Meaning of NOTHING BUT TROUBLE - A Really Short English Lesson with Subtitles

5,963 views ・ 2019-09-24

Bob's Short English Lessons


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

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So in English when we say that something, or someone is "nothing but trouble" it means
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that they're only trouble.
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It's kind of a funny phrase that we use.
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Let's think of an example, maybe your cousin has a friend and that friend is always getting
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into trouble, maybe they are always breaking the law, maybe they are always stealing things.
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You would say to your cousin, "Your friend is nothing but trouble!", and what you're
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saying there is that your friend is trouble.
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Your friend is a bad person and maybe you shouldn't be hanging around with them.
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We can also use this to describe things.
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You could say, "The car I bought has been nothing but trouble since the day I bought
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it.", and what you would mean then is that it's always breaking down.
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It's always broken and you're always needing to fix it.
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01:01
We use the phrase "nothing but" in front of other things as well, not just the word trouble.
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You could say, "I drove to work the other morning and there was lots of fog and I could
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see nothing but fog on the way to work."
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So that means you could only see fog.
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So we do use the phrase "nothing but" in front of other things as well.
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Maybe you were down by the river and you were throwing some fish food in the river and you
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could see nothing but fish in the water in front of you because so many of them were
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coming to eat the fish food.
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So we do use the phrase "nothing but" in front of other things as well.
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This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

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