How to Use “Throw Up", "Throw Down", "Throw In,” “Throw Out,” and "Throw Back" | Learn English Podcast

We're about to throw down on this episode.

Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.

On today's episode.

I want to continue a series that we have started where we go over phrasial verbs.

And on today's episode, I want to focus on the phrasial verbs that have the word throw in them.

We've been working on this series because I know phrasal verbs are very confusing.

I teach English to people who are learning it as a second language and I have heard a lot of times from students that phrasal verbs can be very confusing.

You can have one phrasal verb with multiple meanings.

You can have phrasal verbs that seem similar but mean very different things, and you can have different phrasal verbs that mean almost the same thing.

So on today's episode we're going to cover some of the phrasal verbs with the word throw in them, so you can study them and start using them like a native speaker.

So if you're interested in learning about these phrasal verbs well, of course, practicing your listening comprehension and building your English vocabulary, then follow along, because we're about to begin.

Before we get started, I want to remind you to look at the description of this podcast episode.

There you will find the list of words and phrases that I used in the episode, so you can take them, study them and build your English vocabulary.

Now let's start with the word throw.

In its verb form, the word throw usually means when you are taking an object and moving it through space with an action from your arm.

Think of a sports ball, for example, a basketball, a volleyball, a baseball, an American football.

You're taking something and moving your arm in a way to get that object to move through space.

Keep that in mind, because some of the phrasal verbs do have something to do with an object moving in space.

But of course, when we add a second word to it to make it a phrasal verb, then the meaning can change.

On today's episode, we're going to go over five phrasal verbs.

There are a lot more with the word throw in them but, like I said, phrasal verbs are very complicated.

There's a lot of them, and even within one phrasal verb you can have a lot of different meanings depending on the context.

So we're going to start with our first one, and that is to throw up.

The most common meaning of this is to vomit.

When you eat something bad, maybe you have a little bit of food poisoning or you have some type of stomach virus.

You can vomit from being really nauseous.

We would say that you threw up.

An example sentence here is I ate some bad food and I threw it up.

Another meaning is when you move something up in the air relatively quickly.

This is usually your hands or your arms.

For example, if you are on a roller coaster and you put your hands in the air, maybe you raise your hands very, very quickly.

You can say that you threw up your hands before the drop on the roller coaster.

You also hear this with music.

If you're at some place with a DJ, they might tell you to throw your hands up in the air.

An example here would be a Tayo Cruz song called Dynamite.

Now, besides parties and on roller coasters, you might also hear this when someone gets frustrated, when someone is annoyed or just kind of tired of dealing with a difficult situation.

For example, let's say you are in an argument with your friend and you're really not making any progress.

You just keep arguing with each other.

One person might throw their hands up in the air out of frustration.

Our next phrasal verb is throw down.

This in the phrasal verb context usually refers to taking something and throwing it on the ground with a lot of force.

So throw up means that you're putting something up into the air, or if you're doing the opposite, that would be throwing something down onto the ground.

Just like throw up, this also has a slang meaning in the dance and music scene.

When you party, when you are dancing and having a lot of fun.

One way that we can describe it is that you threw down.

When people are talking about people who were on the dance floor or who are currently on the dance floor, you might hear that they are throwing down.

That just means they are partying dancing a lot, having a lot of fun.

A very opposite meaning of this is when two people are challenging each other to a fight.

Let's say, you know two people who do not like each other, and it's known that they don't like each other and they kind of always get into it, which means that they argue, have some disagreement when they see each other.

You might say that they are about to throw down.

That means that they are about to fight.

If they do get into a physical altercation, if they do fight with each other, afterwards you can say that they threw down.

This is somewhat related to an idiom that you might hear.

There is a phrase that is throw down the gauntlet.

What that means is to challenge someone to something.

It doesn't mean a physical fight.

It could be, but it's usually some type of challenge.

For example, there is a sprinter in the United States named Noah Lyles.

He is an Olympic sprinter.

I think he won a gold medal or maybe even two gold medals at the last Summer Olympics.

And there was a NFL player, which is American football, who wanted to challenge him to a race.

He wanted to race Noah Lyles because he kept saying that he could beat him.

And in that case you can say that the football player threw down the gauntlet, which means that he challenged Noel Isles to this very public race.

And that's part of it when we say this phrase.

That term of throwing down the gauntlet is usually a public display, usually some type of dramatic display or dramatic challenge when someone makes it.

Now, I also used this phrase at the beginning of this episode and, hearing these definitions, maybe you are a little bit confused as to why.

Maybe you're thinking I was challenging someone or wanting to fight someone, but there's actually another meaning, and that is to throw down knowledge.

If someone maybe a professor or an elder, someone who is older than you or more experienced than you gives you a type of speech or gives you a lot of advice, you might say that they threw down.

And in this case it means that they are giving you some type of information or sharing their experience or wisdom with you.

This is usually when someone has a type of speech or maybe they're in a debate where they are arguing for their position.

So you might hear someone say that the person in the debate really threw down their knowledge, which means that they are sharing their knowledge, sharing their wisdom, sharing their experience with whomever is listening.

Our next phrasal verb is throw out.

The most common use of this one is when you are disposing of something.

You are getting rid of it, putting it in the garbage, in the trash.

And you'll hear this when people are cleaning their refrigerators, when they're throwing away their food that maybe is expired, or maybe they're cleaning out their garage.

Anytime someone is disposing of something.

Another meaning is to get ejected from a certain place.

For example, you have probably seen videos of coaches when they are coaching their sports team.

And if they get into an argument with the referee?

If the referee does not like that the coach is arguing with them, they can throw them out of the game, which means that they eject them from the game.

If you go on YouTube, you can actually see these for baseball.

I don't know how baseball is in other countries, but here in the United States, when a manager who is the head coach of a baseball team, when the manager gets thrown out, usually they start going even crazier.

Usually they start really screaming and sometimes even throwing things.

And the videos are always really funny because they're just so dramatic.

So many things are said. that don't need to be said.

And that is another usage of this term throw out.

They get thrown out of the game.

You might also have this in any type of setting at a restaurant, at a concert, at some type of business.

Anytime someone is acting poorly, being rude, being disrespectful, they can get thrown out of whatever establishment they were in.

Another use of this term is to say that you are rejecting an idea or an argument.

In the united states there are a lot of lawsuits.

There are a lot of lawyers and courts here in the united states and sometimes you'll hear on the news that a case got thrown out.

You might see a headline that a judge threw out some lawsuit that they were hearing.

What that means is that they are dismissing it, they are rejecting the argument, the lawsuit, and they are not letting it be heard in court.

A less common use, but another use that you might hear is when someone is brainstorming ideas.

When you are brainstorming ideas, you were just saying kind of whatever comes to mind.

Maybe you are at a meeting with your company and you are trying to brainstorm some ideas about how to work on a particular project.

And people might just say, hey, let's just throw some ideas out.

Which means just say whatever comes to mind.

It doesn't have to be very serious.

It doesn't have to be something that we continue to use in the future.

But we're just trying to get all of our ideas out.

And so in that case, it just means that you are saying whatever comes to mind and that you're moving relatively quickly and that you're not really editing what you're saying.

Our fourth phrasal verb is throw in.

One of the most common uses of this is also in sports.

I know I'm talking a lot about sports today, but these are all terms you will hear if you watch a sports telecast in English.

And these are all common terms that you do hear in sports in general.

So throw in.

One of the uses of this term is that you are taking some type of object and moving it back into the field of play.

For example, I know, in rugby and basketball and soccer, or what everyone else calls football, in those sports sometimes the ball goes out of bounds.

And in that case you have to take the ball, and usually a player throws it from the out of bounds back into the field of play.

You'll also hear this term in baseball when a ball gets hit out to the outfield.

When the outfielder is fielding the baseball and needs to throw it back into the infield, you will hear the announcer say that the outfielder is throwing it in.

They're throwing the ball from the outfield into the infield.

Now, a phrase that is tied with this and is used in sports, but also in other areas of life, is to throw in the towel.

Throw in the towel is something that you see in boxing, for example, when one fighter is hurt and the match needs to end.

You will see that that fighter's corner, the people who are on his staff, might throw in a towel.

So that means that the match ends, that one side is surrendering.

So you do hear that with boxing.

But you also hear that just in general everyday conversation.

If something is going very bad at work or in a relationship, you might hear someone say that they're going to throw in the towel.

That's just a colloquial way of saying that you're going to surrender, that you're going to give up.

You're going to stop putting any effort in to whatever it is that you're talking about.

A very different meaning is when you are going to purchase something and the salesperson says that they're going to throw something in.

In this case, what throw in means here is to give something for free.

Let's say that you are going to buy a car and the car salesperson really wants you to buy that car today.

They might tell you that we're going to throw in a year of free car washes.

So they are giving you an incentive.

They're giving you a year's worth of car washes for free.

And so that's why they used the phrase throw in.

And our last phrasal verb is throwback.

Throwback can mean that you catch something and then you return it.

For example, if you are someone who likes to go fishing, you might catch a fish, but maybe it's not a good fish.

Maybe it's really small or something is wrong with it.

You don't actually want to take it home and eat it.

You can throw the fish back, which means return the fish back into the water.

Again, this also comes up with sports.

I know in baseball there is a tradition that if someone hits a home run, then the fan who catches the ball if that wasn't a home run hit by their team that they're supporting they will take that baseball and they will throw it back.

They will throw it back onto the field because they are returning it.

They don't want to keep it.

Another meaning for this phrasal verb is to drink something quickly.

And usually when we use this, when we're talking about a drink, it's usually alcoholic.

It doesn't always have to be alcoholic.

Maybe you have some medicine that is a liquid that tastes really bad.

You might want to throw back the medication when you take it, which means you're going to drink it really quickly, so you don't have to taste that bad taste in your mouth.

But more commonly, it is used to talk about alcohol.

You might see this on TV shows or movies when the characters are drinking a lot of drinks.

They're drinking them very quickly.

They're doing shots, which means that they are drinking the little, small amounts of alcohol very, very quickly.

We can say that they threw back a lot of shots, which means that they drank those little alcohol drinks really quickly.

And the last phrasal verb meaning is to remind someone of an earlier time in their life.

For example, maybe you hear a particular song or see a TV show or a picture from your childhood.

I know I have a lot of pictures even on the shelves behind me.

And some of the pictures are really old.

They are pictures of me as a young child.

And so when I see them, I say that the pictures throw me back to my childhood, which means they remind me of my childhood.

They remind me of the time where I was doing whatever I'm doing in the photograph.

Now, this is very similar in meaning to what happens when we take the phrasal verb throw back and we combine it into one word to make it throw back.

A throwback is a noun, and you will see this happen with phrasal verbs how the phrasal verb can get combined into one word to become a noun.

That's what's happening here, but the meaning is very, very similar to having that nostalgia feeling, being reminded of an earlier time in your life.

What this means is that whatever object you are calling a throwback, It is very obviously from a different time period, maybe a different decade, maybe a different era in your life.

It is something that is nostalgic and very retro.

There is this group from the 1990s called Ace of Base, if anyone knows that band.

And there is a particular song by them called A Sign.

When I hear that song I get reminded of the year that that song came out and spending time with my cousins listening to that song.

I can say that that song really throws me back to my childhood, which is, using the phrasal verb form of that phrase, throwback.

But I can also turn it into a noun and I can say that the song is a real throwback.

In that case, I'm calling the song a throwback, which means that it's very obvious that it is from a different time period than the current time period that we are in.

That song is definitely from the 90s.

It is a throwback.

And you can do this with anything.

Anything that seems to be nostalgic, seems to be from a different time period than the one that we are in, can be a throwback.

You can have a throwback outfit, a throwback hairstyle, a throwback movie or TV show, a throwback piece of technology.

Really, anything can be a throwback if it is not something that is modern, not something that you would say is from the current time period that we are in.

I hope you liked this episode.

I hope you learned something.

I know phrasal verbs are very confusing, but I just want to encourage you to study these.

Look at the vocabulary list, look at the different ways that we use these phrasal verbs, because the more times that you study them, the more time that you spend reading and listening to English, the easier it's going to get.

Having that exposure, having that practice with these different phrasal verbs is only going to help you improve your English and improve your listening comprehension when you are listening to a native speaker.

If you want more episodes like this, please let me know.

Like I said, these are only a few phrasal verbs with the word throw in them.

There are so many more, and we barely scratched the surface, which means that we barely even discussed any.

We only talked about five and there are so many more.

So if you want more episodes like this, please leave a comment.

Let me know if you like this episode and if you want more episodes like it in the future.

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Until then, keep learning English.

[Mastering Phrasal Verbs with 'Throw': A Comprehensive Guide]-[How to Use “Throw Up", "Throw Down", "Throw In,” “Throw Out,” and "Throw Back"]

📋 Summary

Mastering Phrasal Verbs with 'Throw'

1. Throw Up

2. Throw Down

3. Throw Out

4. Throw In

5. Throw Back

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript