Meaning of UP FOR GRABS and FREE FOR THE TAKING - A Really Short English Lesson with Subtitles

6,243 views ・ 2019-09-18

Bob's Short English Lessons


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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So sometimes you have extras of things and you just let people know that they can have
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them for free.
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In English we would say that they are, "up for grabs".
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One time I bought donuts for my students at school and I bought 24 donuts and I only really
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needed 20 so there were 4 that were left over.
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So I put those donuts in the staffroom at work and told people that those donuts were
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up for grabs.
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Sometimes this happens a lot at my work where people have different kinds of snacks or different
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kinds of food and they have lots of extra so they will put it on the staffroom table
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and they will let people know that the extra cookies, or the extra snacks are up for grabs.
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It's one of the reasons why I tend to put on weight at work, because I eat too many
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snacks that are up for grabs.
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01:00
We have another saying as well when we have extra things that are free, we say that they
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are free for the taking.
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So you could use exactly the same example here.
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Maybe there is a class at school that is baking cookies, maybe they're learning how to bake
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cookies and they make way too many cookies and they have lots left.
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They might put some in the hallway and tell the students that the extra cookies are free
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for the taking.
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So when something is up for grabs it's usually free for the taking and if something is free
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for the taking it means it's up for grabs.
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Hopefully that made sense!
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