IMPROVE YOUR VOCABULARY: length, long, short, wide, broad, high, height...

Hello and welcome back to engVid. In today's lesson we are going to be looking at eight

words used for measuring space, and looking at how we use these words in a human story.

So this lesson is appropriate for beginners and intermediates looking to use language

in a more accurate and varied manner. So, today's situation, we are pretending that

I have a girlfriend in San Francisco.

First word: "long". Length, so there are different ways in which I can use this word: "long".

Firstly: "length". Someone might ask me: "Benjamin, what has been the length of your relationship?"

I.e.: How long have I been going out with the girl for? Well, the answer, a couple of

months, two months maybe. "At length", we use this word when you hear something after

a long time. "At length, I received an email from my girlfriend". "Lengths", most commonly

this word is used to measure how many times you go up and down in a swimming pool. "How

many lengths would I have to swim to get to San Francisco from London?" The answer is:

Quite a lot. "Lengthened", you could use this phrase with time, but it means anything that's

getting longer. "Time lengthened between the time that I saw her last." Time got longer.

"It was a long-distance relationship." That means we're on the telephone sending messages-okay?-we're

in two different places, trying to get along.

Opposite of "long": "short", and three words that we can use with "short". "I wanted to

shorten the distance between us." I wanted to shorten the distance. A "shortcut", we

use this word in electronics. So I won't try to explain to you how this works, but a shortcut

means that if you are going... You have to do a lap... Pretend we're doing athletics,

not electronics. If I do a shortcut, my start's here and my finish is there, maybe I do a

slightly shorter lap, so I'm shortening the distance I travel. "Shortly". "Shortly" is

pretty much the opposite of "at length", it means in a short time. So: "Shortly I will

go and have a cup of coffee."

Okay, we ready for the next ones? Good stuff, keep that concentration going. "Wide", two

words here. "Width": "The width of my trousers I believe is 32 inches", something like that.

"Widening": "My waist is widening with each croissant that I eat." My girlfriend in San

Francisco might not like it. Okay? "Width", widening, getting bigger. Okay.

"Broad". "Broad" means sort of bulky. If you're broad shoulders it means that you're out here,

so a sense of getting bigger. If I broaden my horizons, it means I learn more about the

world. "A broad-minded person", so: "I think the people in San Francisco are broad-minded."

They care about the environment and they are good people, they want to learn more.

"High". Well, you could listen to a Bob Marley song, but alternatively, stay tuned with me.

"To be on a high" means that you are feeling really good, you're riding a positive wave

of emotion. So these two words: "high" and "low" often used to talk about emotion. "High",

sort of positive ones; "low", feeling down in the dumps; down, high. "Height": "My girlfriend's

height is 6 foot 1." Okay? The height of something. Or you could use it to measure something more

abstract, like passion: "The height of our passion". "Highly", this is a synonym of "very".

"The highly sought-after professor. The highly sought-after", it means everyone wanted to

hear from the professor.

"Low", so let's look at the story, I've got this girlfriend, dah-dah-dah-dah, writing

these long-distance messages. I want to shorten the distance between us. I'm getting a little

bit fatter. I think things are really good over there. So, I'm on a bit of a high because

I go out over to San Francisco and I see her, and then she dumps me. This is your cue to

maybe check out my other video on how to get dumped, words on how to get dumped, because

after that moment I felt quite low, and then I felt even "lower"-lower, lower, lower-even

worse because I realized I had another two weeks in San Francisco and there wasn't very

much to do. I wanted to be "far away", okay? I wanted to be a big, long distance away from

that place that I had gone to. And then we have another word sort of connected to "low":

"depth". Think again of the swimming pool. Instead of the lengths, we're talking about

the depth of the swimming pool. "The depth of my depression was pretty bad."

Hope you've learned something from today's lesson. Thank you very much for watching.

Until next time, take care.