Hello, this is Lee from Busan in Korea, and you're listening to Everybody ESL.
Welcome to episode 434 of Everybody ESL, the podcast for everybody who wants to improve their English, practice their English or just learn more English.
My name is Ben and I have a mini episode for you today where I am going to teach you about one English topic.
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Okay, let's get on with this mini-episode.
In this episode, I am going to teach you an interesting expression.
The expression is to and fro.
To and fro.
That's T-O-A-N-D-F-R-O.
To and fro.
What is fro?
What does fro mean?
I don't think by itself, on its own, fro really means anything.
I don't think you will ever hear or read that word fro by itself.
But it is a part of this old-fashioned phrase, to and fro.
Let's see if you can guess what fro means.
In this expression, to means toward or in the direction of something.
And fro is short for the word from.
It's a short form of from.
And so to and fro means in this direction or toward that place, and in the other direction, away from that place.
It means toward something and away from something.
We use to and fro to describe things that are moving in one direction and then the opposite direction, and then back, and then back again.
We use it to mean things that go here and there and back here and back there again, back and forth.
That means if you are describing something like a crowded street scene, you're describing a scene with all kinds of people walking in all directions.
You might describe the crowd as walking to and fro.
People are walking over here, then they're walking in the other direction.
People are walking to one side of the street or one side of the square, and then they're walking to the other side.
They're walking from one side to another.
They're walking to and fro.
You could also describe other things that move from one side to another side and back to the first side and back to the other side, as moving to and fro.
For instance, what if you were describing something like a Horse.
A horse's tail.
Maybe the horse is swinging his tail from one side to the other side.
You could say the horse's tail was moving to and fro.
Or the horse was swinging his tail to and fro.
To and fro does sound a little bit old-fashioned.
And I don't think that you will hear this expression in conversation very often.
Maybe you will never hear this expression in conversation, but you will see it in writing sometimes.
Even though it's not a very common expression, I think it is an interesting and useful phrase that you should know.
This is the end of episode 434 of Everybody ESL.
Remember.
If you have questions about English or if you have comments for me, Send an email to everybodyesl at gmailcom.
I'll be back soon with a new episode.
And until then, keep going, keep practicing and keep learning.
I'll see you soon.
Goodbye.
