#1 - Phrasal Verbs With Down
Do you ever have a funny feeling about someone and you can't pin down why? You meet someone for the very first time and you mark them down as a bad person, an unreliable person, someone who will let you down.
Here and now, using lots and lots of phrasal verbs with down, I am going to knuckle down and examine these funny feelings.
Do you know what knuckle down means. Probably not. An ape, King Kong for example, walks on its feet and its knuckles. But that is not exactly knuckling down. Suppose you have an exam in a week's time, an English exam, and you think, 'I need to get down to some serious revision.'
And you really do get down to it. You drink lots of very strong coffee, you pour it down your throat, cup after cup, your body twitches, you can't sleep, you can't even lie down. All you want to do is read your English grammar book. Read it, read it, and read it again. You just can't put it down. Now, that's knuckling down. You get down to it, and you knuckle down.
Anyway, those funny feelings, what do they boil down to? It's all in the eyes. When you get right down to it, everything you ever need to know about anyone is right there, in the eyes. The windows of the soul. You may want to write that down.
We all tend to get bogged down in detail. Some girls have long lists of what they want in a man. Some girls even jot it all down on paper in case they forget. How can you forget whether or not you like somebody? Suppose you put the list down somewhere and you lose it. And then you meet a man. Should you date him, yes or no? Can't decide. You can't find the list.
Some girls even carry little astrology charts with them. The first thing they ask a guy is 'what's you star sign?' Then they hurry on down to the nearest bathroom, settle down on a toilet, get out their charts and look down the list.
'Let's see, I'm Gemini and he's Taurus. Only three out of ten. So, I guess I don't like him.'
Learning how to look into someone's eyes helps you cut down on the work and the paperwork.
My first mistake with Lex was to compare him to the list. Tall, good looking, great dancer. Hmm, maybe I should settle down with him forever. Of course the list was much longer than that. That is the cut down version. I don't want you to know all my secrets. But even so it was stupid, stupid, stupid.
Also I had my astrology chart. I'm Gemini and he was a Leo. A match made in heaven the chart said. Put it down to stupidity, or desperation if you like, but I was convinced. The list and the star signs, he matched both. You could have blown me down with a feather. I told myself to calm down, cool down. But how can you stay cool when you think you've just found your soul mate?
Have you ever done something so stupid you think you'll never live it down? I mean, in public, with lots of people watching? That night I got really, really drunk. I like to dance, I like to go to clubs, but I really don't drink much. I usually water down my drinks, even the wine. I take a bottle of water with me, I drink half a glass of wine and then I refill the glass with water. It's much cheaper than buying lots of wine and it stops me from getting really drunk and falling down.
I just hate how I feel the next day; hung over, headache, really tired, run down. And after that night with Lex I felt as though I had been run down, by a truck.
Anyway, once I got out of the toilet I ran back down the hallway to find Lex, the love of my life. And I did find him, dancing with another girl. I went weak at the knees, I had to sit down on the floor. My best friend Marie sat down beside me and handed me a bottle of wine. A full bottle. I drank it straight down as though it were water.
I tried to stand but the room was swaying. I fell down on my hands and knees and I crawled towards Lex.
'Get away from him,' I kept shouting at the girl, 'he's mine, he's mine, he's mine.'
Lex looked down on me and I looked up at him. Our eyes met. His mouth was serious, but his eyes were laughing.
All I needed to know was there in that single glance. He looked down on me, he had no respect. True I was down on my hands and knees and my face had turned green, but when you get right down to it, no respect, no relationship.
Have you got all that down? I hope so.
#2 - Phrasal Verbs With To, Into
Now it's time for phrasal verbs with to and into. I bet you've been looking forward to this one.
Does it ever occur to you that you spend most of your life doing things you don't want to do? Of course almost nobody wants to go to work. If you didn't have to would you learn English? If you didn't have to would you cook? Would you shop? Would you clean the bathroom?
If you were to come into a large amount of money would you do any of the things you do now? Would you live in the same city? The same country? Would you still eat kebabs?
When you get right down to it most people almost never get to do what they really want. Why is this? Is someone forcing you to do a lot of boring, stressful things? Does a really mean, nasty person have a gun to your head?
My ex-boyfriend Lex, for example, was, and is, an accountant. I'm sure if I looked into it I would find a few happy accountants. But Lex was not a happy accountant. His boss laid into him every day. Lex's boss was called Rupert and I would say, if you are a parent and you name your child Rupert (a very silly name), you cannot expect things to turn out well for the child.
At school they called him 'Rupert the bear' after the cartoon character. Rupert hated being called 'Rupert the bear.' As a result he turned into a difficult teenager (spots, attitude, no girlfriend, maybe drugs) and a very unpleasant adult.
Lex, I guess, was not a very good accountant. He couldn't add up or subtract, not even with a computer. And Rupert saw to it that Lex was punished for being a bad accountant. He yelled at Lex. He made Lex work late. Of course Lex could have faced up to Rupert, he could have squared up to Rupert and punched him. He could even have called him Rupert the bear or hummed the Rupert the bear tune.
'I don't want to get drawn into a big fight,' Lex used to tell me, 'I just don't feel up to it.' He talked about looking for another job but somehow he never got around to it.
Now, I know what you are thinking. You're thinking, 'what about Ellie? Will she ever get around to telling us if she likes teaching English. Maybe she hates teaching English. But will she fess up to it?'
Fess up to is a particularly strange phrasal verb. It's slang, I guess, and I guess it comes from the verb 'to confess.' It means the same thing.
How do you deal with your boss? Are you a 'yes person?' Do you do everything the boss says without question? Do you play up to your boss and hope he will promote you?
If you play up to someone you agree with them all the time, you laugh at all their weak jokes, you tell them all their ideas are amazing. This is also called sucking up to or 'brown nosing.' Can you think why 'brown nosing' means the same as playing up to or sucking up to? Obviously you have a brown nose. But how does it get to be brown?
One of the great things about being a freelance English teacher is that I don't have a boss. There's no one to suck up to. Bosses sometimes think they are better than everyone else. The talk down to their employees. They treat them like idiots.
I don't buy into that. In fact I hate it. Anybody who talks down to me is getting into big trouble. For example, if I were a very boring account who could not add up or subtract, not even with a computer, and a person called Rupert the bear were to shout at me, in public, and say, 'get into my office right now,' I would stick it to him. I would absolutely stick it to him.
I'd say, 'you can take your job and shove it right up your a__ Rupert the bear.'
I have never had an office job. I just don't think I'd take to it. I don't think I'd fit into the office way of life. Nine to five, coffee at eleven, chicken sandwich for lunch.
And I'd have a boss. 'Ellie, we've run out of tea bags, be a good girl and run out to the shop and get some would you?'
I think I probably would run out. I'd run out and never come back.
So that's why I'm an English teacher. Do I enjoy teaching English? Of course I do. I love and adore each and every one of my students. I love you all.
Do you think I mean it? Or am I brown nosing?
#3 - Phrasal Verbs With In, Out
Listen and learn and the phrasal verb will become your friend, your best friend, your very, very best friend, your lover.
Yes you may fall in love with phrasal verbs. You may learn to love the phrasal verb so much that you fall out with your girlfriend, or boyfriend or who knows, both.
Do you like to go out? Maybe you like to eat out. And maybe your partner likes to stay in, maybe your partner likes to stay home and eat in. So you argue a lot. You say, 'darling, let's go out tonight and take in a movie.' Your darling replies, 'I'm tired, why don't we stay in, chill out and watch some TV?'
Here's an example of what can happen.
The guy has had a very, very, bad day at the office. His boss yelled at him. He's tense and angry. He wants to take it out on someone. So when he says 'lets go out,' and she replies, 'we're staying in,' he has the perfect excuse to act out his frustrations.
'We always stay in,' he says, loudly. Then he shouts and stamps his feet. 'Staying in is boring, we need to get out more.'
Of course, the girl has also had a difficult day. Maybe she's an English teacher and after six hours teaching accountants she's also tense and frustrated and is grateful for the opportunity to take out her frustrations on her guy.
'I am not boring,' she says, 'get out of my apartment.'
'This is my apartment,' the guy replies.
The girl knows he's right. So she throws something at him, a vase or a plate, can't quite remember which it was. Then she walks out on him, actually she storms out of the room and locks herself in the bathroom.
Of course, when she locks herself in the bathroom she also locks her boyfriend out.
So what can he do? Well, he can play it cool, sit it out, chill out in front of the TV. But he knows how stubborn his girlfriend can be. He knows she could stay in that bathroom all night. And he knows he only has one bathroom.
He thinks about turning on the TV and tuning in to the girl's favorite soap opera, the one she wants to stay in and watch. He thinks, she'll be in the bathroom listening in, and she'll just have to come out and watch. Then he realizes that will mean she's won out. She'll have her boring evening in, in front of the TV.
'I won't give in,' he tells himself.
Then he thinks, 'I could threaten to jump out of the window. If I shout out, "darling, if you don't come out of the bathroom immediately I will jump out of the window,"' she'll have to open the door.
So he goes to the window, opens it and looks out. It turns out the apartment is on the ground floor.
He stares out of the window for a while, wondering what to do. Life is so stressful. Wouldn't it be great if he could drop out, live out his life in a hippy commune, in the peace and quiet of the countryside, grow vegetables and marijuana, and never worry about eating in or eating out again.
Of course most hippies didn't actually drop out. They went to rock festivals like Woodstock, drank lots of beer, had lots of s__, took lots of drugs and then dropped back in. Most of them became computer programmers. They turned out to be very conventional people indeed.
Anyway, the girl is still sitting in the bathroom, on the toilet. She doesn't want to stay in the bathroom all night but ...
Do you know the saying, to let the cat out of the bag? If you let the cat out of the bag, you reveal a secret. Some girls who may be listening to this will be quite upset, quite put out, if I let this cat out of the bag but sometimes we girls like to make the guys suffer.
Even though the girl could simply let herself out of the bathroom and watch TV, she doesn't. She stays in the bathroom for another four hours.
The guy drinks way too much coffee. He can't hold out much longer. He could break in but then he'll have to pay out to fix the door. Then, check this out, a brilliant idea jumps into his head. He begins to cry.
He sobs loudly, he lets everything out, his anger, his frustration. He wails and screams. It's pathetic really, but it works. The girl feels guilty. She opens the door and lets the guy into the bathroom.
You see, although we girls like to take out our frustrations on our guys we let the guys play on our feelings. I mean in this particular case the guy could have gone outside in the bushes and let all that coffee out. It was late and dark and nobody was out and about.
But I didn't think of that. No, I heard my Lex cry out in pain and I gave in instantly.
That time Lex won out, but in the end he lost out, because Lex is now my ex. My ex-boyfriend.
#4 - Phrasal Verbs With On, Off
It's time for more of those horrible, frightening, phrasal verbs. Do not doze off, do not nod off, do not switch off, and definitely do not turn on the TV. No, sit on the sofa, turn off the music, and listen very carefully. Phrasal verbs can be fun as well as frightening, especially phrasal verbs with off and on.
Have you ever been ripped off? I'll bet you have. I once gave five euros to a homeless man. He said he needed to buy a new pair of underpants. Thirty minutes later I saw him go into an apartment block. Quite a nice apartment block actually. And he was carrying four cans of very strong beer. So he wasn't homeless at all and he hadn't bought underpants. He'd stolen my money. He ripped me off.
Have you ever been in an on and off relationship? I'll bet you have. You know you have and on and off relationship when one week someone really turns you on, the next week they turn you off, then the next week they turn you on again, then the next week ... well, well, you get the idea. On and off, hot and cold and so on.
Usually in an on and off relationship the guy says the girl is leading him on. One minute she's really friendly, smiling, flirting, touching just a little, maybe even kissing. And then suddenly, every time he calls she's washing her hair. He calls at nine in the morning or eleven in the evening, it doesn't matter. She's washing her hair. It just is not possible for a girl to wash her hair and meet a guy all in the same day.
Then the guy calls again. One last time. And guess what, she's really pleased he called. She tells him, 'you really turn me on.' The guy smiles but he's thinking, 'is she leading me on.'
This is how my relationship with Lex began.
Of course, sometimes you meet someone and you hit it off first time. You get on so well with each other. Or you seem to. Then something happens and it puts you off. It really, really puts you off.
For our second date Lex and I went to an Italian restaurant. My very favorite Italian restaurant with the best spaghetti in the whole world. Also the waiters are very good looking. And Lex, I should say was also very good looking until he stuck his finger up his nose. That really put me off him.
I wanted to tell him off. I wanted to say Lex, 'you are disgusting, get your finger out of your nose immediately.' But I didn't. I carried on eating my spaghetti and ignored him. And I thought about my hair, about how much it needed washing.
So you see, I wasn't leading him on. He had put me off and because I'm polite I didn't want to tell him he was disgusting. So every time he called I said I was washing my hair.
Now, I know exactly what you are thinking. You've learned a few new phrasal verbs and you are thinking, 'if Lex was such a turn off, why did Ellie carry on seeing him?'
I forgave him. I let him off. I gave him a second chance. Anyway, I think I've gone on about Lex for long enough.
Do you ever get the feeling, someone is having you on? When the homeless man, who wasn't really homeless, said he needed five euros top buy a pair of underpants, he was lying, he wasn't telling me the truth, he was tricking me, he was having me on.
And I believed him. It was difficult though. I couldn't really say, 'take off your trousers and show me. Prove you need new underpants.' He was scruffy, badly dressed, smelly, dirty hair, black fingernails. I'll bet his underpants were really off-putting.
So I didn't realize he was trying it on. If you try something on you ... well, you could try on a new pair of underpants to see if they fit. Of course you would have to do this in a changing room. But you can try it on anywhere. It means you are trying to trick somebody. And it is not nice. Not at all.
I'll finish off by saying, remember, a homeless person will ask you for money, or food or cigarettes, but a homeless person will never ask you for underpants. Never, never, never. Believe me if you are homeless underpants are not a priority.
So learn from my mistake and don't let yourself be ripped off.

#5 - Phrasal Verbs With Up
Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think, 'Oh no, I have an English lesson tomorrow and I have a test, a phrasal verbs test?' Of course you haven't prepared for the test. You'll fail badly. You may as well give up now.
I'm here to tell you, never, never, never give up. Cheer up, put a smile on your face, be happy, loosen up and listen to more fun phrasal verbs with up.
Are you good at meeting new people? Are you a sociable person? Or do you clam up, just can't think of anything to say? Girls, you're at a party and a cute guy eyes you up. You know, looks you up and down, maybe winks at you. What do you do?
Of course you don't want to get his hopes up, not right away. But maybe you think, I'd like to hook up with him sometime. So you smile, just a little smile, and you think up something to say to him, something like, 'what are you up to next week.'
The cute guy sees you smile, so he comes up to you and says, 'what's up?'
Let me tell you guys, 'what's up' is a very, very bad chat up line. It doesn't really mean anything. It's like asking, 'what's happening?' How do you answer that? If you want to chat up a girl at a party you have to think up something more interesting to say than 'what's up.'
I met Lex at a party. His opening line was, 'I just broke up with my girlfriend.' This is not great either, it's depressing, but it's better, much better, than 'what's up.' So I said, 'oh really, why did you split up with her? Was she having an affair?'
Lex said, 'are you psychic or something?'
'No,' I said, 'but in my experience, most people split up because one of them is knocking up someone else.'
Knock up is a bit crude. It's not really, really bad language but it's also not polite. Can you guess what it means? If not please write to me and I'll write up a full explanation and send it to you.
Lex's ex-girlfriend was called Leonora. She knocked up her English teacher and now she's shacked up with him. She lives with her English teacher. Can you believe it?
Of course I have never hooked up with one of my students. I don't want to mess up the teacher pupil relationship. It's bad for business. Also I think a student should look up to his English teacher. He should treat her with respect. He should not think about knocking her up. I just won't put up with it, no I won't, not for one moment.
Okay, I just wanted to clear that up. Where was I up to?
Sometimes, you know, I think I may be a little bit psychic. For example, I once had a dream I was up in the sky, high up and floating. But I wasn't alone, no, I was teaching English. The very next morning, I got up and read my email. And guess what? I had an email from a man who wanted to learn English in a hot air balloon.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, 'Ellie is crazy, the things she gets up to. How can you teach English in a hot air balloon?' Let me tell you, a hot air balloon is quiet. There are no interruptions. A hot air balloon is a very good place to teach English as long as a storm doesn't blow up.
No, the problem was not the hot air balloon. The problem was the student, Sergio. He always showed up late. Late, late, late. Always late. And he never paid on time. Never. He did pay up in the end. But always late. Lateness and not paying on time are two things an English teacher should not put up with. Definitely not.
So I told Sergio, 'your English lessons are at an end. I will never teach you again.' He fell to his knees and begged, 'please,' he said, 'I will make it up to you. I will never show up late again. I will pay up on time. Please, please, please. You, Ellie, are the world's greatest English teacher.'
Now, I probably am the world's greatest English teacher but I do not like it when a student sucks up to me. It's embarrassing. Don't you just hate it? When someone tells you are wonderful because they want something? That is sucking up and sucking up sucks. Big time.
Never suck up to anybody. Always stand up for yourself and you'll be just fine. Nothing will ever frighten you again. Not even a phrasal verb

See also:
JustSomeLyrics
73
73.5
Jim Reeves Put Your Sweet Lips Closer To Lyrics
Hellowen Sole Survivor Lyrics