Learn the English Phrases THE DEAD OF NIGHT and THE DEAD OF WINTER

In this English lesson,

I wanted to help you learn the English phrase

the dead of night.

When we say the dead of night,

we mean the very middle of the night.

Like the darkest point of the night.

When I go to bed at 10 o'clock at night,

sometimes I get up in the middle of the night,

because I have to go to the washroom, or I'm really thirsty.

So if it's like one or two o'clock in the morning,

or three o'clock in the morning,

you could say it's the middle of the night,

but you could also say it's the dead of night.

They sometimes use this in movies or TV shows

that are really scary.

They'll say like I saw something when I was walking outside

in the dead of night.

So in the dead of night

simply means the middle of the night.

Right now it's snowing outside.

And the second phrase I wanted to teach you

is the dead of winter.

Notice it's the same phrase almost,

but instead of the evening or the night,

I'm talking about a season.

Right now, it is just about December.

I think you're watching this on December 1st actually.

I'm recording it on November 30th.

It's actually the beginning of winter.

It's not the dead of winter yet.

When we get to the end of January, when it's really cold,

when it's -15 Celsius outside,

and there's three feet of snow,

we would say that that is the dead of winter.

So to review, when you say it is the dead of night,

it means it's the middle of the night.

When you're old like me,

you tend to get up once or twice in the middle of the night,

usually to go to the bathroom.

But yeah, that's kind of a funny thing when you get old.

When I was younger, I just slept through the night.

Now I usually get up at least once to go to the bathroom.

And usually I get a drink of water,

which makes me have to go to the bathroom a few hours later.

Maybe I should stop doing that.

Anyways, and when you talk about the dead of winter,

you're talking about the middle of the winter,

usually in January, right now, it's just the beginning.

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

This comment is from Jesús.

Hi, teacher Bob, regards from Mexico.

Why do you say is actually a term, and not only is a term?

Why actually, thank you.

Have a nice snow day, and God bless you.

And my response is this.

It is an extra word that is used to emphasize something.

In this case,

I used it to subtly point out

that I had made, that I had misspoke.

So in the last video, I did say that,

let me walk for a little bit.

I did say, oh, this is actually a term,

because initially I had said it was a phrase,

but it's not actually a phrase.

Wow, this is really low down.

I should crank my camera up a little bit.

You're gonna go for a little ride here.

I wanted you to be able to see out the window.

So there we go.

So in the last video, I showed one word,

and I initially said phrase, but one word isn't a phrase.

A phrase is a collection of words.

So I said something like, it's actually a term.

I used the word actually to kind of emphasize,

and subtly point out that I had misspoke,

that I had made a mistake.

Anyways, as I said, it is not the dead of winter.

Here, let me move this desk for a sec,

and put you even closer to the window.

There we go.

I'm not sure if you can see outside,

we still have a nice blanket of snow out there.

I know in the last video, there was snow.

I actually ran out, because I saw snow,

but the snow stayed,

I'm actually a little bit surprised about that.

Normally, when we get our first snow,

it melts really quickly, and then it's gone,

and then it's just kind of muddy and gross outside.

It's one degree, and then two degrees,

and it's just not very nice,

but the snow for some reason has stayed.

So we're pretty happy about that.

It makes it, as I said before,

it makes it very beautiful outside.

I'm super happy that we have a nice snowy day again here.

It was a little bit of a crazy drive into work this morning.

I had to be at work at quarter to seven this morning.

I had a little meeting,

and that's why I'm shooting in my classroom,

because I'm at work.

But anyways, I think that's it.

I should say bye.

Have a good day.

Thanks for watching this little English lesson.

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