Hey English learners, welcome to another phrasal verb episode.
I hope you're doing great.
I hope your English learning is going well and that you're ready to learn some new phrasal verbs today.
We're going to look at two phrasal verbs in this episode.
The first one is break off.
And the second one is break out.
And we're going to look at two different meanings of breakout.
So first, let me define these phrasal verbs and give you an example of each one.
Break off. means to end or discontinue some type of relationship.
You put an end to that relationship.
So, for example, I could say the government broke off diplomatic relations with that nation.
In this sense I'm saying that the government had diplomatic relations with another government from another nation, but now the government is going to end that relationship.
They're no longer going to have diplomacy anymore.
They're no longer going to have diplomatic ties to that country, probably because they don't approve of what that other country is doing right now.
So they broke off diplomatic relations with that nation.
They are no longer in that diplomatic relationship.
They're ending it.
So that's break off.
How about break out?
The first definition that we're going to look at is to escape from some enclosure, something that is trapping the person or animal inside.
For example, I could say, the animal broke out of the cage.
So this means that the animal was able to escape from the cage.
It broke out.
And the other meaning of breakout that I wanted to talk about today is is when we use this phrasal verb to mean that something starts suddenly, but not just anything.
We use it when talking about some undesirable negative, chaotic event.
Okay, for example, war broke out.
That is some undesirable negative, chaotic event.
War.
Right.
Or I could say riots broke out after a protester was hit by the police.
In this case, there was a protest that was peaceful, probably.
And then suddenly the police hit a protester and the protesters stopped being peaceful and they started rioting.
So riots broke out.
So that's an undesirable, chaotic event that suddenly started.
It broke out.
Okay, now let me talk about a couple of different things, and I'm going to use these phrasal verbs again and again in different sentences so that by the end of this episode, you should feel more comfortable with understanding these phrasal verbs when you hear them used, and perhaps you can even use them in your own sentences.
So, first let me talk about a certain couple, a boyfriend and a girlfriend, who became engaged.
They got engaged to be married.
When you're engaged, this means that you plan on getting married.
You have that plan.
You probably have a date that you are going to get married to the other person.
So this might be fiction or it might be real.
I won't tell you.
But let me talk about this.
So this couple was very happy.
When they first started dating, when they first started going out and they were happy enough together to actually get engaged, the man proposed to the woman.
When you propose to someone, This means that you ask them to marry you.
So the man proposed to the woman and she said yes.
And they started planning for their wedding.
But problems arose during their engagement.
So before they were engaged, they had a pretty happy relationship.
But after they got engaged it seemed like they started having more problems, and those problems got serious enough that the woman actually threatened to break off the engagement.
The woman threatened to break it off and to leave the man.
She didn't, and they were able to work through those problems that they had and it seemed like they were getting back on track.
They rediscovered their loving relationship that they had before they were engaged.
So that was good.
And then some weeks went by and other problems arose, other complications, things that caused them to start fighting again.
And then, this time, the man was actually got to the point where he threatened to break off the engagement.
He threatened to break it all off and to leave the woman at this point.
So now it was the man's turn to threaten to break off the engagement.
And he didn't do it.
He decided to try to fight for their relationship and continue on and continue planning for the wedding.
And they did pretty well for the next few weeks and even the next couple months.
But eventually...
They realized that things were just not going well, especially because, when they would talk about their life together, their future life after they were going to get married, they realized that they didn't share the same goals.
They didn't have the same vision for their life, their future life.
And when that happens, this usually causes huge problems or it causes the relationship to end.
And that's actually what happened.
They both decided to break off the engagement.
They both decided that it was better for them to go their separate ways.
And this time it wasn't because they just had an argument or were fighting with each other.
They actually talked calmly and seriously about their goals and realized that they didn't align.
The man wanted some things, the woman wanted other things, and these things were contrary to each other.
And so yeah, it's possible that their minds could change in the future, but they realized that their vision of the world the man's vision and the woman's vision were just too different.
They viewed things differently.
They wanted different things.
So they both decided that it was best to break off the engagement.
And so that's what they did.
They broke it off and everyone was disappointed that they had broken off the engagement.
Everyone was looking forward to the wedding and to seeing them build a happy marriage and family together, but it didn't happen.
They broke it off and they both realized that it was for the best.
Obviously they were sad.
The people around them were sad.
Because remember that their relationship before the engagement seemed very good, positive.
They were happy together.
So it was a sad thing for their friends and families to see them break off the engagement.
But, of course, once they explained to their friends and family what had happened and that they had both decided that it was for the best, everyone began to realize that they were right.
They probably would have had major problems in their marriage if they hadn't broken off the engagement.
And if they had just decided to do it anyway.
So it was a hard choice to break it off.
It wasn't easy for them, but they were honest with each other and with themselves and realized that it wasn't going to be a great marriage, most likely.
So that's why they broke it off and they went their separate ways.
Alright, now let me talk about something else.
I want to talk about prison.
And this one, for sure, is fiction.
This isn't a real story, but I want to tell it anyway.
So, there was an incident... at a prison where a prisoner actually broke out of his cell.
So a cell is the place where the prisoners are kept, like where their bed is, where they sleep, the little space that they have.
That is their cell.
So one of the inmates, meaning one of the people that were imprisoned there, one of the inmates actually broke out of his cell and almost broke out of the prison entirely.
It was a big deal and chaos broke out when the guards realized this.
When they realized that one of the inmates was missing he wasn't in his cell, where he was supposed to be complete chaos ensued.
Chaos broke out and And alarms went off.
People were yelling and shouting and other prisoners wanted to take advantage of the chaos that had broken out, and they tried to break out of their cells.
Well, because the guards really weren't paying attention.
They were focusing on finding the lost inmate, and some of the inmates weren't actually in their cells at that time.
They were in a different part of the prison, because not everyone is always in their cells at the same exact time.
Sometimes Some of these prisoners would be outside of their cells somewhere.
And in this case, that's what happened.
There were also some inmates that weren't in their cells when all the chaos broke out, when they realized that the prisoner had broken out of his cell and the inmates that weren't in their cells at this time also tried to take advantage of all the chaos that had broken out, and so They tried to escape, because it was all very disorganized.
The guards didn't know what to do, but eventually a guard actually captured.
He actually found the prisoner that had broken out of the cell.
He found him before he broke out of prison entirely.
And when he found him, he grabbed him and threw him on the ground.
And he was seen by the other inmates to be excessively aggressive with the inmate that had broken out.
He was being too brutal with him, And when they saw that, more chaos broke out among the inmates who weren't in their cells and fighting broke out among the guards and the inmates.
It was complete chaos, complete disorder and there was fighting and the guards had to use lot of force to subdue this whole chaotic scene.
So you can imagine how crazy things were in that prison at that time.
And not only that, but the inmate who had broken out.
He actually suspected another inmate of ratting on him.
When you rat on on someone, it means that you tell the authority that the other person is doing something wrong.
So the inmate that broke out of his cell.
He thought that another inmate was the one who told the guards and that's why they realized that he was gone.
And once he started suspecting that other inmate, things went south, meaning negative things started happening.
Fighting broke out among these inmates and among their friends, and these friends started fighting.
So a bunch of fighting broke out among the prisoners, and it's very dangerous when that happens in a prison.
There's a lot of violence in those cases.
People can sometimes brutally injure other people or even kill other people in those cases.
In that case nobody was killed, but people were injured.
After all, the fighting broke out, and some different weapons were used in that fighting.
And so the guards had to be really careful in subduing everything, calming the situation down.
It was a very crazy, chaotic scene.
And that happened just shortly after the initial chaos had broken out, when the guards realized that the prisoner had had escaped from his cell.
All of that happened in a very short period of time.
That was one of the craziest events that happened at that prison.
After that point, the guards had to be extra careful.
They had to pay extra attention to where all the prisoners were and they had to modify some of the protocols that they had at that prison to make sure that this type of situation would not happen again, because it was complete and utter chaos.
Alright hopefully, as I was talking, you were able to hear those phrasal verbs used again and again and hopefully now you can understand them better.
You have a feel for how to use them perhaps, and Maybe you can try to use them in your own sentences.
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