To really learn phrasal verbs effectively, you have to learn
the common meanings of this word.
That way you'll learn thousands of new words instantly.
Alone,
“AWAY” means “To have distance between two things.”
They are separate from each other.
For example, where's Aly?
I don't know.
He's away. He's not here.
But let's add a verb before “AWAY”.
Now we talk about how you created that distance between the two things.
Just for example, if your friend said,
I've been practicing my singing, can I sing for you?
And your reaction is
“UUUHHHHhhhhhhh.....”
Yeah. You don't want this.
So you want to create distance between you, too.
But how are you going to create the distance?
If you create distance by walking
You WALK AWAY
as a sentence.
“He walked away” in the past tense
and instantly you just learned thousands of new phrasal verbs!!!! :)
How?
Because we can change that method of creating distance.
How else could you create distance?
If you run to create distance.
You run away.
Or in the past tense, ran away.
Again, this says WHAT happened - “Create a distance”
The verb says HOW it happened.
Did you walk? Did you run away?
Did you dance away?
Walk away.
Run away.
Dance away. In a car.
How did your dad leave you? Drive away.
Any VERB + AWAY creates distance.
Or maybe you're dating someone, I know...
Just imagine really hard.
But you're dating someone.
And you're SOOOoooo in love! <3
But your parents decide they want to change your house.
They want to change where you live.
What's that verb?
To change your house? No.
We're going to move my house.
Nope.
“I'm going to move my house” is a common mistake.
Instead, just say “We're going to move”
But not somewhere close.
You want that extra feeling of distance between you, right?
So she adds that word “AWAY”!
“We're going to MOVE AWAY!” :(
“Let's RUN AWAY together!”
But what if you want to separate a thing from you, forever?!
and you don't care where its final destination is?
You don't care who has it in the end.
You also use “AWAY”
For example, you're finished with something
and you want to discard it in the bin.
You THROW it AWAY. I'm kidding.
I'll put that in the recycling.
But let's say you want to give something
like an old phone to someone.
You don't care who.
You don't care if they give it to someone else.
It's fine.
You GIVE it AWAY
The “AWAY” part of this indicates
that you don't care about the final destination.
You're separating it from yourself.
You're discarding it by throwing it away or giving it away.
Another common meaning of away means doing something
until the end, until it finishes.
For example,
You meet someone at a party and you start dancing
and you don't stop dancing until the end of the night, you can use “AWAY”
In this situation,
you dance until the end of the night.
You dance the night away until the night finishes.
Not necessarily dance.
Maybe you prefer to
talk.
You just talked the night away.
We don't often use this literally.
So they probably don't mean you talked until exactly the sun came up.
No, this is just for emphasis.
Doing something until it's finished.
Until it's finished?
It's almost like “emptying” something.
In that case, emptying time.
Dance the night away. Hmm.
Could we use this for emptying other things?
Yes, we could.
For example, this milk?
Yeah. This milk is not good anymore.
It's gone off.
So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to POUR it AWAY!
until it's finished.
Or you probably hear this one from your mom.
If you're skinny, even if you're not skinny, your mum will tell you.
Oh, my God, you're so skinny.
Look at you.
You're WASTING AWAY
Please eat more food!
To “WASTE AWAY”
Literally means your body is
shrinking, shrinking, shrinking until there's nothing there.
So your mum is worried
that you're not eating enough and she'll just give you tons of food.
Does your mom say this to you?
It can't be just my mom.
Another common, but very different meaning of “AWAY” is to hide something
usually in a safe place or where you can't see it.
For example, maybe you know that when your room is messy,
you need to put away your clothes.
You hide them so you can't see them.
Well, you can use this with other verbs too.
Not every verb, but verbs like “SQUIRREL AWAY”!
This is maybe the cutest phrasal verb.
It means you hide something away like a squirrel hides nuts.
Honestly, the cutest phrasal verb ever?
I think so!
For example, your friend
shows you that she has $1,000,000 in a bank account.
You want to say, “Wow, You've got so much money!”
She can reply.
Yeah.
I've been squirreling away money every month for years.
Pronunciation.
I know this one is quite difficult.
Squirrel.
So she has been not hiding, but putting in a safe place.
Money every month for years.
More commonly, but definitely less cute.
You could say “I've been putting away money.”
They mean the same thing, but we all know which one is the more cute phrasal verb.
So which one do you want to use?
But “AWAY” can also mean do something
in a relaxed way or for a long time.
And you don't need a time reference like “dance THE NIGHT away.”
Let me show you, for example.
I swear if you give someone a microphone,
they think they have a podcast.
So you could say:
“UGH! I gave him a microphone and he just talked away.
So this “AWAY” implies
he did it in a relaxed way for a long time.
Now, yes, you can use a time reference in this case duration.
“UGH! He talked away for hours!”
Remember “Dance the night away”?
The time reference goes in the middle.
Not this one. No.
“He talked away FOR HOURS!”
“He talked away ALL NIGHT about his stupid podcast.”
So if that means do something in a relaxed way for a long time.
This is very useful to tell someone.
Hey, do this thing, feel comfortable, feel relaxed,
take your time doing it.
If someone is cooking something really smelly like fish
and they want to check with you, is it okay if I cook fish?
You want to say, No problem.
Take your time.
Feel relaxed and comfortable doing it.
That's the word you need: “AWAY”!
“No, no. COOK AWAY!”
“I don't mind, it’s fine!”
At this point, I need to say please take notes in my lessons.
Of course, you can practice with my ultimate English e-book
available on Patreon.com/papateachme or on my website papateachme.com
But if you don't have that, take notes on a bit of paper
On your notes app. Anywhere!
Make examples sentences with this vocabulary.
Make sure that those example sentences are relevant to your life
and something you will say in the future.
That is how you'll learn all of this vocabulary and keep it there for future use
And finally, yeah, of course there are phrasal verbs with “AWAY”
which don't use the common meanings of “AWAY”
but they're very common and important, and you should learn them.
First one is to “BLOW someone AWAY”
For example, you meet someone and you fall in love instantly.
You're like, Wow, you're amazing.
You totally (*MINDBLOWN!*)
To say someone in surprises you in a huge way.
You would say, for example, she blew him
away.
She astonished him.
She surprised him in a huge way.
His life was never the same again because to blow is like an explosion.
We can practice this right now.
In the comments, in your notes, or in my ultimate English e-book.
Write this.
Where have you traveled to?
Where have you seen
That absolutely blew you away?
And why?
Give me recommendations to travel somewhere nice.
And finally, finally, this one I need to mention,
because in my classes I have to correct it all the time.
When you lose consciousness.
What do you do? What is the phrasal verb?
He passed away.
No. See?
No. That is the mistake.
I often have to correct this.
If you lose consciousness, if you faint, you don't “pass AWAY”
You “pass OUT”
If you pass AWAY, that means you die.
So please keep that in mind, because you might worry
someone if you say the wrong thing.
Okay. Test time.
I hope you've made notes because you're going to need them right now.
I'll give you an example situation.
You have to think of the common meanings that we've learned today
and create the phrasal verb that's missing in this sentence.
Question 1: I met Jisoo
and we went drinking and did karaoke
until the morning.
What is that sentence?
What is that phrasal verb that's missing here?
I met Jisoo, and we ____the night _____
5 seconds.
We were at karaoke.
So we SANG the night AWAY
Yes, we were drinking.
We could also say we DRANK the night AWAY
Question 2: Jisoo and I are besties now
She wants to ask me, “Is it okay if I smoke?”
I want to tell her it's fine.
No problem.
Feel comfortable smoking. Go ahead.
What can I say?
Jisoo! We're besties!
SMOKE AWAY!
Someone asks where I am.
She says he's not here. Hmm.
Where is he?
Oh, he'S AWAY
He RAN AWAY with Jisoo!
And finally, this drawing I don't need it more.
I'm going to discard it with this action.
What's the sentence?
I'm going to...
WIPE it AWAY
How many did you get correct?
Let me know in the comments below.
So which other phrasal verbs do you have problems with?
Let me know down below.
You can practice with this and hundreds of other lessons
with my ultimate English e-book.
It's available on patreon.com/papateachme or papateachme.com
I'll see you in the next class! Bye!