Learn the English Phrases "to be off" and "to back off"

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO BE OFF and TO BACK OFF

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the phrase to be off. Now, this has a few meanings. The one I'm going to focus on today simply means to leave. If I said to Jen, I'm off. I'm going to go to town and buy some gas. It means that I have my keys in my hand. It means that I'm about to go out the door and I'm going to drive to town. So when you say that you are off, it means that you are going somewhere. The other day, Jen said, well, I'm off. See you at 4:00 and then I responded by saying, oh, where are you going? And she said, oh, don't you remember? I said I was going to go pick up the kids from school, so I'm off to go get them. So it simply means to leave.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase to back off. Now, this can mean to physically back off from someone, but we also use it to talk about if you're talking to someone and it's obvious they're upset, you might back off a little bit. Especially in situations where as a parent, sometimes if I'm talking to one of my kids and it's obvious they're upset about something, I might back off a little bit. Instead of saying, why did you come home so late? I might say to them, oh, you're obviously upset. We'll talk about it later. So I might back off. Instead of saying, you're supposed to be home by 11:00 p.m. You broke your curfew, you're grounded. You can look all those words up, by the way. Instead, I might think, oh, my child seems a bit upset. Maybe they didn't have a good evening. I'll back off. Instead of being a harsh dad, I'll back off. And then maybe Jen will go talk to them about it.

So anyways, to review, to be off simply means to leave. Like after this video, I'm off to town to go have supper with my family. And to back off means to kind of step back a little bit, either physically or just in a conversation so the person has some time to think and calm down from the situation.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Ruslan. Thank you for the cool lesson, dear teacher Bob, so much snow, it looks like you went beyond the wall, Bob Snow. And then my response, I showed the clip to my mom and she laughed. She loved the snow piling up on my head. By the way, nice Game of Thrones reference.

So Ruslan there, thanks for that comment. Made a little reference to Game of Thrones. I don't know if you've watched that. It was a TV show a few years ago. It's a fantasy show, and part of the show was in the northern parts of that area, there was a large wall made of ice. And then if you went beyond the wall, it was a very scary place. I think there were. Were they called White Walkers? I can't remember. It's been a while since I read the books and watched that show.

But anyways, I'm out here. I'm going to cross the road safely once again, looking both ways twice. Before I cross the road, I wanted to show you that there are tractor tracks here. Farming has begun in Canada. Just a little bit of farming. If you look behind me as I walk, you'll see that every few feet there are tractor tracks. What they've done here is they've done some frost seeding. They probably planted clover in this field. Clover is a seed that you can plant this early in the year and it will eventually grow. I don't think you'll be able to see any. I can see some on the ground here. I don't know how close this camera will go, but there should be some little, almost like freckles on the snow if you can see them. And what those are, are most likely clover seeds. And they will sink throug

Transcript

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the phrase to be off. Now, this has a few meanings. The one I'm going to focus on today simply means to leave. If I said to Jen, I'm off. I'm going to go to town and buy some gas. It means that I have my keys in my hand. It means that I'm about to go out the door and I'm going to drive to town. So when you say that you are off, it means that you are going somewhere. The other day, Jen said, well, I'm off. See you at 4:00 and then I responded by saying, oh, where are you going? And she said, oh, don't you remember? I said I was going to go pick up the kids from school, so I'm off to go get them. So it simply means to leave.

The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase to back off. Now, this can mean to physically back off from someone, but we also use it to talk about if you're talking to someone and it's obvious they're upset, you might back off a little bit. Especially in situations where as a parent, sometimes if I'm talking to one of my kids and it's obvious they're upset about something, I might back off a little bit. Instead of saying, why did you come home so late? I might say to them, oh, you're obviously upset. We'll talk about it later. So I might back off. Instead of saying, you're supposed to be home by 11:00 p.m. You broke your curfew, you're grounded. You can look all those words up, by the way. Instead, I might think, oh, my child seems a bit upset. Maybe they didn't have a good evening. I'll back off. Instead of being a harsh dad, I'll back off. And then maybe Jen will go talk to them about it.

So anyways, to review, to be off simply means to leave. Like after this video, I'm off to town to go have supper with my family. And to back off means to kind of step back a little bit, either physically or just in a conversation so the person has some time to think and calm down from the situation.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Ruslan. Thank you for the cool lesson, dear teacher Bob, so much snow, it looks like you went beyond the wall, Bob Snow. And then my response, I showed the clip to my mom and she laughed. She loved the snow piling up on my head. By the way, nice Game of Thrones reference.

So Ruslan there, thanks for that comment. Made a little reference to Game of Thrones. I don't know if you've watched that. It was a TV show a few years ago. It's a fantasy show, and part of the show was in the northern parts of that area, there was a large wall made of ice. And then if you went beyond the wall, it was a very scary place. I think there were. Were they called White Walkers? I can't remember. It's been a while since I read the books and watched that show.

But anyways, I'm out here. I'm going to cross the road safely once again, looking both ways twice. Before I cross the road, I wanted to show you that there are tractor tracks here. Farming has begun in Canada. Just a little bit of farming. If you look behind me as I walk, you'll see that every few feet there are tractor tracks. What they've done here is they've done some frost seeding. They probably planted clover in this field. Clover is a seed that you can plant this early in the year and it will eventually grow. I don't think you'll be able to see any. I can see some on the ground here. I don't know how close this camera will go, but there should be some little, almost like freckles on the snow if you can see them. And what those are, are most likely clover seeds. And they will sink through the snow and they will sprout in March and April, and then they will start to grow. They'll germinate.

Anyways, thanks for watching. Hope you enjoyed this view of a field and I'll see you in a couple of days with another short English lesson. Bye.