We're going to get down in 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 focus on phrasal verbs.
These are the verbs that I hear so often from students, confuse them.
There are so many different phrasal verbs and the meanings for the different phrasal verbs are completely different, even though they sound very similar when you pronounce these words.
So, on today's episode, I want to talk about four specific phrasal verbs, and all of these verbs are going to have the word get in them.
We're going to talk about the different meanings, we're going to discuss some example sentences, so that way you can understand what they mean and understand a native speaker when they use these words with you in conversation.
So, if you're interested in learning more about these phrasal verbs, well, of course, also practicing your listening comprehension, don't 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 a list of the words and phrases that I used in the episode, so you can take them, study them, and build your English vocabulary.
Now let's talk about these phrasal verbs.
We are going to go over four different phrasal verbs with the word get in them.
All of them have multiple meanings, so we're only going to focus on these four for right now because it is just a lot of information.
They have multiple meanings, so there's different ways that you can use them, but don't worry.
We're going to go through them.
We're going to discuss the different definitions and practice with some example sentences so you can better understand these phrasal verbs.
The first one we're going to start with is get in.
The first and most common way that we use this is when you are telling someone to get inside a particular space.
For example, let's say that you are outside and there is a storm that's occurring.
If someone is inside your house, they might yell at you to get inside the house.
That means come inside, come inside this particular space.
you also hear this a lot with action movies there's always some dramatic scene and the hero is in danger and then all of a sudden another character will pull up with a car the door will swing open and the person in the car yells get in that is the command for the hero to get inside the car so they can get away safely from whoever the bad guy is.
A second definition for get in means that you are arriving at a particular destination.
For example, let's say that you go to work and you're really tired.
And you're really tired because you were out late the night before.
You might say that I'm so tired today because I didn't get in until 2 a .m. That get in part means that you arrived home.
So what that sentence means is that I'm really tired because I didn't get home until 2 a .m. You hear this a lot when people are traveling.
If someone is flying to another city, they might say our flight gets in at noon tomorrow.
which means our flight is arriving at noon.
The third meaning for get in is when you are applying for university.
There is a very competitive process for some universities in the United States and other universities just accept almost everyone who applies.
So the ones that are very competitive, the ones that are difficult to get into, those are usually the more well -known ones, the more famous ones.
For example, these are your Harvard, Yale, MIT, the very elite universities that maybe only accept 10 % of people who apply there.
When you get accepted into one of these universities that you have to apply for, you say that you got in.
So if you are applying to Yale, for example, and you get your letter and it says that they accepted you, you can say, I got in to Yale.
And the last meaning is when you are trying to do some type of activity when you don't have much time.
I hear this most often with some type of exercise.
I know it's very important to exercise but it can be very difficult if you have a job, if you have a family.
Sometimes it feels like there's not enough time in the day and you might say I know it's very important to exercise so I I need to get some exercise in.
What that means is I need to find time to exercise.
Maybe you know that you and your family are going to have dinner in two hours and there's just a little bit of time where you're free, maybe 30 minutes where you're not doing anything and you don't have any other obligations.
You might say, I'm going to try to get some exercise in.
You can also use this, for example, with learning English.
If you're listening to this podcast, that means you are getting some listening practice in.
You are using this time to practice your listening comprehension, study English, so you are getting some study time in.
Those are ways that you can use this phrasal verb and again it just means trying to fit some type of activity into your busy schedule.
We have now covered get in and our next phrasal verb is get out.
So when we said get in, we said meant to enter into a particular space, a particular enclosed space like a car or a building.
When we say get out, it means the opposite, to go outside, to be inside somewhere and to go outside.
So we said in the first example with the storm, you were outside, your family member was inside, and they told you get inside the house.
Here with get out, you are still outside, your family member is still inside, but this time you noticed there's some smoke coming from your house maybe there's a fire in your house so you're going to yell at your family member get out that means get outside of the house come outside because there's some type of danger again this is something else you will hear in action movies when there is some type of danger in a particular space you will hear one of the characters yell to everyone else get out which means run you know sorry man okay get out yo another meaning for get out is to be able to not do
a particular task so when we said get in like get in some exercise that means you wanted to do some exercise and you're trying to find space in your busy busy schedule.
If you say you want to get out of doing exercise, that means you don't want to do exercise.
You don't want to work out.
So if there is something that you might find too difficult, too boring, that you have no motivation for, then you can use the phrase get out.
Let's say you have an English lesson coming up and you don't feel like doing it.
You don't really want to keep learning English.
You can say, I need a reason to get out of my lesson tomorrow.
tomorrow that means i don't want to do my lesson and i need an excuse i need a reason not to show up to cancel my lesson you can use this for pretty much anything so if you have a boring meeting at work you don't want to go to that meeting you don't want to spend time with your co -workers at this meeting you can say that you're hoping to get out of the meeting which means you hope you don't have to attend it you also hear this with relationships if someone is not happy with the person that they are dating or maybe even the person that they're married to you might hear that someone is looking for a reason to
get out of a relationship or you might hear that someone got out of a bad relationship which just means they were able to escape or to leave and not have to be in that relationship anymore the third meaning for get out is that information gets spread to to other people.
This is usually when you have some type of secret or some type of announcement that's going to be in the future.
For example, let's say you are pregnant or if you are dating or married to someone, you have some partner and they are pregnant.
Let's say you haven't really told anyone.
You haven't told your friends, you haven't told your family, just you and your partner know so far, and then someone asks you about this pregnancy.
You might say, how did that information get out there?
How does someone know that I'm pregnant when I haven't told anyone?
That is an example of information leaking, as we would say.
So a leak is usually when you have a faucet and there's water that's coming out of it.
Or if you have a hose, for example, again, if water is coming out.
So when we say that information leaks, it means that information is traveling from one source to the other.
You hear this a lot with political news and government news, you'll hear that some information got out or that some information leaked.
And it just means that it wasn't planned.
People weren't supposed to know, but for some reason they do.
And the last meaning is when you're unable to speak.
So this might happen to you when you're trying to speak in English.
You know what you want to say, but you can't seem to say it.
You're having a conversation with someone and you have all of these ideas but it's difficult to actually say them out loud what you can say is that I couldn't get it out.
So in this case what we're referring to is being unable to speak.
I couldn't get a word out.
I couldn't get the sentence out.
You have it in your mind but for some reason it's just not working.
It's just not happening.
You might say I was so nervous I could barely get out a word, which means you were really scared.
You were very nervous, so you could barely speak.
You couldn't speak how you normally would or how you wanted to.
Our third phrasal verb is get up.
The first meaning for this one is to go from a sitting or a lying position and to stand.
So let's say you are sitting in a chair and you want to go to the kitchen and get some food.
You have to get up, which means you have to stand up from your chair and go walk to your kitchen.
This can also be a reference to getting out of bed because usually when you are sleeping, you are lying down or at least sitting somewhere.
If you know you you have to wake up early tomorrow.
Let's say you have to wake up at five o 'clock in the morning.
You can say, I need to get up at five tomorrow, which means that you have to wake up and get ready.
But because you're going to be sleeping, you're going to be lying down.
We can use that phrase get up as a way of saying that you're going from a lying down and sleeping position to standing up and walking around and getting ready for the day.
This is another one that you might hear in movies or TV shows if someone falls down especially in boxing movies when a boxer falls down to the ground you might hear someone yell at them to get up which means stand up you can't stay lying down you have to be able to stand up so that's another phrasal verb that you'll hear very very common in sports movies and action movies.
We can also add a few more words at the end of this and change the meaning.
So I'm going to group these all together they all start with get up but the ending is slightly different.
So we have get up on, get up to date, and get up to speed.
Those are three different phrases that you you might hear, but they all mean the same thing.
And they're interchangeable with each other, which means you can use any of the three and they will still have the same meaning.
What this means is that you have to learn about something or maybe do more research about something.
For example, there are new travel rules and maybe there's new visa requirements or things that you need to do.
And if you're going to go traveling, you need to be aware of those before you try to go enter enter another country.
So you might say, I need to get up on the new travel requirements, which means you have to learn about them, you have to do some research about them, so you become knowledgeable.
That's one way of saying it.
You can also say, I need to get up to date, or I need to get up to speed on the visa requirements.
You might also hear it at work, if there's a new software, if there's a new piece of technology, maybe your company is going to start using some particular AI at work, you might have a boss who says everyone needs to get up to date on this new software or everyone needs to get up to speed with this new software, which means everyone's got work to do.
You have to research, you have to learn about it so you feel comfortable and you are knowledgeable about that particular thing.
Now the last thing with get up is actually not a phrasal verb.
It's a noun. If you take those two words, get and up, and you put them together in a compound word, get up, what you have is a noun, which refers to a crazy costume.
So if someone comes dressed in some type of crazy outfit and they look very silly or very ridiculous, you can say that they have a crazy get up on, which means they have some type of crazy outfit.
They're wearing some type of crazy clothes.
Again, not a phrasal verb.
It's a noun, but it is something that you might hear.
Our last phrasal verb is get down.
Think of the first meaning we did with get up.
We said we went from a sitting or lying position to a standing position.
This is going to be the opposite.
So if you are standing and you need to lie down or sit down, you will get down.
I know I keep talking about TV shows and movies, but these words just really get used a lot.
When there is some type of explosion, something happening in an action movie, you will hear the words, get down, which means that you have to lie down, right?
There's some type of danger, so you should get down and lower your head and stay safe.
This is also something that you can tell someone when they're just too high up.
For example, example, I have two cats and sometimes my cats like to jump on the table and I do not want them to be up on my table.
So I will yell at them to get down, which means that they are too high up there on the table.
I want them to be down on the floor at a lower position.
So in that case, I can use the phrasal verb, get down.
Another meaning is to become sad and depressed.
If you you think of sadness as maybe a lower type of emotion than happiness or excitement, that is maybe one way to think about it.
For example, if you have really bad weather outside, it's really stormy, you haven't seen the sun in maybe a week because it's just raining every day, you can say that this weather is getting me down.
What that means is that the weather is making you feel sad, you feel depressed, you want sunshine, you want happier weather, and that's one way to use it.
So if you have some type of event, something going on in your life, or even someone who's making you sad or depressed, you can use this phrase that something is getting you down.
The third meaning is what I said at the beginning of the episode, and I think this is the most fun way to use this phrasal verb, and this is when you want to say that you're going to have a party, and you're going to have a lot of fun.
fun if you are going out with a bunch of friends you can say that we're going to get down tonight which means that you're going to go out you're going to have a lot of fun you're going to party and just have a great time that's a very informal way of saying that idea but it is something that you can hear you can also hear that when someone is maybe having a lot of fun at a party maybe they're dancing a lot and acting a little crazy you can say that they are getting down down.
And the last one is kind of related to get out and that last meaning we did with get out.
So we said that get out in certain contexts means that you're unable to speak or unable to say what you want to say.
So think of it as the words that you have are inside of you and you're trying to have them come out of you.
So you're trying to have them get out.
This last meaning is when you you have something from the outside that you're trying to have go in.
If you have something that you're trying to eat or drink, if you're having difficulty, if you're having a hard time swallowing or eating something, you can say that you're struggling to get food down, which means you're having difficulty taking that food from outside and eating it or having some type of drink and drinking it.
You're having a difficult time putting that into your stomach. This is usually when someone's really sick.
Maybe they have a sore throat.
That can be those cases.
You can say that, oh, I'm really struggling to get food down or I'm really struggling to get this drink down.
Or if you're a parent and you have a very young child, if your young child is not wanting to eat their food, maybe they're sick or maybe they just don't want to eat right now.
They're throwing the the food and they're spitting it out, you can say that you just want them to get down some food.
You just want them to eat something.
You are just trying to feed them dinner and they're making the process so complicated and so difficult.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
I hope you learned some things and found it interesting.
These are just four phrasal verbs.
There are so many phrasal verbs and if you have been studying English, you know that.
So if you want more episodes like this in the future if you would want me to cover more of these phrasal verbs.
Please leave a comment, let me know, tell me if you enjoyed this episode and if you learned something from it.
I hope you did. Just a reminder to look at the description of this podcast episode.
You'll find the vocabulary list of these phrasal verbs and their definitions so that way you can study them and hopefully start using them in conversation yourself.
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