Learn the English Phrases "Gimme a break!" and "Gimme a sec!"

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases GIMME A BREAK! and GIMME A SEC!

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase give me a break. Which is the short, informal way of saying give me a break. This is a sentence or phrase we use in a couple situations. One is when you really need a break. Let's say Jen and I are putting flowers in the van and Jen is trying to get me to work faster. I might say to her, give me a break. I'm working as fast as I can. I'm expressing my frustration a little bit. I'm expressing that I want to go slowly and methodically. I don't want to go fast because I might make a mistake. So I might say, oh, give me a break. You also use this phrase when someone tells you something that just annoys you. So let's say your cousin likes to borrow things and your cousin hasn't returned all of the things that they borrowed from you and they call to borrow something again, you could say, oh, man, give me a break. You still haven't returned my saw and my hammer that you borrowed last week. Give me a break. This is really frustrating.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase give me a sec, which is short for give me a second. This is simply a way to tell someone to wait. If I was doing something and I felt like I needed to sit down for a bit, I might say, hey, give me a second. I'm just going to sit down and maybe have a drink of water. In the summer when it's really hot, you might hear me say this to Jen, hey, give me a sec. I just need to have something to drink. If you're on the phone and someone says, hey, can you tell me how many flowers someone ordered last week? You could say, okay, give me a sec. I'll look up that information. So it's just another way of saying wait.

So to review, give me a break is a phrase you use to express frustration in any certain situation. And give me a sec simply means that you need a second or two to do something. You need that person to wait.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from.... I think it's from Natalia. Let's see here. Yes, Natalia, this is my guess. The barbed wire is tilted towards the park. By the way, I'm there again, if you want to look, the barbed wire is tilted towards the park, probably protecting the road from animals that might run out of the park. And my response, possibly Jen thinks there might have been a train station there. There used to be train tracks, but they were removed years ago. Maybe I'll go back and investigate.

And so that's what I'm doing right now. If you're wondering what that loud truck noise was, there's a water truck right there that's leaving. Anyways, I am back here, and I think I do have it figured out. I'm not sure what was behind this fence, but it probably was related to the fact that there used to be train tracks here. If you look across the road, you see those big rocks over there? That's where the train track used to be. And years ago, they removed the train track. And if you look behind me, where these houses are, that's where the train track used to go. So I hope I'm not confusing you.

That's why I think we have this really tall chain link fence here. I think it's because there was either a train station or a train refueling station or something here. And obviously a long time ago, because if you look, you'll see that the tree has grown into the fence. And there's another one down here. I'll show you, which is basically part of the fence. So obviously this fence has been here for a very long time. I'm gonna make sure I don't step in any dog poop.

Transcript

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase give me a break. Which is the short, informal way of saying give me a break. This is a sentence or phrase we use in a couple situations. One is when you really need a break. Let's say Jen and I are putting flowers in the van and Jen is trying to get me to work faster. I might say to her, give me a break. I'm working as fast as I can. I'm expressing my frustration a little bit. I'm expressing that I want to go slowly and methodically. I don't want to go fast because I might make a mistake. So I might say, oh, give me a break. You also use this phrase when someone tells you something that just annoys you. So let's say your cousin likes to borrow things and your cousin hasn't returned all of the things that they borrowed from you and they call to borrow something again, you could say, oh, man, give me a break. You still haven't returned my saw and my hammer that you borrowed last week. Give me a break. This is really frustrating.

The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase give me a sec, which is short for give me a second. This is simply a way to tell someone to wait. If I was doing something and I felt like I needed to sit down for a bit, I might say, hey, give me a second. I'm just going to sit down and maybe have a drink of water. In the summer when it's really hot, you might hear me say this to Jen, hey, give me a sec. I just need to have something to drink. If you're on the phone and someone says, hey, can you tell me how many flowers someone ordered last week? You could say, okay, give me a sec. I'll look up that information. So it's just another way of saying wait.

So to review, give me a break is a phrase you use to express frustration in any certain situation. And give me a sec simply means that you need a second or two to do something. You need that person to wait.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from.... I think it's from Natalia. Let's see here. Yes, Natalia, this is my guess. The barbed wire is tilted towards the park. By the way, I'm there again, if you want to look, the barbed wire is tilted towards the park, probably protecting the road from animals that might run out of the park. And my response, possibly Jen thinks there might have been a train station there. There used to be train tracks, but they were removed years ago. Maybe I'll go back and investigate.

And so that's what I'm doing right now. If you're wondering what that loud truck noise was, there's a water truck right there that's leaving. Anyways, I am back here, and I think I do have it figured out. I'm not sure what was behind this fence, but it probably was related to the fact that there used to be train tracks here. If you look across the road, you see those big rocks over there? That's where the train track used to be. And years ago, they removed the train track. And if you look behind me, where these houses are, that's where the train track used to go. So I hope I'm not confusing you.

That's why I think we have this really tall chain link fence here. I think it's because there was either a train station or a train refueling station or something here. And obviously a long time ago, because if you look, you'll see that the tree has grown into the fence. And there's another one down here. I'll show you, which is basically part of the fence. So obviously this fence has been here for a very long time. I'm gonna make sure I don't step in any dog poop. There's quite a bit of it here. People are supposed to clean it up. So you can see this tree has grown into the fence.

And about the dog poop. Let's just review what the rules are here. It says, dogs on leash, stoop and scoop. Pick up after your pet. Hopefully more people remember to do that. Anyways, thanks for watching. See you next week with another short English lesson. Bye.