Speak Better English with Harry | Episode 533

Improve your English with this episode on phrasal verbs used in everyday conversations. These expressions are perfect for talking about people, emotions, and social situations.

You’ll learn how native speakers use phrasal verbs naturally when expressing support, disappointment, or reactions in daily life. Clear examples and explanations help you understand the meaning and use of each one.

Great for B2–C1 learners preparing for exams like IELTS or just wanting to speak English more fluently and confidently.

Transcript

Hi there. This is Harry. And welcome back to another podcast where I try to help you to get a better understanding of the English language, where we look at for cavalry, a spoken English conversational English to help you improve your prospects for jobs with international companies. Whatever the reason, come to us and we certainly can try and help you.

And at the end of this podcast, I will give you my contact details for you and for friends or family members that you think might get some benefit from it. So what are we going to talk about today? Well, in this particular podcast we're going to take a look at some phrasal verbs. And they are phrasal verbs related to behaviour and behaviours, the way we do things or the way we act.


So as always, I'll go down through them one by one, and then I'll go through them individually and I will give you some examples. Okay. Let's start. So phrasal verbs related to behaviour cheer someone up, tire someone out. Calm down. Make something up. Rush into something. Fit in with. Look down on, stand up for, rely on and finally let down.


Okay, so let's take them one by one. First cheer someone up. But when we cheer someone up, we make them feel happy. Okay, so usually we make them feel happy because they were probably feeling sad before that. Or feeling unhappy. So to cheer someone up. And here we've got the verb and the preposition split, and we've got someone in the middle to cheer someone up.


Okay, so how do we cheer someone up? Well, we tell them a funny story or we tell an they're good, or we tell them they did well, or whatever we do, we get them feeling better about themselves. Okay, so to cheer someone up. So make them happy. Make them forget about whatever their problems are and perhaps make their life better.


So you could have a situation where your son or daughter didn't do so well in an exam might not been so important, but as always, they take it to heart. So when your partner comes home from work, you say, why don't you go inside, have a chat to Mary or Eileen, cheer her up. She's feeling a little bit depressed because the exam didn't quite go the way she thought.


So you go in and you put your arm around her shoulder just to see what's happening. Do you want your dad to cheer you up so you cheer someone up to tell him a funny story? Okay, next tire someone out. And again here, we've got the the verb and the preposition split. So tire someone out. Tire to tire the verb out the preposition.


Tire someone out to tire someone out means to make them feel exhausted. So when I go out and play with the grandkids in the park and I'm running around and playing football with them, or trying to run around or play football with them, after about half an hour, they have tired me out. I'm exhausted. So I'm sitting down saying, I need a coffee, I need a water, whatever.


I need. So to tire someone out means to use up all of that energy very quickly, and then they become exhausted. Oh, that work I did last week. It's tired me out. I don't know what I was doing working so late every night. So to tire someone out, watching somebody run the marathon would actually tie you out. You don't know how they are able to run for such a long distance.


And so that will certainly tire you out. Thinking of the training that you would have to do for the running marathon would tire me out. So to tire someone out, make them feel exhausted. Next to calm down. Well, these are the words we usually use when somebody is really upset. So son or daughter come home in a bit of a panic.


Some argument at school and you know, the best friend or whatever it is and that all this and all that and getting a little bit overexcited and they're getting really upset. So you say, okay, calm down, calm down. To calm down means to take a deep breath, relax. Breathe deeply, calm down. So it's a way we try to get people to forget about the trouble and try and relax and try to explain it to you quite simply without the emotion.


Okay, so calm down. You'll have to calm down, kids, as the teacher will say before we can start the class. No excitement, no running around. Okay, it's the first day back at school. Take things easy. Calm down next to make something up. And again here we've split the verb make and the preposition up. Make something up. So when you make something up, you invent a story.


Okay, so you didn't get to work on Monday because, well, you had a bad weekend and Monday came along. You thought, oh, I can't face work. So, you know, you're rang in about an hour after you got woke up and you put your fingers on, you know, oh, I don't feel very well today. I can't come in. So.


Makes it sound as if you're suffering from the flu. So you make something up to invent a story as to why you can't come to work, or if you don't want to go to that 30th or 40th birthday celebration of some friends say, oh, look, I really can't go out tonight, I'd much prefer to put my feet up, watch a movie and come.


We just make something up. Some excuse up. Yeah. So to make something up, make an excuse. The reason why we can't come. You're good at making excuses. Why don't you do it? So off you go to make the call to make something up next to rush into. Usually rush into something. So here we can't split. We can't say rush something into rush into something.


Okay, so when we rush into something, it usually means we make a very sudden decision, very quick decision, very knee jerk reaction to something without really thinking about it. Okay. And you might hear people say, don't rush into any quick decisions. Don't rush into deciding. Now, take your time. Okay? So you can use it in the negative. Or somebody says, well, I told you you shouldn't rush into a decision because when you make a decision very quickly, you usually make the wrong one.


So why don't you sit back, think about it, look at the pros and cons, both sides of it, and then decide. So don't rush into a decision. Okay, so when we rush into something, we make a quick decision sometimes because we have to, but often we do it because we don't think properly. Okay, you move job and after two months you're really not happy.


And you say to your friend, you know what? I think this was a mistake. I thought grass was greener on the other sides of the fence, so that means I thought it would be good from where I was. But in reality, I think I should have stayed. And you say, well, do you remember? I did say, have you really thought about this?


Do you really want to leave? Is is it what you want just because they're offering more money? And I hate to say I told you so, but I did tell you. Yeah, you shouldn't rush or you shouldn't at this stage have rushed into it. Okay. So to rush into something, make a very quick decision. Next fit in with and here we have two prepositions after the verb fit fit in with.


When we want to fit in with the crowd, when we want to fit in with the gang, when we want to fit in with the other classmates, it means we want to be one of them. We want to feel the same as they do. We don't want to be seen as different, so we want to fit in with them.


So we might buy the same clothes, wear the same clothes, we might listen to the same music, we might talk in the same way, act in the same way. So when you want to fit in, you want to blend in with everybody else so you don't appear to be different. Okay, so not so easy to fit in with the crowd.


If you move to a new school, it's not so easy to fit in with the crowd if you move to it another country. But this is what you have to try and do. So people come to me to learn English because they want to fit in better with their colleagues or people that they have to talk to on conference calls and zoom calls, and they like to know what small talk they can use so that they can fit in with their colleagues before and after the main conversations.


Okay, to fit in with next to look down on. When somebody looks down on you, it means they look down their nose, means they look at you as if you're not as good or as valuable as they are. Okay, so this was a little bit of snobbery. Yeah. So. Oh, she looks down on those poor people, meaning she might sound as she feels sorry for them, but in reality she has no feelings at all.


And she looks down thinking, oh, disgusting, what are they doing here? So to look down on somebody is to look down your nose, or think that people are not as good as you are, or make them feel as if they're not as good as you are. So you might hear somebody saying, well, don't look down your nose at me.


Yeah. So or the king and queen or somebody else in high authority look down on the poor people outside their castle or the palace and show them some breadcrumbs, okay? To look down on other people to stand up for. And here we've got the verb stand. And then two prepositions up for to stand up for what you believe in.


Is that an expression meaning you should always put forward your ideas, and you should always believe strongly in your views and not let anybody knock you off course. And don't let anybody persuade you otherwise. If you genuinely believe in something, then you should stand up for what you believe in. Okay, so if you don't agree with bullying in the school, then you stand up for that.


If you don't agree with ageism or sexism, where people are somewhat biased to older people or somebody because they're male or female, then you should stand up for what you believe. Meaning tell people what you believe in. Don't be persuaded otherwise. Just because everybody else feels you're wrong doesn't mean you are wrong. So stand up for what you believe in.


Don't go with the others just because there's a bit of pressure. You can stand up for your friend. When somebody starts complaining about something, say, well, it wasn't his fault he didn't do it. So you stand up for them, okay? Means you give them support. You have, as we say, their back. You're there to to help them. That's what good friends are for, to protect, stand by in good and in bad times.


They couldn't quite literally stand up for the old lady who gets on the bus and she got nowhere to sit. So you are sitting on the seat. So you stand up for that lady and offer her your seat. Okay, so that's quite the quite literal meaning of it to rely on. Well, we all need to rely on somebody at some time in our lives, and to rely on means to depend on somebody, or we need them for something.


So I'm relying on you to finish the project. I'm relying on you to tell me the truth. I'm relying on you to help me get this work done. Your children rely on you to protect them. A husband or wife relies on the partner to love and help them in difficult times. Or if they're sick to to help them get over their illness or if they're out of work to support them financially.


Whatever the reason, one person or other people would rely on somebody else. Okay. So we rely on we rely on our governments to govern our countries correctly. The government rely on us to support them. And whatever their policies happen to be, rely on, depend on. Place our trust in somebody to rely on. You could quite simply use it.


You know, if you're waiting for the plumber or the electrician to come and fix something and you say, oh, look, this pipe burst over the weekend and I had a mini flood in my kitchen. I managed to stop the water, but I'm really relying on you to come as quickly as you can to fix it. Don't worry, madam, I'll be there in an hour.


Hopefully. They hope so. You're relying on somebody to help you? Relying on the plumber to come and fix the burst pipe. Okay. And finally let down. Well, there are many ways in which we can use it. To let down somebody means usually to disappoint them. Yep. So when we talked before about the lady relying on the plumber to come and fix a burst pipe, she might at the end say, well, hopefully you are reliable and you don't let me down.


Meaning you don't disappoint me by not turning up or turning up late or not turning up at all. Okay, so please don't let me down. Okay? So we let down somebody when we disappoint them, we let down somebody when we do something that they didn't want us to do or we didn't do something that they expected us to do.


Either way, they will feel let down the teacher when she goes out the class and tells the class to be quiet, she just has to go to talk to the head mistress or the headmaster for some minutes. When she comes back, does absolute chaos. The shouting and screaming. She said, you've really let me down. I thought I could trust you, so you're going to have to stay in detention for 30 minutes at the end of the class.


Okay, so let down, we can let someone down gently. So if we have to tell them some bad news, we have to find a way in which we can break that news to them rather gently. So okay, if you have to give them bad news, let them down gently. So that's what your wife might say to you. If you have to tell them we can't go to the cinema or we can't go on the holiday because of this or that, then let them down gently and you know they'll be disappointed.


But don't just go in and say, okay, bad news. You can't go to the cinema today. Say, give them a reason, make up something or give them an excuse, but let them down gently, okay? To let down. Okay. So there's phrasal verbs related to our behaviour, the way we act with people, the way we relate to people.


So let me give them to you one more time to cheer someone up, make them feel happy. To tire someone out. Make them feel exhausted. Come down to relax, make something up. Invent a story. Rush into making quick decisions that usually backfire. Fit in with feel. With the in-crowd. Yeah, okay. To fit in with people or others, look down on.


Look down your nose on somebody to make them feel inferior. Stand up for to stand up for your beliefs. What you believe in, rely on, rely on to give your support to somebody or somebody relies on you for support that shoulder to lean on. And then finally let down to disappoint, to let down. Okay, so phrasal verbs related to behaviour.


I hope you've enjoyed this particular podcast and as always, if you want to contact me, well then you can do so on www.englishlessonviaskype.com. Always happy to hear from you. Always happy to get your suggestions. And as always, if you have a friend, a colleague or somebody that you think would benefit from this, well, why don't you pass on the details?


And while I'm talking about it, we can always arrange for you to have 1 to 1 lessons or family or friends if they've got something that they need to improve. Well, come along to us. It might not be me specifically who will give you the lesson, but I've got lots of teachers working with me who are really, really good.


Lots of experience, all professional teachers. So if you need some help, you know where we are, okay? As always, thanks for listening. Join me again soon.