Hi there, this is Harry and welcome back to Advanced English Lessons with Harry where I try to help you to get a good understanding of the English language.
In the lesson today we're going to look at collocations, advanced collocations, particularly those relating to two words, miss and lose and I'll explain them to you in a little bit more detail.
Okay, let's get back to the lesson now the two different words to verbs in English to miss, to lose but in some languages they're the same or very very similar so it's easy to get them confused and I often get people in lessons telling me I lost the bus and of course you can't lose the bus unless it fell out of your pocket of your trousers and of course unless you have very big trousers you wouldn't be able to fit a bus in those, so you can't lose a bus you can miss the bus but you can't lose it.
So that's what we're talking about in these particular colocations.
So as I said they're both verbs okay to miss something and to lose.
Usually we use miss when we're talking about transport as I mentioned to miss the bus miss the train, but you can also use it when you're talking about appointments.
You missed the dentist's appointment because you got up late.
You missed the doctor's appointment because you forgot about it.
Okay, so you can miss them in that situation.
Or you can be sad about something.
You can miss your relatives, okay?
If your dog dies, you can miss your dog.
Or if you move away from home for study purposes and you go to a university town, you can miss your parents and your friends.
Okay, so you can use them in all of those situations.
Or you can miss a bit of your school because you're sick, or he's missed three weeks this term, he's been really, really ill.
Okay, so there are the situations when you can use miss.
Now, when we talk about the verb to lose, we can talk about sport, it's the opposite of win, so we can lose a match. or my team has lost three games in a row so we're in serious trouble so the opposite of win or you can just lose a personal possession.
I lost my wallet yesterday, I lost the car keys last week, I think I'm losing my mind yeah okay so I've lost something, a possession.
And of course as we all would like to do when we train or if we want to go on a diet we like to lose weight, or he's looking great, he's lost a lot of weight recently, or he needs to lose some weight because he's getting a little bit older and it's not so healthy when you get older.
Okay, so simple examples of when you can use lose and then when you can use miss.
Now, sometimes you can use both of them for the same thing.
For example, chance, you can miss the chance and you can lose a chance, okay?
So there are times when both words can be used for the same situation, but in most cases and examples that I'm going to give you, then they are of a very different meaning.
Okay, so let's go and look at some more examples of when we talk about miss.
so we can miss the train and miss the bus ok I missed the train by minutes I don't know what happened but the traffic was really bad when I got to the train station it was just pulling out oh I missed the bus that bus they always come earlier than they say they will and I missed it we can miss the chance okay a chance perhaps of a promotion because you weren't sure where they put in for the promotion or not, or you were sick for a couple of weeks and you didn't send in the application, or you just didn't tell your boss that you would be really interested in changing your position or going in for a position higher
than what you had so you missed the chance.
We can miss the point when we're having a debate or an argument or a discussion with somebody.
Somebody might say I think you've missed the point so they're telling you reasons why it's a good to oppose increases in taxes and other issues and you start talking about the government or changes in the government and say no no I think you've missed the point, what we're talking about here is the impact of inflation or the rising costs or the higher taxes, so you've missed the point you didn't understand it.
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And then we have an expression, miss the boat.
Well, now it doesn't mean like the bus or the train we were talking about earlier, but when you miss the boat, you miss a real chance or you've missed an opportunity to do something.
So, if we go back to the issue about the promotion and you go home and you're talking to your friends and they say, well, what happened?
Did you find out about that job?
Well, I missed the boat.
I was late for a couple of days, put in my application and they wouldn't consider it.
Okay, so you've missed the boat.
Or if you send in your application late to go to a university and if you're two or three days late for registration, they tell you, unfortunately, it's full and you'll have to wait until the following year.
So you come home to tell your parents, oh, I've missed the boat then, meaning I'm late and I have to wait.
OK, so when we miss the boat, we miss a real chance or a real opportunity to do something or to achieve something.
OK? Or it could be something really, really simple, where you have your eye on this girl and you're just a little bit shy and you're not sure how you can approach it or ask her for a date.
And then when you do pluck up the courage after several weeks or months and you ask her, she says, look, I'm really, really sorry, but I'm going out somebody and you go back to your friends and say huh I missed the boat there I should have had the courage of my convictions and asked her out three or four weeks ago but I won't make that same mistake again.
Okay so to miss the boat so they're all opportunities when you can use miss so let's look at some other examples of when we lose something we've already spoken about losing weight okay?
So we lose weight when we go on a diet.
We lose weight when we go to the gym.
We lose weight because we're under doctors' orders.
We lose weight because we're nervous or anxious about something.
So the kilos fall off you.
Look at him, he's lost so much weight in the last few weeks, I'd hardly recognize him.
To lose weight. Lose face.
We lose face when we do something or say something that makes us look different in the eyes of other people.
Okay? So if you've made a terrible mistake and you don't want to admit it because if you do admit the mistake, you lose face in front of other people, they'll think differently about you.
What am I going to say to the people out there?
I mean, they don't expect me to make mistakes, they'll think I'm stupid.
Well, it's better to tell them what you've done rather than to wait for them guessing and if you're honest and upfront about it they'll understand and they'll forgive you so okay you might lose a little bit of face for a period of time but after a few weeks they'll have forgotten about it.
Okay. Or the government can lose face because they change some policy that they said they would never do.
So for example, the government come in and you vote for them and they say I guarantee that during the three or four or five years of our term in office, we will never increase taxes.
After twelve months, they realize that the economy is having trouble and difficulties.
So, they announce that they're going to increase taxes by one or two or 3%.
So, they immediately get a lot of problems. People write in to them.
People phone. People call on them to say, what are you you promised us that you would never increase taxes, so they lose face.
They lose credibility, okay?
To lose face, to lose credibility in the eyes of the public.
To lose a chance. Well, when we lose the chance, for example, my football team had a great opportunity to go top of the league, but they lost the chance because they got beaten by the team bottom of the league.
Nobody expected it to happen.
All we had to do was win one or two nil and we would have been sitting proudly on top of the league.
Now as it happens we're in a fight for second or third place because we got beaten by the team at the bottom.
Ha! This is the way football goes, so we lost the chance.
And as I said earlier, you can also use here miss, so we can lose the chance and miss the chance.
So I could equally say my team lost the chance to go top and they missed the chance to go top.
In that situation, they both mean exactly the same.
We can lose time. We can lose time because our computer crashes.
Oh, look at the time I've lost today.
I've been trying to get this organised and at the end of the day it wasn't my fault at all.
It was some poor fool outside dug up the line by mistake and cut everybody off.
So I've lost so much time.
Or the boss might say to you, don't lose any time getting that contract completed.
It's really, really important.
And the sooner we get it completed the sooner we get paid.
So you can lose time or somebody might tell you make sure you don't lose time.
You can lose time in driving from one city to another because the traffic is really heavy.
Oh, I lost a lot of time on the way here.
Road repairs every, seem to be every 10 kilometres so it really slowed me down so I'm really sorry that I'm late for the meeting.
So to lose time. We can lose touch with people – very, very easy to do.
You move city, you lose touch. You go and make friends in universities or schools, whatever it is, and then you move school, you change school, you end the university, you lose touch. Or somebody might say, please don't lose touch. Let's keep in touch. Don't lose touch because friendship is important.
You can often lose touch with some family members.
It doesn't have to be just friends.
It can be family members.
They move away and there's always great promises.
Oh yeah, keep in touch. Oh yeah.
I'll meet you and come and see you.
But they never do. So we lose touch over time.
And that's where technology is a great thing because it helps us to keep in touch so that we don't lose touch with those people nearest and dearest to us.
Lose touch. You can lose touch of course with reality.
We often think that our politicians have lost touch with reality.
People who have some high expectations and they never meet them and they have really lost touch with reality.
To lose ground. When we lose ground it could be, well for example, economic situations and currencies.
When you compare one currency to another and something happens, they often lose ground against the other currency.
For example, the British government introduced a serious and significant measures of cutting tax in a period when the inflation is high and as a result sterling lost ground against all the other major currencies around the world euro, dollar and Swiss franc.
Okay, so you can lose ground when talking about other particular currencies.
You can lose ground in a race, if you're running a marathon and you hit a bit of a wall after 15 or 18 or 20 kilometers and you begin to lose touch, there we go with that example again, to lose touch with those in front of you or you lose a bit of ground meaning the distance between you and the people in front, the leaders gets greater and greater.
So you lose touch or you lose ground and it's very hard to make it up because you really have to dig in, dig deep and try to get some extra energy into those legs so to lose ground.
Okay, so they're all different examples of those co -locations dealing specifically with miss and lose.
And as I said at the beginning, they can get a little bit confused.
But just remember simple things, you can miss your parents you can miss your friends you can miss the bus you can miss the train but there are things that you definitely lose you lose the car keys because you just can't find them anywhere I couldn't find the car in the car park because I forgot and where I had parked it so you lose the car keys they drop out of your pocket you lose the football match you lose the opportunity to do something so just differentiate between miss and lose.
As I said, they're both verbs, okay?
That's easy to remember and just practice the differences.
If you have any problems with any of these or you're not so sure, well, as always, you contact me, www .englishlessonbyscrapt .com.
I'll be very, very happy to help you out.
We're always grateful when you listen and watch. So, until next time, this is Harry saying goodbye.
Cheers. you
