10 Phrasal Verbs with CALL: call for, call up, call in, call upon...

Hi. Welcome back to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. Today's lesson is, again, a phrasal lesson,

a phrasal verbs lesson. We're going to look at the verb "call". And again, a phrasal verb

is a verb plus a preposition that together sometimes have meanings completely different

than the words themselves. Okay?

So, which ones are we going to look at today? We're going to look at "call on". Sometimes

you will hear people say: "Call upon". More or less the same usage. "Call up", "call back",

"call for", "call in", "call off", "call to"-and this is a little different because you always

need something else here, but I'll show you that-"call into"-also you need something at

the end here, because by itself it doesn't really work-and "on call".

Now, "on call" is not a phrasal verb. In fact, it's not a verb at all. This is actually a

situation. So, I'm going to start with this one. So, for example, "on call" is when you're

available at any time for a certain position. So, for example, if I'm a doctor or a nurse,

at some point in my career, usually at the beginning, I will have a lot of on-call work,

meaning that I have to be ready. Anytime somebody calls, I have to go to the hospital and do

the work. A lot of jobs, for example, waitresses or even retail jobs, they give you an on-call

position. It means it's not part time, it's not full time, it's on call. When they need

you, they will call you, you will go to work right away. When they need you again, you'll

go back. So, it's... Could be used as an adjective or a noun. A noun as the situation, "on call"

to describe your position.

Okay, let's get to the verbs. "Call on". So, if I call on you for help, that means I'm

asking you for help. So, you call on someone to help you do something. You also "call upon",

but this is not necessarily a person. You can call upon your wits, you can call upon

your intelligence. It means you want to draw. So you're asking your brain to give you the

tools you need to do something. So, this job is going to... Is going to call on all our

energy, all our brains, all our confidence to do this job. So that's "call on". Okay?

Okay, let's go to the next one. Excuse me. "Call up". A few meanings to this one. One is just telephone.

"Oh, yeah, I'll see you next week. I'll call you up sometime and we'll go out for a drink."

Okay? So you can say: "Call someone" or you can "call someone up",

basically means the same thing. But in sports or in the military, it has a different use.

In sports it's a promotion. So, many professional teams, they have the amateur teams or the

semi-professional teams that their youngest... Their young athletes play there, and when

they get good enough, they're called up to the big team, to the professional team. So,

for example, in hockey you have your NHL teams, your professional league teams, you have your

farm teams. This is the... We call these the "farm teams".

Okay? That's the ones that are

just learning, they are young guys, they are trying to get up to the major leagues or the

major teams. So, you call them up. They've done well, they're called up to the next level.

In military, some countries, they have a draft. It means that they pick out young people to

become soldiers and go to war. So, when they draft them, they're calling them up. Okay?

They're out of high school or college, or whatever the situation, and they're called

up to serve. It means they're going to the army. Okay.

So now we're going to look at "call back". So, of course, there's always:

"Hey, come back." So you're calling out to somebody, asking them to come back, to return. And the

same thing you can do with a telephone call. I call somebody at their office, let's say,

the person is not available, out to lunch or away from the office or in a meeting, and

I leave a message and I say: "Can you please ask him or her to call me back?" Basically,

return my phone call. Okay. Now, another common use of "call back" is when you have an interview

or audition.

So, an "audition" is when an actor goes to try to get a part in a movie,

or a TV show, or a play, whatever. So they go for an audition, they go to show what they

can do. Now, if they are called back, that means they are invited to a second audition.

Or in an interview, they're invited to a second interview. So it's very uncommon these days

in professional situations, if you go to an interview, they're not going to give you the

job right away. They are interviewing many, many people, they will finish all the first

interviews, and then they will call back people for the second interview. So if you get a...

Some... It's also a noun. You can say: "a callback". If you get a callback, that means

you've been invited for a second interview; or in the case of acting, for a second audition.

Okay? So these are the common uses of "back".

"Call for". Now, if you call for something, if a situation calls for something, it means

it demands it or it requires it. Okay? Or so, for example: This situation calls for

special attention. Okay? That's what this situation needs. It calls for this, it calls

for that. So, for example, if I need... If I need to do something that's very, very expert

or very, very niche, I might... The job itself might call for an expert or a specialist.

So then I would call in a specialist, but I'll get to that in a second.

Another "call for", somebody comes... Your son or daughter comes home from school to get the mail from

their college they applied to, they open it: -"I got accepted! I got accepted!"

-"Well, this calls for a celebration!" and you go and get the wine: "Cheers, cheers, cheers."

So, to find something appropriate for an occasion. So, the occasion calls for a response. Okay?

So, calling for champagne always a good idea.

So, again, "call in". So, like I said before, if you have to call in somebody, means you

have to bring a specialist. Call in an expert, call in somebody who has knowledge about something

so you can do whatever the task needs to do. Another meaning of "call in", and again, going

back to the telephone: If you want to give a message, you can call it in. So, for example,

if I'm really, really sick... So, this morning, I woke up, I'm sneezing, I have a fever. I

really feel bad. I don't want to go to work. So, I don't go to the office, tell them:

"Look, I'm sick, I'm going home." I just call in sick. It means I telephone, I say:

"Yeah, I'm sick, I'm not coming in today." Okay, everybody understands. No problem. You can

call in your message. If you have to vote. For example, if I want to vote in my country's

election but I'm out of the country, some... Some countries will let you call in your vote.

You can call, leave your message, leave your vote, they accept it, that's it.

"Call off". If you call off something, it means cancelled. Okay? So you had a party

set to be outside, like a picnic or a barbeque, and it started to rain. So, you had nowhere

indoors, you have no cover, so you had to call off the party. Or you got injured the

day before the party, so you had to call it off, cancel it. Sometimes people use it to

mean postpone, but usually it means cancel. So, "call off". Now, another way we can use

"call off" is, like, somebody... The police are coming at you. Let's say I'm a drug dealer.

Okay? And I have my drugs in my pockets. And the police coming with their dogs, and these

dogs are barking, and they're going crazy, and I say: "Whoa, call off your dogs." It

means: "Hold them back, restrain them, don't let them go forward." We can also use it in

the military. So, the soldiers are about to go to attack, and the... Whoever they're attacking

comes out with their hands up: "Whoa, call off your soldiers. We're giving up." It means:

"Don't attack. Hold back." Okay? So that's "call off".

Now, "call to" by itself doesn't really mean much. So, we say: "Call to action", for example.

A call to action... Now, all of you, obviously, you're online right now, you've been to many

websites. In many websites you will see: "Sign up", or "Buy now", or "Find out more",

"Learn more", "Get more information". All of these buttons that are asking you to do something,

these are called "calls to action". So, in that case, they're actually nouns, they're

not phrasal verbs. But if you... If you're the person who wrote the site, the website

or whatever, you... You want to call your viewers to action, you want them to do something.

Okay? "Call to action". You can also say: "Call to mind". Now, this has a very different

meaning. Let's say you're walking along the street, you hear some music somewhere, and

it just calls to mind that vacation you had in Hawaii last year. So, basically, like,

recall. You know the verb "recall", to bring to mind? You can also "call to mind", it means

the same idea. Okay?

And "call into" is... Works on the same principle. You're always going to call something into

something. Call... So, you're going to "call into question". Sorry, my "q" is not so pretty.

"Call into question". So, somebody wrote an article, or an essay, or a newspaper column,

and you read it and then you say: "No, no, something's not right, here." So, you call

the publisher and you call the information into question, or you call the writer into

question. It means you doubt. You think there's something wrong and you want to investigate

the problem with that article, or with the writer, him or herself. Okay, that's basically

it for "call into". Always call into question or call into some sort of doubt, etc. And

then again, "on call", ready to work at any time.

So, I hope these are clear enough. And if you need to practice them some more, please

go to the www.engvid.com website, there's a quiz there. You can also ask me questions.

And yeah, if you...

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