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 talk about one of the things that frustrates my students the most when they are trying to learn English, and that is phrasal verbs.
I know that phrasal verbs are confusing.
For those of us who are native English speakers, we use them without even thinking, and we know the different multiple meanings that these verbs can have.
But if you're trying to learn English, they can be very difficult to understand.
One phrasal verb can have multiple meanings, and phrasal verbs with similar structures or similar sounds can mean completely different things.
It can be so confusing to understand how to use these or understand what a native speaker means when they use these in conversation with you.
So on today's episode, I want to talk about phrasal verbs with the word WAIT.
If you want to learn more about these phrasal verbs, 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, of our previous podcast episodes, so you can find the vocabulary list of the words and phrases that I use during the episode.
That way, you can take these phrasal verbs and these other vocabulary words, put them into your vocabulary learning system, and start using them in conversation yourself.
Now let's start with the first part of this phrasal verb, and that is the verb TO WAIT.
What WAIT means is that you are staying in place until something happens, or you are delaying doing a particular action until something occurs.
For example, if you are trying to take the metro to work, and let's say you missed the train that you wanted to take, you might have to wait until the next train comes.
That means you're standing on the platform, you're waiting until the next metro train comes along, so that you can take that train and get to work.
It can also mean that you're just postponing some event until something else occurs.
For example, maybe you need to go to the doctor, but you have work today, so you could say, I have to wait to go to the doctor's office until I get off work.
You're delaying going to the doctor's office until you get done with this particular event, which is finishing your day at work.
That is the general definition of the word WAIT.
However, we can take that verb, we can combine it with other words, and we can make a phrasal verb.
This phrasal verb has different meanings, or slightly different meanings, you can use them in different contexts, compared to just the verb WAIT by itself.
Now the first one that we're going to talk about is WAIT ON.
WAIT ON has a couple of different meanings, and I'm going to start with the most common one, and then we'll work through the different meanings, and I'll give you example sentences of how they're used.
For a native English speaker, if they hear the phrasal verb WAIT ON without any other context clue, the most common meaning, the first thing that comes to mind is thinking of being at a restaurant and being served by a waiter or a waitress.
The most common use of the phrasal verb WAIT ON means to serve someone, especially at a restaurant.
The people who give you your food, who take your order, those are called waiters or waitresses, depending on the gender, if it's a man or a woman.
In general, if you're talking about mixed gender, you could just say the WAIT STAFF, and because they have that as their name, that is the tie -in to the phrase WAIT ON.
When someone is serving you, when someone is providing you with some type of service, especially at a restaurant or similar setting, that is the phrase that we would use.
We would say that they are waiting on you.
An example sentence here is we can say that the waiter waited on us promptly and made sure we had a great meal.
Now, like I said, this is most common in a restaurant.
It can, however, be with other settings in other settings and with other people besides just a waiter or a waitress.
Let's say that you have a friend who has an elderly grandparent and the grandparent has a hard time walking.
They really can't take care of themselves and your friend is helping their grandparent.
They're helping around the house.
They're helping them walk.
They're helping them go to the restroom and eat and everything.
Even though they're not in a restaurant, they're still providing a service and they're still taking care of someone.
And that would be waiting on someone.
Typically, when we say this kind of thing, we will say they are waiting on someone hand and foot.
Hand and foot means that they're taking care of everything that person needs.
They're taking care of anything that comes up and they're being very, very careful and very diligent, which means that they're being very aware of everything that the person needs, and they're making sure to meet all of that person's needs.
They are taking complete care of a person.
So when someone is doing that, we say that they are waiting on someone hand and foot.
And now this wasn't one of the ones that I said we're going to talk about, but I did want to mention the phrasal verb wait upon.
Wait upon is extremely similar to wait on when you're talking about taking care of someone and providing them some type of service.
Waiting on someone in the context of taking care of them and waiting upon someone mean the same thing.
So you might hear that someone is being waited on or waited upon.
And if you're talking about taking care of someone's needs, those mean the same thing.
The second meaning for wait on is waiting a decision or a development.
This means that you need more information to occur before you can make your decision.
You need something to happen before you can move forward with whatever it is that you're doing.
For example, let's say you are a doctor, you're working in a hospital and you have a patient and you're not sure what is wrong with your patient.
You order lab results for the patient, the patient gets their blood drawn, and you're waiting for those results to come in.
You can say that we are waiting on the test results before we continue with their treatment plan.
That means you're waiting for those particular results.
You're waiting to see the information from their test results before you make a decision, a better informed decision, and know what to do.
So you're waiting on a particular piece of information so you can make a better choice and a better decision and then move forward.
The third meaning of wait on is to be dependent on someone else and wait for their action.
For example, let's say that you and your partner, your girlfriend or your boyfriend, are going out for the evening and they're taking forever to get ready.
You're going to go out together, you're going to go to dinner and go to a movie, but they are not done getting ready.
They're still brushing their hair and putting their clothes on and you're just standing there waiting to leave, but you can't leave until they are done getting ready.
What you can say is that I am waiting on you.
That means that you are ready, you are standing there and you are being delayed from leaving until this person, your girlfriend or your boyfriend, is also ready to leave for the evening.
You are waiting on them to get done getting ready so you can both leave together.
You can also use this if you are at work and you are trying to work on a project, but you need approval for some particular part of the project.
You tell your boss about this thing that they need to approve, but they haven't given you an answer, yes or no.
So you can say, I'm waiting on my boss to approve this part of the project.
Again, that means that you are dependent on them to complete a particular action before you can move forward and continue on with what you want to do.
Our next phrasial verb is wait in.
Wait in is not as commonly used as wait on.
It doesn't have as many meanings and it's a lot more specific.
Wait in is when you are going to wait inside a particular location, usually inside some building.
Let's say you and your family are traveling together, you're going to be going and staying in a different city at a particular hotel and you're going to meet up with them when you get there.
You can tell your family members that I will wait for you in the lobby or I'll wait in the lobby for you.
What this means is that you're going to be inside a building, in this case a hotel, and you're going to be at a particular location inside that hotel, which is in the lobby.
So I'll wait in the lobby for you or I'll wait for you in the lobby.
You could also say this if there is very bad weather outside.
Let's say there's a storm outside, but you need to go to the store to buy something.
What you can say is that I'm going to wait in the house until the bad weather passes.
Wait in is specifically emphasizing that you are inside some type of building and you're waiting for a specific purpose.
You're waiting there for specific reason and until something occurs.
That's probably the most straightforward out of all the phrasal verbs with wait.
Our next phrasal verb is wait out.
Wait out usually means that you have to endure a particularly uncomfortable or unpleasant period of time.
Something is occurring that you don't like, that maybe is making you unhappy, but you have to just deal with it as we would say, which means you just have to go along with it.
There's nothing really that you can do and you just have to wait for whatever is making you unhappy to end.
For example, let's say that your boss at your work is really mean.
They are very rude to you.
They're not nice to deal with.
You hate having to talk to them.
However, your boss is also retiring in two months.
There's nothing really you can do about your boss.
They're not a great person.
You don't like talking to them.
You can't really change that, but you know that your boss is not going to be there forever.
They're just going to be around the office for two more months and then you never have to see them again.
What you can say is, I just have to wait it out until my boss retires so that wait it out is referring to the time period, the period of time until your boss retires.
There's nothing you can do to change it, but you just have to endure it.
You just have to deal with it.
You just have to survive these two months and then you will be free.
So that is an example of waiting something out.
Another example is if you were trying to buy a house and interest rates, at least here in the United States, are pretty high, a lot higher than they've been in recent decades.
Maybe you want to buy a house, but with these high interest rates, you just can't afford to.
So you can say that I'm going to wait out these high interest rates and I'll buy a house once they go down.
You can't change the interest rates.
That's the federal government and the federal monetary policy.
There's nothing that you can do there.
You have no control over the interest rates here in the United States.
So you just have to wait.
You just have to go through this time period of high interest rates and once the government lowers them, once it becomes easier to buy a house, then you can buy a house.
Our last phrasal verb is wait around.
Wait around can be used in a couple of different contexts, but the most common meaning is to be stuck somewhere and to waste time or to be unproductive.
For example, I'm in California.
I'm on the West Coast of the United States.
And let's say I am traveling to a country that's far away.
Let's say I want to go visit Vietnam.
Now, I can't get a flight that goes directly to Vietnam.
I'm going to have to stop somewhere and have a layover in another airport.
So let's say that I take a flight and the airport that I stop at that's in between California and Vietnam, my layover there is for four hours.
There's nothing really I can do in four hours.
I can't leave the airport and come back.
I can't go anywhere.
So I just have to stay in the airport.
In that case, I could say that I have to wait around in the airport for my next flight.
I'm stuck in place.
There's nothing really I can do.
There's nothing that I can go see.
And I'm just being unproductive with my time, which means that I am waiting around.
I'm going to wait around in the airport for my next flight so I can go see Vietnam.
You can also hear this when someone is criticizing someone else about not taking action or not doing something.
For example, we know that humans are impacting the environment.
The environment is changing around us.
Global temperatures are changing.
We're getting more severe weather.
And you might hear someone say, we can't just wait around and do nothing.
That is a criticism.
If you say that someone is waiting around and doing nothing, or if you say we can't wait around and do nothing, that means that you really want people to start taking action.
You want them to start doing something instead of wasting time.
You might also hear this in movies or TV shows, especially if a couple is in a relationship to people who are dating and maybe they're having some type of argument.
Let's say that one person in the relationship wants to become more serious.
They want to get engaged.
They want to get married.
They want to start a family.
And the other person isn't so sure.
They are not sure if they want to get married.
The person who wants to continue the relationship and wants it to get more serious can say, I'm tired of waiting around for you to decide what you want.
I'm not going to wait around for you any longer.
I'm not going to wait around for you to get your life together.
That's a very common line in TVs and movies, especially coming from a female character whose partner might not have a job or might not be in school or might just be kind of lost with what they want to do with life.
That I'm not going to wait around means this relationship is ending.
I'm tired of you not committing to me and your future and we're breaking up.
I hope you learned a little bit about these phrasal verbs.
I hope you learned about the different meanings, the different contexts they can be used in, and the differences between these phrasal verbs that have weight in them.
I know these types of verbs are confusing for students who are learning English.
We as native speakers use them without even thinking about it, but it's frustrating for students who are learning.
I hear it all the time from my students that they find them very confusing.
I just want to encourage you and tell you to keep studying, keep trying because the more you interact with English, the more times you hear these phrasal verbs, the more context you see them in, the easier is going to get to understand them and the easier it is to use them when you are speaking in English.
Fluency takes time.
Listening comprehension takes time, but the more practice you get and the more times you see them, the better you're going to be with them.
A reminder to look at the vocab list that's in the description so you can find the definitions of these phrasal verbs and so you can start trying to put them into your vocabulary learning system and learn them yourself.
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