Speak Better English with Harry | Episode 560

In this episode, you’ll learn how native speakers use phrasal verbs related to driving in real-life situations. Each one is explained in simple English with clear examples so you can understand and use them naturally.

This lesson is perfect for English learners (B1–C1) who want to improve vocabulary, speak more fluently, and prepare for exams like IELTS, TOEFL, or Cambridge English. By the end, you’ll feel more confident using common driving expressions in both conversation and writing.

Transcript

0:09

Hi there, this is Harry. Welcome back to Advanced English Lessons with Harry, where I try to help you to get a better understanding of the English language, to help you with your conversational skills, your business English skills, interview skills, whatever your goals are, we're here to help. And for those of you and your friends or family who want one-to-one lessons, well, you know what to do. Just get in touch, www.englishlessonviaskype.com and you can apply for a free try lesson and we'll be very happy to hear from you and very happy to help you. And what do I have for you in this particular podcast? Well, I know how you all love your phrasal verbs. They're really very popular. And somebody asked me if I could include some phrasal verbs connecting with driving and things like that. So what I've done is I've put together a number of phrasal verbs related to driving. So I'm going to go through them with you, explain them, and hopefully you get a good understanding. So here goes. So I'll list them first of all, then I'll give you the examples. Back up. Buckle up. Fill something up. Load something up. Slow down. Block somebody or something in. Pull out. Pull in. Pull over. Drive off. Cut in and tick over. Okay, so they're phrasal verbs related to driving. And remember always with a phrasal verb, of course, you've got the verb and then you've got the preposition. And together they give you the phrasal verb. Some of them have more than one meaning. So even though in this case they're referring to driving, they may have alternative or other meanings. Okay, so let me go through them with you. Back up. Well, when we back up a car, it means we reverse. Okay, so you take your car out of your driveway in the morning from your house and you reverse the car onto the street and off you drive on your way to work. Okay. Or somebody's giving you directions and they just say, well, look, back up a little bit, turn left, turn right and head in that direction and you should find the place that you're looking for. So to back up means to take your car, put it into reverse, look into the rear mirror, of course, and reverse carefully and slowly so you don't hit something coming behind you. So to back up. Back up also has, as I said, another meaning, and that means to give somebody support. Okay, so apart from driving, to back up and put the car in reverse, if you want to back up somebody means you back up their ideas or you give them some backup in their argument with the boss. Second, buckle up. Well, this is a very, very informal way to say put on your seatbelt. Okay, so get in the car, buckle up and off you go. Okay, so kids in the back seats, put on your seatbelts, buckle up, and we'll be on our way. Yeah, okay, so to buckle up means to be secure, okay, and off we go, drive our car. The law now is for everybody, front seat passengers, back seat passengers, young kids, toddlers, buckle up and be safe, okay? So the buckle is the part of the seat belt that clicks, click into the little holder, yeah. So this is the buckle and buckle up means to be ready. We also use buckle up, meaning to fasten our coats or to make sure we're nice and snug on a cold winter's day. So buckle up, yeah, meaning make sure you're safe and you're comfortable. But in terms of our driving, buckle up, put on the seatbelt and off you go. To fill something up, well, we fill the car with petrol, we fill the motorbike with petrol, we fill the car in America with gasoline or the truck, the bus, whatever the vehicle is, we fill something up, we fill the tank, we fill the petrol tank with gas, with petrol, diesel, whatever it might be. Of course, we can fill lots of things up. We can fill jars with water. We can fill tanks with gas. It makes no difference. But in terms of our driving, we get into this filling station or the petrol station and we fill the petrol tank. So you call into the garage and somebody says, can I help you, sir? Yeah, fill it up. Meaning, put in the petrol, put in the diesel, whatever it might be. Fill the tank up. Okay? So to fill something up. You might also go into the filling station and fill your reusable coffee cup with coffee. Fill it up. Give me another fill up of coffee. Fill something up. Load something up. Well, to load something up means to put packages or parcels or luggage or something big and bulky into the boot of your car, into the back of your car, into the back of a truck, whatever it might be, into a van. So we load something up. We load the trailer with our furniture when we're moving from apartment to apartment or house to house. We get a friend to come and help us with the removal of the furniture and we load up the trailer with our furniture. When we're going on our holidays, we take all the suitcases and luggage and we put it into the back of the taxi or we put it into the back of our car. We load it up and off we go to the airport to load something up. Slow down. Well, this is a very specific reference to driving. When we slow down as we approach the traffic lights, we go down through the gears, sixth gear, fifth, fourth, third, second, eventually going into neutral when we come to the traffic lights. We slow down. We slow down when we're approaching an intersection on the motorway. We slow down when we are coming to the Piage or the place where we pay our toll. We slow down when we come to a roundabout. At least we should. Not everybody does. So to slow down means to take your foot off the accelerator, put your foot on the brake, go down through the gears and slow down, drive more slowly to slow down. We can tell people generally, it doesn't have to be to do with driving. We can tell people to slow down. Our kids, when they are eating their food, like a dog or a horse, they have to say, slow down, it's not a race, slow down, take it easy. Or, look, look, look, look, look. Slow down. Drink it more slowly. You'll get full of wind and air and burping everywhere. So slow down. But in the car, slow down. There's an old song, if I remember, the words are, slow down, you move too fast. Something like this. Yeah, okay, so to slow down. Okay, next, block somebody or something in. To block somebody or something in. So when we block somebody in, it means we've parked in the wrong place and they can't get their car out, which is very annoying. If it's happened to you, I can understand your frustration. Yeah, somebody drives, they're in a hurry, it's wet, they don't see the signs, so they put their car in, they hop out, they run into the shop. And when you try to move your car, guess what? You have been blocked in by somebody, okay? Or a big truck is blocked, so they can't get in, they can't get out. They have to wait for that person to come and move their car. So to block somebody in means to park in an awkward position that they cannot move. To block something in means to block a truck or block some other thing that wants to move an ambulance, for example, or rubbish truck or one of these things. And when you come back to the car, oh, they're not going to be so happy with you. You either have a notice on your window screen. You'll probably have a ticket from the policeman if you're not lucky. And then you're going to have a very irate, annoyed or frustrated cab driver, truck driver, or some other householder who's trying to get out in a hurry. So to block somebody in or block something in. To pull out, well, when we are about to enter the traffic stream, we look in our mirror, we look in our side mirror, we indicate, and then we pull out. We enter the traffic lane or the line of traffic. We pull out of one lane into another lane to overtake. We pull out. So we press on the accelerator. We move a little more quickly to overtake. We pull out into the traffic to start our journey in the morning to get the kids to school or to get ourselves to the office to pull out. We might pull out to avoid an accident. If we see some cars up ahead and they go bang, bang, and we suddenly turn left or right to avoid that. So we pull out quickly. Or we see an animal on the road, we pull out to avoid the animal, the dog or cat or something bigger. Hopefully not. So to pull out. Of course, we can also pull something out of our pocket, like our keys or our wallet or a ticket or whatever it might be. But when we're talking about driving, pull out means to get into the stream of traffic, to indicate and to drive off. And the opposite can be to pull in. So when we want to stop, we indicate again and we turn when it's safe to do so. And we pull into a parking lot. We pull into the side of the road. We pull into the service station. We pull into our driveway wherever we are going to stop, wherever we're going to get out or wherever we're going to let a passenger that we might have in the car with us. We want to let them out. So hold on a minute. I'll pull in over here and you'll be able to get out safely. So you indicate, come into the footpath, open the door and let your passenger out. And then you pull out again and off you go back into the traffic. So to pull out, pull in, pull in, pull out. All about indicating, all about careful driving and also always about looking exactly where you're going, particularly for that motorbike coming behind you to pull in. Or these days, these guys on scooters or electric cars that you can't hear, all sorts of little added problems as we're driving our cars. Pull in, pull out, pull out, pull in. And then the last of the pulls, pull over, not what you wear, that's a jumper or pull over, but this is pull over. And when you pull over, means you're going to stop. So somebody says, oh, I don't feel so well. I think I'm going to be sick. Hold on, don't get sick in the car. I'll pull over. Too late. Well, hopefully not. So pull over means you drive the car, get to the side of the road, and the person can get out and get some fresh air. Oh, don't get out yet. I'm going to have to pull over here after the traffic lights. There's a policeman there. I can't stop. It's a yellow zone or it's a non-stop zone, whatever it might be. Yeah, so you have to wait until I can pull over safely. When I can pull over, then you can get out. Okay, so to pull over means to indicate again, but often we're doing this quickly because we've seen a parking space and we really want to get into it before somebody else takes it. Yeah. Okay. So you pull over, you indicate and in you get. Okay. And then when you've dropped your passenger off, you can drive off. Yeah. Okay. So you've left your friend, your wife, whoever it is at the airport, at the train station, at the shopping center, and you're getting ready to go off for your game of golf or your game of tennis or to go and read the paper somewhere. So you drive off. You again indicate and off you go, pulling out again into the traffic and you drive off, drive off as happy as Larry. Foot on the accelerator, into first gear, second gear, whatever it might be, and you drive off. Okay, drive off into the distance, meaning to leave where you were and head wherever you're going next to drive off. Cut in. Don't like this. I don't like this when people in front of me cut in and driving in my lane and then suddenly somebody cuts in, meaning they come in very quickly. And, okay, you don't have an accident, but you don't like it because they've taken your space or they haven't indicated properly. And there are these guys who cut in on one lane and they cut back into the next lane and they cut in again. So in and out like a drunken spider. Yeah. Okay. So somebody who cuts in can do it to get from one lane to the other if there's a traffic jam. Yeah. Or somebody will indicate either with the hand asking you, can they cut in? Which, of course, then you do, you let them. And if you might have noticed, usually men let you in, women seldom do. Okay, that's a generalization on my part, but it happens. So next time you're in the traffic and somebody wants to come from the lane on your right, let them in, let them move in, let them cut in. Okay, why not? You're not going to be held up too much. And sure, life is life. Okay, so somebody cutting in in front of you. If they do it without requesting it, bad manners. If they wave the hand, then it's okay, because usually what they'll do, they'll put on the indicators or the hazard lights just to indicate that they appreciate what you have done. So let somebody cut in, let them come into the traffic lane. And then the last one is to tick over. Well, usually if we're sitting at the traffic lights or we're stuck in traffic, the engine of our car will tick over. So we don't need to put our foot on the accelerator, but the car engine is just going humming away. Often now in the modern cars, you take your foot off the accelerator when you stop and the engine cuts out as a mechanism of saving fuel, mean fuel efficient. And of course, if you're driving electric cars, well, then they do cut out. And as soon as you put your foot on the accelerator, the engine starts up again. So to tick over is the little bit old-fashioned when the car is just sitting there. That's your engine ticking over. Okay, so there's our phrasal verbs related to driving. And as always, I hope you've enjoyed those. And if you have any more suggestions, well, you know where I am. You can always make them. And you can join me on www.englishlessonviaskype.com. As I said, I'm happy to hear from you. Give me your suggestions. I'll try to include them. Thanks for listening. Join me again soon.