phrasal verb back out of if you have an object at the end of it.
But I'll just say back out.
So let's look at a couple meanings of this phrasal verb.
The first meaning of back out is to fail to keep an agreement, arrangement, or promise.
So, for example, we were about to sign the contract, but he backed out the night before.
What I'm saying here is that We were going to sign this contract.
We had already agreed that we wanted to start this deal or whatever.
We already agreed verbally, meaning we already said this to each other.
However, we hadn't yet signed the contract, but we were planning on signing it, and the night before we were going to sign it, the other person backed out, meaning he changed his mind and decided not to go forward with the agreement that we had, and so he didn't sign the contract, So he failed to keep that arrangement, that agreement that we had had.
We said that we wanted to sign this contract and then he failed to keep that agreement and he didn't sign it.
So he backed out the night before.
And the other usage of back out that we're going to look at is to exit a parking space or other area in.
So you're exiting a space or some area that you parked in in reverse, going backwards.
So, for example, she backed out really slowly because she couldn't see if there were cars coming.
This means that she was exiting that space in reverse really slowly.
Okay?
All right.
I'm going to talk about two different things now, and I'm going to include this phrasal verb many times while I'm talking, so that by the end you'll have heard me say this phrasal verb many times and hopefully you'll know the phrasal verb by that point.
So first of all, I want to talk about this trip that I had planned with my friends in the past.
This might not be a real story.
Recently I've been saying, oh, this is fiction or this is real.
This time I'll let you decide.
I won't tell you if this really happened or not.
I'll just tell the story.
So we were planning on going to Europe.
There were four of us, me and three other friends.
We had gotten everything ready for the trip.
So everything was booked, meaning everything.
Everything was reserved, right?
We had everything ready.
We even had our bags packed.
We pretty much just had to get to the airport and get on the plane.
But literally the day before we were going to leave, one of our friends backed out.
He backed out of the trip at the last minute.
I probably don't need to tell you how disappointing and shocking that was, right?
We couldn't believe that he would back out like that when everything was already planned.
It was such a surprise to all of us, especially because we had planned this trip over a long period of time leading up to that time.
We had dreamed about taking this trip together to Europe.
We were super excited about it and it was really just a shock that he would back out at the last minute.
And It wasn't just shocking, but it was really frustrating and annoying because of course this friend wanted his money back.
He had agreed to pay for his part, his share of the expenses.
All the hotels and Airbnb's, the rental car, the tours, all of those things we had already booked in advance.
And because he decided not to go, he wanted his money back.
But it was especially frustrating and difficult to do this because I purchased all of these things with my credit card and then my friends paid me Their part so I charged everything to my credit card He didn't use his credit card To buy these things so he just wanted his money back but that was really complicated because I bought all of this stuff together and on my credit card and I didn't know how to ask for a refund for just one quarter of the price of everything because there were four of us and he paid for one quarter as we say one-fourth The cost of everything.
So he just wanted a refund for one quarter of everything because he backed out.
And that was super complicated to try to do to get just a quarter of the money back.
You can imagine how much of a headache that was.
We sometimes say that something is a headache to mean that it's very annoying and frustrating.
It causes you a lot of... pain and difficulty.
It's a headache.
So that was terrible.
And it was just really disappointing because the rest of us would have to pay more money because he backed out.
We would have to pay more money for the hotels.
We had to pay more money for the rental car.
And we were going to rent a stick shift, a manual car, because that's what most people drive in Europe.
And my friend, the one who backed out, was the only one who could drive stick.
In English, we say that someone can drive stick to mean that they know how to drive a manual car.
Most people in the US do not know how to drive stick.
We can only drive automatic cars.
And my friend was going to be the one who would drive our car in Europe, because we were going to rent a manual car because it's a lot cheaper.
So that was also disappointing.
Since he backed out, we had to get a more expensive car, an automatic car, and also we had to pay for it with just us three and not the fourth person.
So that became more expensive and we had gotten some discounts on some tours.
That only gave us the discount because there were four of us and if you bought a tour for four people you got a discount.
So after my friend backed out, there were only three of us so we didn't get that discount anymore.
So you can see that everything got more expensive when he backed out and We had to pay for all of this on our own.
But really more importantly than just the cost of everything, we were really sad that we weren't going to go on this trip altogether, all four of us.
That was really the worst thing about him backing out at the last minute.
We had planned this for months and months in advance.
We had always wanted to go and take this trip together, us four and it just really wasn't cool that he backed out at the last minute.
I think that you would agree that this is something that really disappoints you.
When you have a plan, you have an idea that you're gonna do something really fun with your friends or your family members and then one person backs out, or multiple people back out.
And it just ruins the plans for everyone, right?
We still went on the trip, the rest of us, but it wasn't the same.
And the whole time we kind of had that thought in the back of our minds that it was really uncool that our friend backed out and that all of that happened.
So that was definitely not my favorite experience.
And I think that some of you have guessed by now that this wasn't actually a true story.
So I just revealed the truth to you.
But it sounded like a true story, right?
But let me talk about the other topic I wanted to talk about now, which is backing out of parking spaces and how hard this is to learn.
This is a true story.
I'm going to talk about teaching my wife how to drive.
A lot of you know that I taught my wife how to drive earlier this year.
And she has her license now, thank God.
I'm extremely grateful for that.
But it was hard to teach her how to drive, especially when you're parents and you have children and you don't necessarily have someone who can watch your children for you while you go practice driving.
We had limited time to practice, let's say.
And when my wife was learning how to drive, she learned pretty well...
I would say that she did a good job.
But really, the hardest thing to do, the hardest place to navigate is the parking lot.
This, for me, is by far the worst part of driving.
Driving on the freeway is easy.
Driving on normal streets is pretty simple, unless the streets have some very counterintuitive layout or rules or something.
But driving in busy parking lots is the worst experience.
And backing out of parking spaces is the hardest part of navigating a parking lot.
I'm not saying that this is hard for me right now because I've done this for many, many years.
But for someone who's just learning to drive, backing out of parking spaces is like the hardest thing to do in the car.
Because there are cars coming in and out of the parking lot and pulling in and backing out of parking spaces all around you.
And there are people with their shopping carts walking to their car from the store.
There are other people going to the store from their car and they walk behind your car.
There are so many possible cars and people that you can hit when you're backing out of a parking space.
So you have to be extremely careful.
You have to look over both shoulders many times while you're backing out.
You want to be safe and you know as well as I do that some people don't do this.
They don't look over their shoulders many times while they're backing out, and that's dangerous.
There have been many times when I've almost been hit by a car because someone didn't look over their shoulder and to see if I was behind them when they were backing out.
So you're really supposed to be very careful when you do this and it can feel like you're an owl.
You know how owls can turn their head all the way around.
Sometimes I feel like an owl when I'm backing out of a parking space.
I have to look one way, then look the other way, look the other way again and you go very slowly and sometimes cars just drive by you very fast and there are a lot of things that make it a little bit difficult, even for an experienced driver.
This is probably the time when you're most likely to have some type of problem when you're backing out of a space in a busy parking lot.
So my wife hates doing this, but she has to and she's getting better at it.
But it's still complicated for her to do this, especially because she has the kids in the car with her and they can be distracting, of course.
And some cars have backup cameras and these are nice because you can see if there's someone or something right behind you and usually it will beep you if you're backing up but there's someone there, it warns you that you might hit someone.
So that can help.
But these cameras can also sometimes complicate things because you can't see the sides of your car.
With this backup camera at least the ones I've seen you really only see what's right behind you.
But what if someone is coming from a different angle?
You might not see them through the camera.
So you can either wait for the warning beep or really you should be looking side to side still to make sure that no one is coming.
So even with a backup camera, you can still feel like backing out of a parking space is complicated.
So backing out of spaces, especially in busy parking lots, is not fun at All right, that's it.
I hope that you were able to hear this phrasal verb many, many times and that you feel comfortable using it now.
Remember to use my advanced podcast episodes so you can practice with real English, not slow English like this.
You should start practicing with real English spoken fast, and that will help you reach the next level.
And I also encourage you to use my US Conversations podcast to practice listening to two people talking at normal speed.
That will really help you reach a high level of listening.
So the links to sign up for those are down below in the description.
All right.
Thank you so much for listening to this phrasal verb episode, and I'll talk to you in the next one.
