Hi, welcome to ingVid.com. My name is Adam and today, I want to talk to you about English now.
I know that, you think, English is a very confusing language, and you're right. It's a very confusing language.
Many students have come to me and said: but I checked in the dictionary, and this is what it means and I say yes,
but there are several meanings in the dictionary, which one did you choose and
everybody looks at me and going:
The one it says in the dictionary. Little hint for all of you all of you studying English
Many words in English have more than one meaning and the dictionary
doesn't list them in the order that you need them it just gives you definitions. You need to look at the context.
What is the sentence around this word you're not understanding, okay?
So I have, I chose a few examples here just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about
So I think all of you know this word - "wear"
You wear clothes, you wear a tie, you wear glasses?
So most of you think - this is a verb about clothes, okay?
Did you know, that, this can also be a noun?
The noun "wear" and the verb 'wear' have absolutely no relationship
The noun wear, although, it can also be used as a verb
Basically means, to make less, to make more weak
okay, for example, if you put a lot of friction, if you rub something a long time, the material
will become less and less. So for example, look at my jeans, okay? If I do this many times,
eventually, my knee area will wear and then, when this area is worn,
okay, there will be a hole here and
then, these jeans will have so much wear that I won't be able to wear them in public.
People will laugh at me. That's not good. Now usually,
we talked about wear and tear, okay. This is the use of materials
Now for example, if you have anything with moving parts
You drive, you drive, you drive, you drive
eventually things start to break and fall apart. Why? Because of the wear on the parts
You metal rubbing against metal the metal becomes less, becomes weak
I think everybody knows this word -"meet". You're going to meet your friends. You're going to meet for drinks
Okay, great. Did you know that,
this work can also be a noun. You thinking: meet - noun? Can't be, but it can, okay? When,
recently, you've seen the Olympics
gymnastics meet in the world, the biggest track and field meet in the world. A meet,
usually we're talking about a sports event, but, meet as a verb,
also has other meanings, besides meet someone. You can meet expectations
Your boss wants you to be able to do this much work
in a week, let's say. If you can meet
expectations, means, you can finish all that work that your boss wants you to do, right. Nothing to do with other people
has to do with the work. Your meeting expectations
Now most of you, I think know this word. Do you think it means, mean, like not nice, as an adjective?
Now, I'm shocking you, I know, but, what does mean mean as a noun
Well, for example, some of you are going to be taking the IELTS exam
You have a reading score, a listening score, a speaking score and a writing score
The universities, they want to see your mean score. What does that mean?
It basically means your average. If you take all the four scores
The mean is where these come in the middle, in the average.
So you have to be careful to use this as a
So someone that says have you taken the TOELF exam? Yes? What was the mean? Oh, it was seven oh
congratulations, you're going to university
make. Everybody knows make. This is one of the first verbs you learn in English right, to make, to create, to build something
Let's say you're calling tech support. Your computer is not working very well, you call tech support
The first question the tech support guy is going to ask you is what's the make of your computer?
You say I don't want to make a computer
I want to fix my computer, and he's saying, well, yes,
but what's the make. So make, basically means the maker or the manufacturer?
Basically who made it. So the make of my computer for example is a Acer
Maybe yours is Dell, or Apple or Toshiba
Now these two are funny ones because either used Yulian as slang
Milk, of course you all drink, you've all drunk milk
You've all drunk water. These are very delicious drinks, but that's not what we're talking about here. Do you know that milk and
Now, there's of course the literal meaning of milk - to milk is to
milk a cow, to squeeze the milk out of a cow
to water means to pour water over something, over your garden, or your lawn
but in slang it has a completely different meaning
to milk something or to milk someone is to get out of it as much as possible
okay, so for example, your friend is very rich and very
generous and he likes to give out money. So you try to milk him for every penny
he has. Maybe not a nice thing to do, but people do it anyway. That's what milk means, to milk someone
To water, we usually say - to water down
To water down means, to make less intense. A little similar to wear, but different. To water down
means, to make it less intense, a little bit weaker
So for example, if you're reading a business report, and you have to explain to your customer, the business
situation, for example, if you give them all these technical words
that they won't know, what you mean. You need to water it down for them. You need to make it simpler
So you put less technical words you, make the sentences a little bit easier to understand, you explain the situation in
everyday words. You make it less intense, so they don't get scared. Good, now,
I know all these new words, that I already knew, but I didn't know, so now you're thinking, well
How am I supposed to know other words, by myself, without me here, without Adam here to explain them
Use context and of course use your dictionary
If you look at your dictionary all of these meanings are there
The thing is don't take the first meaning a dictionary gives you, because it, maybe, it's not the one you need
Look at the context, what is around the word?
What is the situation the word is being used in and then, look for something in the dictionary that matches that
context and that's how you will improve your english
okay? now you're still not too sure, you want a little bit of practice go to
There's a quiz there, you can practice these and come back to engvid.com for other lessons
Learn English, improve your abilities, and I'll see you next time. Thank you