Phrasal verbs - OFF - make off, get off, pull off...

I don't know where the government gets off on telling me what I should do and what I

shouldn't do. I tell you that really pisses me off and I'd really like to tell that guy....

Hi, I'm just in the middle of a political rant.

"Rant" is when you talk about something in an angry way and you're just talking, you're

not really thinking about it, or processing it, you're just complaining.

So I was in a rant, because of what the government did, and I wanted to tell somebody off. I'm

quite pissed off, and I don't know where they get off telling me what to do.

Now if you look, I used a lot of "off", "off", "off" -- phrasal verbs. What is a phrasal

verb? It's a two- to three-word verb. I've done lessons on phrasal verbs before, so please

check some of them out. But what I want to get across to you right

now is the particle "off". When I teach phrasal verbs, I try to teach it a little differently

than other teachers, because for me it makes more sense to work with particles.

A "particle" is a word that is joined with other words to make sense. For instance phrasal

verbs are two- or three-word verbs, and we use off, and up, and down, and those other particles.

The first part is the verb, all right? I prefer using the particles, because I find

looking at 100 particles is easier than looking at 1000 verbs. The verb is always modified

by the particle so in my mind if we learn what the particle means, it's going to be

easier to understand the phrasal verb. You with me? Let's go to the board, get some

of this off. All right what does "off" mean? There are two basic meanings for "off", okay?

Basically it either means movement away, or preventing. "Preventing" is a fancy word that

means stopping, okay? Now even there we can go a little more and

go: movement away can mean release, detach, or let go. These are similar -- not exactly

the same, but similar. And when we're preventing, it means to not include, or to separate, basically.

Now we've got the basic movement or meaning of "off" down. Let's move on.

We'll look at the board here and we've got Mr. E saying "Goodbye, cruel world", and he's

jumping off, right? And by doing this we mean right here, movement away, all right? So with

our movement away we have four here: "See off", "make off", "set off", "scare off".

Remember what "off" means. It means, well we said movement, letting go, or detachment,

right? So let's start with the first one, if I'm going to "see you off", it basically

means you are going somewhere, maybe you're flying back to Japan, or to Cairo, or to London;

places I want to visit! Okay, and I go to the airport and I stand

there and then your airplane is taking off and our whole family is waving at you. Well,

we're "seeing you off", all right? So we're seeing you leave or leave "off", get "off"

the ground and fly in the sky. So when you "see someone off" you are going to see them

go away, all right? They are moving away from you.

"Make off". In the year 2008, there was a guy named Bernie Madoff. It's kind of a funny

name because "make off" means to escape, or, you know, to escape or not get caught. It

also means to steal. So when you "make off" with something, it

means you escaped from punishment, or you stole something. Mr. Bernie Madoff "made off"

with a billion dollars. I want him to be my next best friend in this venture. You can

do these movies with that worm with me. Okay, "set off". It means to begin, or we

say here let go or release. It's a movement away. When you "set off" like in the morning

when you go to work a lot of people say, "I went to work at nine in the morning."

I can tell you I left my house at nine in the morning, or I "set off" because it's a

movement away from my house. So "he set off early in the morning", it means to leave or

go early right? You "set off for school" -- leaving for school.

Next one: "scare off". Ladies, if you ever saw me in the morning without all this beautiful

makeup, you'd be scared. I would "scare you off". It means to make something afraid, so

it moves away. At your house maybe you see a dog, and it's going pee-pee. You go "get

out, get out of here, get out of here", and you try to scare off the animal, all right?

So this is movement away from -- "off". We talk about movement.

There's another one when we talk about movement away. I told you it also means "release".

"Release" means let go or detach. We can use this for emotions. We use "off'' to help describe

emotions -- the happy and the sad ones. The first one is "get off".

Mr. E "gets off" on reading books. "Get off" means to have emotional excitement or enjoyment,

so if you "get off" on reading books or good music, it means you enjoy it. In the adult

way, "get off" means sexual release -- that's another video.

Anyway, so you can "get off". So you can say "I get off on good music." or "good wine".

And people say "Oh, you really enjoy it." Or "I get off..." and I don't want to know

anymore, just stop right there, don't want to know, okay? Now off from "getting off"

from enjoyment. Sometimes people make me upset, and I have

to "tell them off." What that means is release some words or let my anger come out, all right?

I'm going to "tell you off". You've done something wrong and in very strong words I'm going to

tell you what you've done. Employers do this with employees often. "You

were late for work.You were drinking on the job, and now I find you with my cat in

the closet. What's going on here?" They're "telling you off". They're saying this is

wrong behavior; change it. Now, finally, if you "tell someone off", and

they do it again, you know those people you tell them off, you tell them off, you tell

them off, and they do it again. Now you go: "That's it! I'm pissed off. I am pissed

off now." "Pissed off" means angry. I'm not going to talk anymore, someone's going to

die. Mr. E is dead, see? He pissed me off, I threw

him off. That's how it goes here. That's how we roll, okay? "Roll" means that's how we

act, and that's what we do around here. That's how we roll. You piss us off, we're going

to kill you like that bug. Sorry, I'm tired. Okay, so now that we've talked about movement

away and we talked about how we can use it for emotions, and we talked about how it actually

is physical movement. Let's talk about the second part, which is "preventing" which means

a separation or non-including. Look at the words. "Para". "para" comes from

"parallel" -- when two things are alike or similar, but they don't join together. That's

that separation we're talking about. So we're going to look up here about "pull off", "round

off", and "write off", okay? When you "round off", it's when we take one

number and we go to either the higher 10 or the lower 10. So if you have 15, you can round

off at 10, which is lower, or 20, which is higher. An example: you are going to a restaurant

and you have some friends coming. And they say to you how many people do you think will

come?" You say, "I don't know, 16 or 17." The person

who owns the restaurant might say, "Let's round that off to 20 shall we?" Because it's

an easier thing to deal with, rounding off to that 10 than to say 10. 10 is too low,

20 is easier. So you might round off and I go "Hey, I owe

you like $25." You go "Don't worry about it, just give me $20." You've rounded down. You

made it lower, easier, so to "round off" means to make a zero, okay? "Round off".

Then the next one we'll look at, because remember when you're doing that, you're separating,

because it's not 17. It's 20, or it's 20 or 15, but you're rounding it off to the next

number, and you're actually separating. We'll look at the next one: "pull off." To

"pull something off" is to do something unexpected, because there's a lot of difficulty. Let me

say that again slower. When you "pull something off", you're able to do something that is

extremely difficult, and you shouldn't be able to do. That usually separates you from

other people. Well, when I said "How did you pull that off?"

Nobody else can do it, but you could, because you're special and you watch EngVid, you can

"pull off" this lesson and learn when other people won't. Nice.

So if somebody is running a race or... let's say soccer. Canada is playing Brazil in the

World Cup. Canada beats Brazil. All the Brazilians of the world are now going, "How did they

pull it off? It's impossible!" Right? You've been separated from the best. You've

separated. So this is where you say "oh, I thought..." Like yeah, sometimes it's not

going to be obvious. But when you think about it you go, "yeah, that kind of makes sense.

I never thought of it like that." And finally, "write off". "Write off" is similar

to "round off," because what happens when you "write something off", you say the value

of it is zero, what? This is more of a business term. Businesses "write off" a lot of things

a lot of time. Yes, so what they'll say is... This and this. In case you wanted to give

me a Christmas present, and Christmas for me is 365 days of the year.

See they're bringing presents for me right now. The police are bringing them. I love

it when they bring me my presents. Anyway, here is the first computer we had, not very

good and small. Here's the iPad 2. iPad 3 is out now, people!

Anyway, I would "write this off", and say this has zero value. Oh, sorry, iPad 4 -- I've

been corrected. I like that one better. *wink, wink*. Listen, this one has zero value compared

to this, so I would "write this off" and say it's no good. I want this one, okay?

So when somebody says "we're going to write it off", we're saying the value of it is not

good, but it's not just for business. Unfortunately, some parents "write off" their children when

they think, "This child is no good, they are going to be in the garbage, or a prostitute,

or..." let's not say what else they can be. And they "write them off" and say you have

zero value. Please don't do that to your children boys and girls, okay? So if you "write someone

off", or you "write off" someone, you say they are of no value. We cannot use them,

all right? Now, finally, "off" is used for prevention.

"Fence off", "cordon off". I'm a little bit off right now. I'm off the screen, yeah? But

I want you to see this. "Fence off". We use these things to separate

people from things. A fence, you've seen these around your house to keep people out of your

house, you know you have a wall like this. It keeps people "off". Fence. "Fence off"

an area means to close it off. "Cordon off" is what you'll see when these

people come. I hope you can hear. This is the police. Usually when something bad has

happened, well it must be very bad. There are many of them. They stand around in a circle

put they put tape or wire and say "Don't come in", and that's called "cordon off".

Well, listen, it's time for me to get off of the screen. We're running out of time.

But remember "off". Go do the video and do the quiz where all of these are explained

at www.engvid.com , okay? Don't tell off your friends, just tell them about it. See you.

Learn English for free www.engvid.com