(lively music)
- Hello everyone, and welcome back to English with Lucy.
Today, I'm going to show you how to upgrade your English
and take it to the next level,
and we're just going to echo off the video
that I made a couple of weeks ago
about the words that you should not use,
and the alternatives that you can use.
If you haven't seen that yet, click on the card.
I highly recommend you do.
I received so many messages from different people
asking me to help them expand their vocabulary
and replace boring words with interesting words,
so that is what we're going to do today,
but before we get started,
I would just like to thank the sponsor of today's video,
Lingoda, who are bringing you an amazing opportunity
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Right, let's get on with the lesson.
Okay, so in a previous video I spoke about the words
that you should never use in English,
and I want to expand on that today.
I'm going to talk about some common words
that could be considered quite boring,
and some alternatives that you can use.
Basically, this is just a really jam-packed,
jam-packed means it's really, really full,
a really jam-packed vocabulary video.
So get your notepads out.
You are going to want to take notes.
Now, the first word is smart.
I want to mention this word because in British English,
it means something slightly different
than in American English.
In American English, smart refers to intelligence.
If somebody is smart, they are intelligent.
In British English, it's not so clear.
You have to add a bit of context,
because if I say someone is smart,
you would think that they are well-dressed
or well-turned-out.
If I say he's a very smart man,
I'm referring to the way he looks, not to the way he thinks.
So I'm going to give you some alternative words
for smart and intelligent,
that you can use in everyday English.
Some of the alternatives need a bit more explanation
because they mean something slightly different.
They're not just synonyms.
So instead of saying smart, we can say knowledgeable,
somebody who has a lot of knowledge.
We can say brilliant.
Now you might know brilliant
as being really, really good or great.
That's brilliant.
But if you describe a person as brilliant,
it can mean that they're really, really clever.
I think you would describe Dumbledore as brilliant,
'cause he was just this genius.
I always like to get in a Harry Potter reference.
Another word similar to brilliant is gifted.
If somebody is gifted,
it means they are very skilled in a particular area,
often referring to their intelligence.
When I was at school,
there was a special list that you could be on,
that was called the gifted and talented list,
and it was a list of students that were very talented,
or very intelligent,
and they, the people on the list,
got to go off and do special activities.
Now I think of that, I think that is dreadful.
That's just
That is dreadful.
Yeah, I hope that doesn't occur anymore.
Another word we can use is witty.
And witty, it means funny and intelligent.
So someone who's funny might make a lot of jokes,
but they're not particularly intelligent jokes,
and somebody witty makes a lot of very intelligent jokes.
They play with the language.
They use historical facts.
Somebody who I think is very witty is Stephen Fry.
I always mention Stephen Fry and Harry Potter in my videos.
You can tell what I watch in my spare time.
So if somebody says something
very intelligent and very funny,
you can say, that was very witty of you.
It's a lovely word.
Along the same lines, quick-witted.
This means that somebody can come up with
an intelligent or funny response very, very quickly.
I, on the other hand,
take a little bit longer to process information.
Another lovely word is sharp.
If someone's sharp, they're quick.
They're intelligent.
It's hard to trick them because they spot everything.
Then we have wise, and wise tends to mean
that you are intelligent due to experience.
You've got a lot of experience.
You can refer to your experience.
You're wise.
We often refer to older intelligent people as wise.
We've also got brainy,
and this kind of refers to somebody who's quite studious,
somebody who lives a very academic life.
I wouldn't say it's the biggest compliment.
Well, it is a compliment to be called brainy,
because you're being told that you're intelligent,
but I think this word can be used with a negative undertone,
sort of in the same way as geek or nerd,
somebody who studies a lot,
and maybe doesn't have such a big social life.
Nothing wrong with that, but be careful who you use it with,
because you could offend them.
Now, that's enough of these smart alternatives.
As with all of these topics,
please do contribute your ideas
in the comment section below.
I was so amazed at your contributions
in my Words You Should Not Say video.
You guys are smart.
Oh, no, that's what we're meant to not say.
All right, let have a look at a very common word now, good.
(chuckles) Good is a good word.
Good is a good word.
It's a good word.
I can't take that away from the word good.
However, there are better words.
I remember when I was teaching students,
I used to get so self-conscious of repeating the word good,
over and over again after every answer.
Good, good, good, very good, (laughs)
so I had to come up with alternatives,
and I ended up just saying wonderful the whole time,
and then my students used to predict what I was gonna say,
and they'd say wonderful, and I was about to say it,
and it was so embarrassing,
but I'm gonna give you some really good alternatives
to good right now.
See, it's not good if you repeat it all over and over again.
Oh my God, I said it again. (laughs)
Okay, let's just get on with this.
One of my favourite ones is marvellous.
Oh, isn't marvellous just such a lovely word?
Marvellous.
It makes you sound really quite posh and well-spoken.
I would use it at every opportunity.
Another one, which I love seeing in my comment section,
because I know that you guys have done your research
on alternatives for good,
is superb, and this is another posh word.
This meal is superb.
Not super: it's got a b on the end.
Superb, and it just means the absolute best.
Another word is exquisite,
and this is another word for very, very good,
and we often use it to describe food or drink.
A waiter comes over to your table.
"How is the wine?"
"Oh, exquisite."
Very, very posh.
Another that I really like is delightful.
If something's delightful,
it gives you a lot of delight, which means happiness.
The show was absolutely delightful.
It was very happy.
It was very warm.
It was very good. (laughs)
Terrific.
Be careful on the pronunciation of this one.
It's not TERR-ific, it's terr-IF-ic.
Make sure you don't confuse this with terror,
which means something's very scary.
Terrific is a very, very positive word.
Another one is splendid.
If something is splendid, it's top-notch.
It's absolutely excellent.
I think splendid and marvellous
are my favourites in this list.
But what if something is really bad?
Well, don't worry.
I've got a list for you.
Now, there's an unwritten rule in English.
If you use a posh word meaning bad,
you have to show absolute disgust whilst using these words.
So we have atrocious.
We also have obscene.
Obscene. (laughs)
We have dreadful.
Dreadful.
I hope you're all practising at home,
practising your disgusted faces.
Disgusting.
Despicable.
Absolutely despicable.
Vile.
Ah, that's one I use a lot.
Ugh, vile.
That is absolutely vile.
Nasty.
Ugh, nasty.
Evil, just pure evil.
Brutal.
You can have a brutal murder,
which is the worst of the worst, lots of blood and gore.
And possibly the best one, abhorrent.
Abhorrent.
If you use that in an essay,
I'm sure it will go down well if used in the right context,
because it's not such a common word,
but it's a really effective one.
Now, how about some alternatives for verbs.
What about ran, or to run?
You could say someone jogged, which is a light run.
You could say somebody sped, or they sped off.
That means they went at quite a pace; they went quickly.
The same for bolted and darted,
and if you use off, darted off, bolted off, sped off,
it means that they are going away from you.
Scurried, that's running quickly with little footsteps.
Galloped, the same, but with big footsteps, like a horse.
Raced, dashed, both really quick.
And sprinted, well, like Usain Bolt,
possibly the fastest of them all.
And then, on the other hand,
we have alternatives for walked, to walk.
You could saunter,
which is just to kind of aimlessly walk, saunter along.
Or you could march, which is to walk meaningfully.
To trudge somewhere,
that's to kind of drag your feet like you don't want to go.
To stagger, how you might walk after you've had a drink.
You're not picking up your feet, you might trip over.
You can amble or you can stroll,
and that's just a leisurely walk.
I do actually say, I'm just going out for a stroll,
which just means an aimless walk with no objective.
I'm just enjoying being outside for a minute.
Another verb we can find alternatives for is to see.
You can say you glimpsed something,
which means you just got a really quick look.
Equally, you can say you glanced at something,
and you must use it with the preposition at, to glance at.
I glanced at her answers
and saw that she'd got them all wrong.
To gaze, or to gaze at someone.
This is to look at something for a very long time.
It almost implies to look lovingly at something.
If I say, he gazed into her eyes,
it means he looked lovingly,
or looked for a long time into her eyes.
I'm gazing into the camera lens right now,
at all of you students because I love you so much.
To spot.
You can spot something.
That means you've seen something,
or you've noticed it, to notice.
It means you've found something
that you weren't necessarily looking for.
You can examine something,
which is to study it long and hard,
to really look at the details.
And you can also eye something,
and to eye something is to really study,
move your eyes all along it,
and if you eye someone up,
it means you're almost looking at them flirtatiously.
You're really looking at their body
and seeing what they're like.
It's not necessarily a positive thing.
And the last topic is alternatives for saying scared.
Scared is a perfectly fine word,
but if you're writing about something particularly scary,
then you can find yourself repeating it over and over again,
so here are some alternatives.
One you might know already is afraid.
You are scared; you are afraid.
It's pretty much the same thing.
The same goes for frightened, to be frightened.
One that's slightly different is startled,
and this means that something's made you jump.
It's shocked you in the moment.
Maybe somebody's just appeared,
and you go, oh, and you've been startled.
The same goes for spooked,
to spook someone, to suddenly make them scared.
Now, what if you are really, really scared?
You might be petrified,
absolutely petrified.
Or terrified, not to be confused with terrific.
After a scare, you could be really shaken,
and that means that you don't feel right.
This is sort of the aftershock of a scare.
To be anxious, you could be really nervous and anxious.
You could also be horrified,
or, good word coming here, aghast.
Aghast, and this is just to be filled with fear and shock.
Right, that is it for today's lesson.
I really hope you enjoyed it.
I really enjoyed making it.
If you would like more lessons like this one,
please comment down below,
because I always use your requests
as my inspiration for future videos.
That's why I made this one,
because you guys seemed to like the other one so much.
And there are loads more alternatives I can give you,
and I think it's just so much nicer
than reading them from a page,
having somebody explain them to you.
Don't forget to check out the Lingoda Language Marathon.
The link is in the description box along with the code,
and please do connect with me on all of my social media.
I've got my Facebook,
I've got my Instagram, and I've got my Twitter,
and I will see you soon for another lesson.
Mwah!
So in the previous video, I spoked...
I spoked (chuckles)
English teacher.
Right, that's enough of these smart words.
With all of these topics,
I would love for you to contribute in the description box.
Not in the description box.
Don't touch my description box.
That's mine.
You can go in the comment box, (laughs), okay.
Just holding my imaginary mind.
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