Welcome back to the Learn English podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
My name is Dr. C and I'm a TESL certified English teacher.
I teach English online to students who are learning it as a second language.
On today's episode, I want to focus on some English vocabulary.
Now, if you have been studying English for a while, you know that there are a lot of words in English that can be used in different ways and that have different meanings depending on whatever the situation is.
This can be very difficult and tricky to understand and it's important to get enough exposure to the language and to be exposed to all these different meanings and sayings and phrases so that you can fully understand what a native speaker means and so that you can begin to use them in context.
One of the words that I'm referring to is blow.
Now, blow can be used as a verb, it can be used as a phrasal verb, and it can also be used as a noun.
And today, I want to get into all of those.
I'm going to walk through the different meanings for blow.
Blow through, blow on, blow down, blow up, blow out.
They all have different meanings and they all have multiple meanings.
It can be a little bit confusing, but don't worry.
We're going to go into the details and I'll give you examples of how to use them.
So with that, let's begin.
Let's begin with the word blow.
And the definition that you should keep in mind for the rest of this episode is that the word blow is dealing with the movement of air.
The main verb definition when we talk about blow is the movement of air.
For example, if you're watching the weather report, you might hear the person who's giving the weather update say that the wind will blow very strongly tonight.
That means that there's a lot of wind and the wind is moving a lot of air.
You might also hear that there were strong winds blowing somewhere during a storm or that the wind is blowing very strongly right now.
Again, just referring to that movement of air.
You can also say this when you are expelling air.
So let's say that you have some bubble gum that you're chewing and you blow bubbles.
So you can say that you're blowing bubbles.
If a kid has some soap and water and they use it to blow bubbles, they're expelling air into the bubble and that's what's forming the bubble.
And so we would say that is blowing bubbles.
The other way that you can use blow as a verb is to mean to mess something up or to miss out on a chance.
For example, you might hear this in the movies and in television shows when someone is doing something very stressful, something that might be a little bit risky or might be dangerous or might have some very high stakes.
As we would say, you might hear a character say, don't blow this or they may say, I don't want to blow this.
What that means is don't mess this up or I don't want to mess this up.
Let's give a couple of examples here.
Let's say that someone is going on a job interview.
They really need this job.
They really need the money.
They don't have a job right now.
They might say, I don't want to blow this.
Now, let's say that their job interview is first thing in the morning.
Their alarm clock doesn't go off.
They wake up late and they wake up after their job interview was supposed to have occurred.
They might say, I really blew this chance.
That means I really messed up.
I missed out on this opportunity.
You might also hear this when someone is going on a date with someone that they really like.
They might say, I don't want to blow this or I don't want to blow this chance.
That just means I don't want to make a mistake.
I don't want this person not to like me.
I want to make a good first impression.
Another way that you can use blow, but not as a verb, all the ways that we've talked about so far have been verbs.
If you want to use it as a noun, it means to get hit with something, to get hit with an object or with a lot of force.
For example, when two boxers are fighting each other in the ring, let's say one punches the other and the one who gets punched in the face falls down to the ground.
You could say that the boxer fell down after taking a blow to the jaw or a blow to the face.
What that means is that punch that the other boxer hit them with, that is the blow that it's referring to.
So that punch that being hit with something.
You also might hear this again in TVs and movies when someone gets hit in the head with something.
Let's say an object falls down and hit someone in the head.
They might say, oh, I took a blow to the head or they received a blow to the head.
What that means is getting hit in the head, having that object fall on them.
Next, we're going to talk about the phrasal verbs that use blow.
We're going to start with, I think are the easiest ones, the ones that only have one definition.
And then you'll see they'll get a little bit more complicated as we move through these.
The easiest one is blow down.
When you were talking about blow down, what you're referring to is something falling over because of the movement of the wind or the air.
Again, keep that definition in mind when we go through all of these because you'll see that movement of air is what comes up over and over again.
So blow down is when an object falls over.
Let's say there's a large storm occurring outside and the wind is very, very strong.
You could say the wind is so powerful that it might blow the trees down.
Or if multiple trees did fall over because of the wind, if we're talking past tense, you can say that the wind blew down all of these trees.
Again, that blow down or blew down if you're talking past tense means that the trees fell because of the force of the wind.
Our next phrasal verb is also pretty straightforward and simple because it has one definition and is used in a very limited context.
This is blow on. This phrasal verb means that you are pushing air onto the surface of something.
For example, let's say that you go and get your nails painted.
When you paint your nails, they are wet initially and then they dry over time.
If you want to get your nails to dry faster, you can blow on them.
Blow on them, meaning that you put your nails in front of your mouth and you push out air onto the surface of your nails.
That would be blowing on your nails.
So you can say, I am blowing on my nails to get them to dry faster.
The third phrasal verb is blow up and I put this one as the third phrasal verb for blow because it has three definitions.
Let's start with the first one.
The first one would be when something bursts or explodes.
For example, if you have a balloon and you are blowing up the balloon, you're filling it with air, eventually if you keep doing that, it's going to have too much air and too much pressure inside the balloon, and the balloon will blow up, meaning that it explodes and it bursts open.
You can also say this with some type of explosive device, like a bomb.
You'll hear this a lot in TV shows and movies.
I know I keep referring to them, but that's a good way to try to visualize the definitions and hear these in context.
For example, let's say that there is a bomb and there is a risk of it going off.
You might hear the characters in whatever TV show or movie say that the bomb is about to blow up, meaning that it's about to explode.
This is also used when they're talking about demolition of buildings.
If you've ever seen someone use some type of explosive device to tear down a building, that is another way that you can use the word blow up.
For example, this happens a lot with construction work.
Let's say in Vegas, Las Vegas for example, where they're always building new casinos, they get rid of the old ones by putting explosive devices and then blowing them up.
An example of this would be the demolition team blew up the building so they could start construction on the new casino.
The second definition, the second way you can use this as a phrasial verb, is to talk about anger, about getting very angry.
You can tie this in with the first definition.
The first definition again was about something exploding or bursting.
Sometimes you feel that way when you get very, very upset, when you get very angry, all of a sudden you just want to lash out, we would say.
All of a sudden you just want to get rid of that anger and yell or throw something.
That would be an example of blowing up.
You have this feeling of anger and it's increasing inside of you and eventually it just comes out and that's a blow up.
An example of this, let's say that someone loses all of the files on their computer.
Something happens, they get a virus, they get hacked, something happens and they lose access to all of their files and they spend hours trying to figure out what's going on and trying to get their files back.
It doesn't work. They've lost all of the work, all of the things that they need.
If that person reacts by throwing their computer across the room, you could say that they blew up.
That means that all of a sudden, after all of this frustration and anger, they reacted in a very dramatic and very explosive way and they blew up.
So they blew up with anger.
The third way that you could use this as a phrasal verb is to use it to describe a rapid increase in something.
So a rapid increase in size, a rapid increase in stature, rapid increase in fame or popularity.
Examples of this is when you are blowing up a balloon.
So you're pushing air into the balloon.
The balloon is getting larger and larger and that is a way of saying that you are blowing something up.
Blowing up a balloon, blowing up a tire, blowing up an inflatable bouncy house.
All of those are ways of saying that you're expanding, that the air is going into something and making it increase in size.
It can also refer, like I said, to fame or popularity.
This is used when you talk about celebrities or musicians, actors, something along those lines.
For example, you can say that Taylor Swift really blew up this year.
That means that Taylor Swift became more popular.
She started becoming in the media everywhere and that you're seeing her face on the cover of magazines and on television, for example.
You could also say this with Timothee Chalamet.
You can say, wow, Timothee Chalamet's career really blew up this year.
That means that he was in a lot of high -profile projects.
He was in a lot of acting jobs, on a lot of movies and that means that his career is blowing up.
With a band, if a band starts becoming popular, they release an album and they start touring and their music is on the radio and they're on TV shows playing.
You could say the same thing here.
The span is really blowing up right now or they blew up right now.
They blew up this year.
Something along those lines, again, just means that they're becoming more popular.
It can also refer to having your financial situation getting better.
Let's say the stock prices of a company.
An example of this would be talking about Apple stock, the price of Apple stock.
An example sentence would be that the price of Apple stock blew up after the invention of the iPhone.
That means that the price of the Apple stock increased rapidly after the iPhone was released.
People started buying the iPhones, people started using Apple products and their stock price blew up, which means that it increased rapidly.
Our next phrasal verb is blow through.
We're going to start with the first definition, which again would be tied to the movement of air.
This means that air is moving through some object, some object that has to be open or has to be porous in some way.
So porous just means it has some type of opening.
Without an opening, you can't say that something is blowing through.
You can't say that air is blowing through because it can't move through, it can't penetrate through the object.
An example of this would be trees.
So trees have their leaves and they have their branches, but they're not completely solid.
The wind can move through the trees and that's what we're going to use as our first example sentence.
If it's windy outside and you see the branches and the leaves of a tree moving, you can say that the wind is blowing through the trees.
You can also say this, let's say, if you're in a garden or in some type of meadow, the wind is blowing through the grass.
Blowing through the plants, blowing through the leaves.
If you are standing outside in the wind, your hair, your hair can move and your hair has the individual strands.
And so the wind can go through your hair and you can say that as well.
You can say that the wind is blowing through my hair.
That just means the wind is moving through your hair and your hair is kind of moving in the wind because of it.
The second way that you could use blow through is to describe being reckless and not stopping when you should.
For example, let's say that someone is driving and they come up to a stop sign.
The stop sign means that you need to stop your car, look both ways before continuing to avoid getting into any type of accident.
If the driver comes up to the stop sign and then just keeps going through without ever stopping, you would say that driver blew through the stop sign.
That means the driver was supposed to stop and did not.
Another example is if you are waiting for a train and the train is supposed to arrive, you see the train coming and then instead of stopping at the station where you are, it just keeps moving.
You would say the train blew through the station.
That means the train did not stop, you were expecting it to stop and it did not.
The third way that you could use blow through is to describe going through something very quickly.
Again, this could also mean recklessly like when you don't stop when you should, but it could also just mean that you're moving very quickly or somebody is moving very quickly.
I am a teacher, I teach high school, I know I have mentioned that in previous episodes, but I have used this way of using blow through as a phrasal verb to describe someone's actions when they are taking an exam.
Let's say that I give my exam to my students and one student gets done in five minutes.
You can say that they blew through the exam.
That means they went through the exam very quickly.
Now, depending on the student, it could mean that they were reckless and just wrote random nonsense or it could mean that they were very intelligent and the exam was too easy for them and so they went through it really quickly because it was so simple and so straightforward for them.
Either way, I could use the phrasal verb blew through to describe what they did with that exam.
They blew through that exam.
Another way that you could use this is if someone spends a lot of money.
So this would be a reckless way of using the phrasal verb blew through.
We're meaning it in a reckless way.
If someone, for example, wins the lottery, all of a sudden they get all of this money that they were not expecting to have.
They have all of this new money and they spend it like crazy.
They buy everything in sight and they spend all of their money in a few months.
What you can say is that they blew through their money or they blew through their lottery winnings.
That means that they spent it in a very reckless way and they spent it very quickly.
That money should have lasted for a longer period of time, but it did not.
Another example is when we're talking about storms.
When a storm comes through, you can also say that it blew through if it had a lot of force and if it moved very quickly.
For example, let's say that there was a tornado that occurred.
That is a type of storm, a type of cyclone that forms usually in the middle of the United States, the Midwest.
This tornado goes through town very quickly and causes a lot of destruction.
What you might hear said is that the tornado blew through town.
It moved very quickly but very forcefully and did a lot of destruction that would be blowing through.
Our last phrasal verb is blow out.
I kept this one for last because I think it is the most complicated.
It has multiple phrasal verb meanings and also has multiple noun meanings.
I'm going to remind you to use the vocabulary list, refer to the definitions if you need them, and please try to follow along the best you can because I do know it is a little tricky.
Let's start with the first definition.
The first definition is to push out air.
An example of this is when you are at the doctor's office and they're listening to your lungs with a stethoscope.
They ask you to inhale and exhale.
Now that exhale is you blowing out air.
You're pushing air from inside your lungs to outside your lungs.
That movement of air forcing air to go in that direction is blow out.
That means that a doctor might ask you to exhale but they also might ask you to just blow out because that's what they're referring to.
This is also used when we're talking about a birthday.
For example, people have birthday candles on top of their cake and they need to push the air out of their lungs to blow out their candles.
So when someone comes with the birthday cake and all the candles you'll hear, it's time to blow out your candles.
That means use the air, push the air and cause the light, the flame to go out.
That movement of air can also refer to what you do with a match.
So you have a match that's lit and you want to extinguish it, you want to put out the match.
So you blow the match out.
Blow out the match means that you are exhaling, you're pushing air, blowing air on the match and causing that flame to extinguish or go out.
This can also mean for the movement of air not just in your lungs but also with some type of apparatus or some type of movement of just the air in general.
For example, a leaf blower is a tool or device that gardeners use after they clean up your yard and they cut your grass and they clip your trees.
Sometimes they use a leaf blower.
A leaf blower pushes air through the tool, pushes air through the leaf blower and it moves the leaves.
That movement of the leaves is blowing the leaves out.
So a gardener uses a leaf blower to blow out the debris from your yard.
The next phrasal verb meaning is to rupture or to break because of too much pressure.
Now this usually refers to a tire when you are driving for example and the tire burst, the tire explodes.
We call that a blowout.
If someone comes over to your house for example and they're late, it takes them longer than you thought it would and they come over and they say, I had a blowout on the way here.
That means that their tire exploded and they had a problem with their tire.
You could also hear them say the tire blew out suddenly when I was driving.
That means that the tire exploded while they were driving, of course you never want that to occur.
But if that happens, that's how people will describe it.
They'll say that their tire blew out, the tire blew out where they're driving, or they might just say I had a blowout.
Both of them mean the same thing.
Now the last way that you could use this is when you are talking about winning or losing.
When a team defeats another team in a very decisive way, they win a match or a game by a lot, by a large margin, we describe that as a blowout.
For example, let's say that Lionel Messi is playing on his team and his team wins the football game, the soccer game as we would say in the United States.
Let's say that they win 7 -0.
You could say that Lionel Messi's team really blew out their opponents.
It was a blowout victory or it was a blowout.
That means that his team won by a lot, 7 -0.
That's a little bit embarrassing score.
That would be an example of his team blowing out their opponents.
Blowing out means they've won by a lot.
You will also hear this being used to describe the game.
You will hear people who are watching the game and the final score is 7 -0.
You'll hear them say, oh, man, this was a blowout.
That means that the game was a very obvious victory and it was one -sided, as we would say.
The game was not close.
If you hear that term blowout, people say it was a blowout or this is going to be a blowout.
In that context, when they're talking about some type of sporting match, what they mean is that it's going to be a one -sided victory.
The two teams are not equal and it's going to be very obvious who won or who's going to win.
When you're using blowout as a noun, you're going to put the two words together.
As a phrasial verb, they are separated into blow and out.
When you're using it as a noun, it comes together to become blowout.
Blowout can also refer to a type of fight that you have with someone.
Let's say you're in a relationship with someone and you have a blowout fight.
That means you have a very horrible fight, a very loud fight.
There's yelling. Someone storms out and slams the door.
That would be a blowout.
Again, this is the type of fight you see in very dramatic TV shows and movies where someone is yelling and crying and storming out of the room.
That's a blowout. You don't want to have a blowout with someone if someone tells you that they had a blowout fight.
That's what they're referring to.
A very, very destructive, a very intense argument with someone.
Now, the last way that you can use blowout as a noun has absolutely nothing to do with this.
I'm sorry. That's why I'm saying that this is a little bit confusing because this last way is completely unique.
A blowout, when you are referring to hair, is actually getting your hair done and getting it styled.
For example, there are blowout bars across the United States, and I'm assuming in other places as well.
These are places where you can go and get your hair done.
Now, when you wash your hair, if it's wet and you want it to dry, you use a blow dryer, a tool that you use to push air onto your hair and get it to dry faster.
That's where this term is coming from.
When you go to a blowout bar, the hairstylist washes your hair.
They use a blow dryer.
Maybe they curl it, but they style it and it looks really, really nice.
Think of runway models or people who are on the cover of magazines and their hair looks fabulous and so well done.
That's a blowout. So if someone says, oh, I'm going to go get a blowout or I'm going to a blowout bar, what they're referring to is getting their hair done.
You can see the three ways that you can use this as a noun can refer to hair, can refer to a very bad fight, and can refer to a game that was played where one team won by a large margin.
Very different uses, depends on the context.
That is one last piece of advice that I want to say is that all of these really depend on the context.
I know it's difficult.
I know it's hard to understand phrasial verbs and these different meanings for nouns because it's the same word, but meaning very different things depending on the context.
I've talked about the use of input before and how input is so important when you are learning a language, and I just want to talk about that briefly again.
Input is when you are reading or listening to a language, getting a lot of input, getting a lot of exposure to these phrasial verbs, to these different nouns that mean very different things is important so you can see all of these different contexts.
The more times you see them, the more times you interact with them, the easier it's going to be to remember them and the better you are going to get at understanding them and then eventually using them as well.
I hope that this episode helped you.
I hope that you learned something about all of these different phrasial verbs and nouns and that you can use them in the future.
If you liked this episode, please let me know.
Tell me if you would want me to go over more phrasial verbs and different meanings for nouns and just do some vocabulary episodes in general.
There's a lot. Like I said, you know, if you've been saying English, how many phrasial verbs there are, and of course, I can discuss them more, but I won't know if you want that unless you tell me.
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