Learn the English Phrases "to dilly-dally around" and "to ask around"

4,592 views ・ 2023-10-13

Bob's Short English Lessons


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

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In this English lesson,
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I wanted to help you learn the English phrase
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"to dilly-dally around."
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Now, this is an older phrase,
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and you won't hear it very much anymore,
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but my mom said it the other day.
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My mom said that when she goes down for lunch,
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she lives in an old age home,
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she doesn't dilly-dally around.
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She just goes down as quickly as possible,
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because if she dilly-dallies around,
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she doesn't get there in time,
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and she doesn't get the good food, or something like that.
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So hopefully you can understand
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that to dilly-dally around means to not move quickly.
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It means to just kind of be lazy for a bit
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or not in a hurry.
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Jen and I don't often dilly-dally around
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when it's market day.
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We usually load the van and Jen gets there
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as quickly as possible.
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When my workday ends, I don't dilly-dally around
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on market day.
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I usually get there as quickly as I can
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to help Jen sell flowers.
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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today
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is the phrase "to ask around."
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When you ask around it means you need to know something,
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and you ask a whole bunch of different people about it.
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So you go and maybe you ask your neighbor,
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maybe you ask your other neighbor.
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Maybe you ask a relative.
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If I was at market again and if someone said,
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"Is someone here selling garlic?"
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I might say, "I don't know,
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"but if you ask around, maybe you'll find someone who is."
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So it just means to ask a whole bunch of different people.
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So to review, "to dilly-dally around" means to be lazy,
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to not be in a hurry, to be in no rush
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to do something or get somewhere,
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and "to ask around" simply means you have a question
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and you just ask a whole bunch of different people.
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But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.
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I'm not sure if I'm framed the way I normally am.
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Maybe that's a little bit more normal.
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It's taking some getting used to here.
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This comment is from Patrick.
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"I enjoy lessons like this,
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where phrases like 'back up to speed' pop out naturally.
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"My students enjoy them too."
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And my response, "That's why I like the last two minutes
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of each lesson, because even I don't know
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"what I'm going to say.
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"It's very natural."
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Yeah, I haven't at any point sworn
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in a video though, have I,
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so that's pretty good.
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But hey, I wanted to show you something interesting
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about this time of year.
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If you look down here,
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you'll see the grass is turning yellow,
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and these flowers over here
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definitely are saying that it is fall.
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They're definitely saying that it's not summer anymore.
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But if we go over here,
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it's kind of interesting, these dahlias,
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let's spin you around again,
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these dahlias are going strong we would say.
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In fact, they're doing so well
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that we aren't even harvesting all of them anymore
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to sell them.
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By the way, we usually don't harvest them
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when they're this big.
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We usually harvest them when they're like this,
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or like this, or like these over here.
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But definitely, the dahlias are going strong and doing well.
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There's another phrase that just popped out,
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and Jen and I are still harvesting and selling.
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It's kind of odd.
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It's almost the middle of October
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and we are still harvesting flowers and selling them,
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so that's nice,
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'cause the year was a little weird earlier.
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We also have things like this
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that were ready a little bit too late.
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This is a variety of broom corn,
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and you can see it's a little bit green.
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We like it when it is more,
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let me see if I can find one, more like this.
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And we didn't have a lot of this ready
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for the last market last week.
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By the way, in this lesson,
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I mentioned the farmer's market a couple of times.
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It is now over.
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It's Thursday today, this is the first Thursday
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in a long time where I'm home at this time of day
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and able to make an English lesson.
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Anyways, thanks for watching.
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I hope you're having a nice day.
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I'll see you in a few days
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with another short English lesson, bye.
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