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MAIRO VERGARA
ADVANCED PHRASAL VERBS COURSE
Transcript | Lesson 09
Hello my friends, this is your, phrasal verbs guru Brooks Gillespie. And
today, I’m in kind of an interesting location. I’m in Bennington, Nebraska,
which is a few miles from where I live and it’s a small town and I am by an
elementary school, which you can probably see in the background and there
is a baseball diamond. Baseball’s very popular sport in the United States. So,
I’m outdoors and it’s kind of a chilly day but it’s nice to get out of the
apartment and just have a, a change of pace. Behind me you can see the
cloudy skies. So it’s kind of a cloudy day and you can hear the birds singing.
Anyway, today… I’m apologizing in advance… I have allergies and in
springtime it’s not uncommon for people in, the United States to do a little
bit of sniffling… cause, you know, there’s pollen floating around and it’s
something that people in South America don’t really experience with
Summer like conditions all year around. But today we’re talking about 3
phrasal verbs. The verbs are ‘put off’, ‘call off’ and ‘bring up’. And we’re going
to start with ‘put off’.

Now I’m come up with 3 sentences and each one has a slightly different
meaning. The first one it… has to do with delaying something. Especially
something that you don’t want to do. And the sentence that I came up with
is a little bit of advice that my Mom used to give me when I was a child, and
here’s the sentence:

One of the bits of advice my mother always used to give me was “Don’t
put off until tomorrow what you can do today”.

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And that means don’t delay. Don’t wait to do something until a later time.
To ‘put it off’ means to wait to do it. And my mother always encouraged me
to do things now. Do your chores now. Do your homework now. Don’t wait
until tomorrow. If you have time now – get it done. Then you can relax and
not have to worry about it anymore. The second definition for ‘to put off’
has to do with changing, it’s similar but slightly different, changing the time
or date of something. Especially if you already scheduled it and you need to
reschedule it for a later time. And the sentence I came up with for that was:

Tom and Sally were planning a wedding for next June but they had to
put it off or they had to put off until the following year when they
discovered that Tom was being deployed to Afghanistan.

So in this case they had a very big life event – a wedding – scheduled, ready
to go, but something else happened that they weren’t expecting. The
husband had to be deployed. Which meant he had to go serve in the military
overseas so they had to change their plans, they had to put off the wedding.
They scheduled it for one time, they had to put the wedding off until
another time.

And the other definition is to make someone not want to do something or

not like somebody. So in this case, if you’re – if you are put off by something,
something makes you not like it so much. And the example here is:

Many girls are put off by guys who come on a little too strong at the
beginning.

So this is a situation where, a guy comes up to a girl in a bar and “hey baby
how you doing” maybe he’s a little too strong. That might put off the girl.
She might be like ah I’m put off by his, his forwardness his abrasiveness. So

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those are three examples of ‘put off’. Our next verb is, or next phrasal verb is
‘call off’, to ‘call off’. Again, I have three different definitions. The first one is
to cancel or decide that something won’t happen. So, we’re not delaying
something, we are cancelling it completely. The first example was this. True
story:

My aunt Sherry spent three months planning her wedding but called it
off at the last minute because she got cold feet.

To ‘get cold feet’ meant to she started to wonder if she really wanted to do it.
Cold feed means you’re a little bit hesitant you’re not sure. So she wasn’t
sure she wanted to marry the guy so she called the wedding off at the last
minute. The second definition has to do with cancelling something that’s
already in progress. I think in this case its really appropriate that I’m next to
a ball diamond. See that’s a baseball diamond. Ah, baseball cannot be played
in the rain. If I was here and there was a ball game in progress and thunder
and lightning entered, came across the sky. They would have to call off the
game. Because it’s unsafe to be out here when the lightening is striking, and
you really can’t play baseball in the rain it’s not a sport that you can play in
any sort of weather. Here’s a sample sentence I came up with:

I had to call off my son’s party because too many of his friends were
getting drunk and acting foolishly.

So in this case, again, the party is in progress, it’s happening, the kids are
here but they’re getting out of control, they’re drinking too much, I’ve lost
control so I have decided we’re going to call off this party and send
everybody home. And the last example for call off has to do with telling an
animal or person to stop attacking. I’m a mailman, that’s what I do. That’s

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my main job, as a mailman. So I deliver letters and I walk into people’s yards
and it’s not uncommon to see a dog and if a dog frightens me or threatens
me I may say ‘Hey, could you call off your dog? Could you call off your dog?
He’s scaring me’ My actual sentence has to do with that.

When the mailman entered the yard and the dogs started surrounding
him, he yelled at the homeowner to call off the dogs.

So in this case, I’m asking him to yell at the dogs and have them come back.
Call them off. Call off the dogs please.

And that brings us to our third and final phrasal verb for the day. And that is
‘bring up’. Bring up. The first example has to do with, mentioning something
or starting a conversation about something. That’s what bringing something
up is.

Grandma, next time you visit the doctor, don’t forget to bring up all the
heartburn you’ve been suffering.

So, I’m telling grandma, don’t forget to mention that. When you’re at the
doctor don’t forget about the heartburn issues you’re having. Bring that up.
Remember to bring that up. Remember to mention it or talk about it.
Second definition for bring up is to raise or be the primary caregiver for a
child. So if you are raising a child, you are bringing up a child. Many, here’s
my sentence:

Many people don’t realize that Barack Obama spent many years being
brought up by his grandparents.

If my recollection serves me correctly, his mother was a professional woman

and she studied and I think she travelled and she couldn’t always be with

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him. So, his grandparents played a big role in bringing him up. He was
brought up not only by his mother but he spent a lot of time being brought
up as well by his grandparents. And our final definition for bring up is
similar but it has more to do with. Oh I’m sorry, excuse me – this one has to
do with transporting something from a lower place to a higher place. If you
can get a look here, I am actually standing on the bleachers here, Kind of a
bad shot but if somebody was sitting further down and I wanted them to
bring something to me, I might say ‘hey could you, could you bring that, that
pop up to me, could you bring that soda up to me’. Because I’m up here and
they are down here. So to bring something up means to literally and
physically take an item and transport it from a lower place to a higher place.
And my sentence in this case was:

Kelly, would you please go down into the basement and bring up my box
full of Christmas ornaments.

So it’s Christmas time, I’m decorating the house, and I’m asking Kelly who,
let’s just pretend she’s my daughter – ‘Hey Kelly, could you go down and
bring those up’. In the Midwest, where I live here in Nebraska, most people
have basements. And one very important reason for that is we are at a high
risk for tornados. We get big, especially this time a year, right now it’s May
that I’m filming, in May and June our big, that’s the time of year that we get
the most thunderstorms. You can see the big clouds in the sky. We got the
big open sky all around us. Um, and these big storms come across the prairie
and oftentimes they bring severe winds, hail, and occasionally tornados.
And, to have a basement is very important because it’s the only place where
you can be really safe. Sometimes, when these tornados destroy a town, the
only reason people survive is because they were in the basement. So the

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house gets blown away but that lower level underground is, is a safe place.
And of course we store things in the basement. And if we want to, we want
the things in the basement up on a higher level we have to go down there
and bring them up.

So that wraps it up for today, it’s a pleasure to chat with all of you once
again. Happy studying! Have a great evening, or day or morning or whatever
it is. Tchau!

MAIRO VERGARA ADVANCED PHRASAL VERBS COURSE