Learn the English Phrases JUST SHY OF and TO SHY AWAY

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you

learn the English phrase, just shy of.

When you are just shy of something,

it means you're almost there, but not quite.

I'm actually five foot, 10 and a half inches tall.

I'm just shy of being six feet tall.

Maybe you watch sports, and there you have

a favorite athlete who might break a record.

Maybe the record is 100 goals scored in a season,

but your favorite athlete scores 98 or 99 goals.

You would say that they were

just shy of breaking the record.

So when you are just shy of something,

you're almost there but not quite.

The second phrase I wanted to teach you today

is the phrase, to shy away from.

When you shy away from something,

it means that you avoid it.

It's something you don't like doing.

Some people don't like speaking in public,

so they shy away from it.

That means if someone asks them

if they want to speak in public,

if they want to do some public speaking,

they usually say no, they shy away from public speaking.

I try to shy away from bad foods.

I try to not eat them, but sometimes I fail at that.

I'm not that good at shying away from certain things.

So to repeat, when you are just shy of something,

it means that you're almost there but not quite,

In a few months, I hope, on my bigger channel,

I will be just shy of a million subscribers.

Right now I'm around 820,000 or something like that.

So I'm not close yet, but if I was at 999,000 subscribers,

I would be just shy of a million.

And of course, again, the phrase, to review.

To shy away means to avoid something.

I shy away from being outside in bad weather,

especially if there's lightning.

If there's a freak storm, I don't like to be outside.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.

I'm having trouble with my pockets today.

Let me get this out.

I know it's from Ruslan and the comment is this.

Ruslan says, "Thank you for the cool lesson, teacher Bob.

Your phrase, fall is coming, reminded me

of the 'Game of Thrones' motto, you know our words,

winter is coming."

My response was, "ha ha, I never thought of that.

Yes, fall is coming."

So "Game of Thrones," it's actually,

I read the books and then I watched the TV shows.

It's a really interesting fantasy series.

It has knights, and it has big battles

with swords and horses and everything.

And one of the phrases in that show is "winter is coming,"

because that's something that everyone,

I think in that land, winter only comes every few years.

So every once in a while, they'll say "winter is coming."

And yes, fall is coming here.

The trees are not quite turning color yet,

but that will actually be happening soon.

It's been very, very dry and that kind of speeds things up,

but you can see behind me, we actually did get

a little bit of rain.

So I'm glad that-

There's a little bit of thunder right now.

It just finished raining a few minutes ago,

so maybe I should have waited a little bit to come outside.

I usually shy away from making videos in the rain.

I don't think it's gonna rain again,

but anyways, fall can come very quickly here.

Even though it has been very warm lately

and it feels like summer, it's been over 30 degrees

for many days, it feels like in this part of Canada,

in just, in a heartbeat, it can be fall.

In about two or three weeks,

the evenings will be very, very cool.

The leaves on all of the trees, including this one,

will start to turn color and probably

in about four or five weeks, all of the trees around me

will be beautiful colors of orange and yellow and red.

So it comes really quickly.

Like you kind of blink your eyes and fall is here.

That's how quick it happens.

Anyway, it's Bob the Canadian here.

Thanks for watching this short English lesson.

I hope you enjoyed it.

I'll see you in a couple of days with another one. Bye.