Describe Physical Appearance at C1 LEVEL (Advanced) English!

Hello lovely students and welcome back to English with Lucy.

In today's video we're going to talk about appearance but we are going to go

way beyond the phrases that you learn when you first start studying English.

You know, I have blonde hair and blue eyes.

Instead we're going to learn how to talk

about appearance at a super advanced level using C1 and even C2 level words

and phrases.

Basically we're going to talk about

appearance on steroids, not literally.

I have recently fallen in love with

taking seemingly simple topics and supercharging them to an advanced level.

I recently did it with daily routines.

That was a grammar lesson at C1 level and

food and drink.

That was a vocab lesson at C1, C2 level.

It is important to note that these lessons are for fun.

They're seeing how far we can go with English.

Lots of people like to comment and say,

but English people don't actually speak like this.

And I agree.

I'm with you on that one.

These videos are for logophiles.

What a nice word, logophiles, people who

love words.

You know when you read a gorgeous piece

of text and you just think, that was beautiful.

That's what I want to give you the

ability to do with this video.

I also want to remind you that there is a

free PDF that goes with this lesson as always.

And it contains all of the words and

phrases that you're going to see here, plus a quiz to test your knowledge.

I'm going to cover quite a large amount of vocabulary in this video.

There is loads more that I've put into the PDF.

If you see a word that you don't understand, it's probably going to be in

that PDF.

Additionally, I'm also going to give you

my C1 ebook.

And this will show you everything that

you need to learn in order to achieve the C1 level of English as defined by the CEFR.

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All right.

So let's talk about appearance.

I'm going to talk to you about my journey with my appearance, starting from

childhood and then moving on to how I might look in the future.

Yikes.

Let's start with childhood.

I have nearly always had long hair and my cascade of blonde hair made me look quite

angelic when I was little.

But a quick chat with my parents would

soon dispel that misconception.

My brother was adorable.

All children are cute.

He had these gorgeous dimples that people

teased him about sometimes, but I always adored them.

Okay.

There are two words I want to pick out here.

Firstly, we have angelic, angelic, which means like an angel, angelic, angel -like.

We can use it to describe appearance, but also personality, if you're beautiful or

if you're good or if you're kind.

Ali had an angelic smile and no one could

stay angry with her for long.

The second word is dimple, dimple.

And this is such a cute word.

A dimple is a small crease or indentation

next to your mouth, normally here or on your chin.

Whenever she smiled, her dimples would appear making her look even more charming.

Now let's move on to the teenage years.

Like most people, my appearance was quite

important to me back then.

One of the first things I did when I

turned 13 was grab a pair of tweezers and pluck my eyebrows into submission.

I regret it so much.

I also used to compare myself to my

friends a lot.

And one of the sticking points was my complexion.

As you can see, I'm pretty pale, ghostly, more like.

And I used to be so jealous of my friends who would come back after the summer

holidays, totally sun-kissed.

I've always been a bit, shall we say,

vertically challenged, which never really bothered me.

On the other hand, my husband, Will, was very lanky when he was a teenager, but

he's filled out now.

Okay, a little bit more vocabulary then.

This first one, tweezers.

Tweezers.

These are tiny tongs, the tool you use for grasping and removing small objects

such as splinters or hairs.

Alex used tweezers to remove a thorn from

his finger.

Next, the verb that goes with tweezers.

To pluck.

You can say to tweeze, but to pluck,

that's the verb I used.

This means to pull out hairs with

tweezers or your fingers.

We also pluck a string when we play the violin.

We strum a guitar, but we pluck a single string on a harp too.

An example, Jules plucked her eyebrows every week to maintain a neat appearance.

Number five.

I really like the way this word sounds.

Complexion.

Complexion.

And this is the natural colour, texture, and appearance of your skin, especially

your face.

An example, lots of English people have

quite a pale complexion and burn badly in the sun.

Next, we have the fairly slang adjective, sun-kissed.

Sun-kissed.

This basically means tanned.

I mean, kissed by the sun.

When you're tanned, you have a browner

skin colour because of the damage from the sun, from spending time in the sun.

If you look sun-kissed, you might be more tanned.

You might have lighter hair.

You might have a little bit of red going on.

It's generally seen as a positive adjective to describe someone with.

Jane looked like a vision with her summer dress and sun -kissed skin.

Never in my wildest dreams will I ever be sun-kissed.

However, you can get a similar look from a bottle.

I do end up looking a bit tangoed though.

There's a popular orange drink in the UK

called ‘Tango.’

And there was an ad campaign where people

would turn orange and there was the slogan, you've been tangoed.

It became normal to say, you've been tangoed to anyone whose fake tan went a

bit too orange.

Sometimes if I apply fake tan and it's a

bit too dark, I say, oh no, I look like I've been tangoed.

Number seven, this is a lovely phrase.

It's quite a jokey one.

You have to be careful who you use it with.

They could be sensitive.

I'm fine with it.

Vertically challenged.

This is a funny way to refer to someone who is short and challenged in the

vertical sense.

Ruth was only five foot tall and often

joked about being vertically challenged.

Notice how I said five foot tall.

You can also say five feet tall, but it's very common to say I'm six foot six.

I'm five foot five.

The final word from that section is lanky.

Lanky, which means tall and thin in a slightly awkward way.

We often use it for teenagers.

It's not necessarily a compliment to call

someone lanky.

As a teenager, Benji was lanky and had to

grow into his long limbs.

Okay, let's move forward to the present day.

I'm 29 now and my worries about my appearance have nearly faded.

I very much believe it's what's on the inside that counts.

If you saw me walking my dog on a wet January morning, I don't think you'd

recognise me.

I usually look fairly unkempt with

windswept hair and scruffy clothes.

Don't get me wrong.

I try to take care of myself and I think I scrub up fairly well.

I like putting on makeup for filming, as you might see.

I love makeup.

And for special occasions.

One of the things I'm trying to work on appearance wise is my posture.

I believe it can change how you feel and how other people perceive you.

Shoulders back, Lucy.

Okay, lots of good vocabulary in there.

Let's look at number nine.

It's what's on the inside that counts.

It's what's on the inside that counts.

You can probably guess that this means

character and values are more important than looks.

An example, she believes that true beauty comes from kindness and compassion.

It's what's on the inside that counts.

Next, number 10.

And this word is interesting.

Lots native speakers actually get this

confused with something else.

It's the word unkempt, unkempt, not unkept.

And I'll talk about that in a second.

We have a nice consonant cluster at the

end there.

Unkempt, unkempt.

This means untidy or not properly cared for relating to appearance.

We also have unkept, which means not tidy or not cared for.

We can use it to talk about appearance, but we normally use it for buildings,

cities, places.

Unkempt with ‘mpt’ is normally about a

person's appearance.

Tom's unkempt hair and wrinkled clothes

made it look like he had just rolled out of bed.

Number 11 is windswept, windswept, which means looking like you've been in strong wind.

And we often use it to talk about hair.

An example, you look a bit windswept.

Have you been outside in the storm?

Number 12.

I love this word scruffy, scruffy.

And this means untidy or dirty in appearance.

When I walk my dog, I put on my scruffiest clothes as I know they're

going to get muddy.

Next, we have a lovely phrase to scrub up

well, to scrub up well.

And this means to look nice when you make

an effort.

I grew up in a really rural area in

England and most of my friends were farmers.

So 99% of the time they were in dirty

jeans, t-shirts and with windswept hair.

However, we loved a party.

And when we had a party, we would dress up to the nines.

We would dress up in our most elegant clothes.

The most common phrase I would hear when

we'd all see each other in our nice clothes is, wow, you scrub up well, don't

you?

You scrub up well.

It means you look nice when you make an

effort, when you actually wear nice things.

An example of this use, Pete is usually

in shorts and a t-shirt, but he scrubs up well on special occasions.

And the final word from that section, posture, posture.

And this means the position you hold your body in, particularly your neck,

shoulders and back when standing or sitting.

Grace used to be a dancer, so she has

wonderful posture.

Notice how I pronounce it posture, posture.

That's because a /t/ and a /j/ sound together, we make /cha/, posture.

Same as Tuesday, tuna.

Okay.

The scariest part of this lesson, the future.

Looking far into the future, I can

clearly visualise myself and Will.

Will's salt-and-pepper will be popping

and my hair will be all white.

We'll have a lot more wrinkles and there

will be crow's feet around our eyes, but I plan to embrace them.

They tell the story of a lifetime of smiles and laughter.

And yes, there will be frown lines from when our children do something naughty

and stress us out.

Finally, three words and phrases to pick

out from that text.

Firstly, salt-and-pepper, and I'm not

talking about seasoning.

We often use it to talk about hair that

has two colours mixed together, one dark and one light, often white and black.

You will sometimes hear people say it as pepper-and-salt hair, but salt-and-pepper

is that common order for us.

An example, Bill's salt-and-pepper beard

gave him a distinguished appearance.

Next, slightly lower level, but just in

case you need it, wrinkle, wrinkle.

This is a small line on the skin, often

caused by ageing.

There were fine wrinkles across his

forehead that showed the passing years.

And finally, we have crow's feet, crow's feet.

You know what a crow's foot, the bird's foot actually looks like?

Like, you know, a little triangle, like little prongs.

We almost imagine that a crow has kicked us in the face and we have crow's feet here.

They're the small lines around the corners of your eyes caused by ageing,

but mostly caused by laughter and smiling.

Lots of people call them laughter lines.

For example, Lucy's crow's feet were evidence of a life filled with laughter

and joy.

That's what I hope anyway.

All right, that is everything I have for this video about describing appearance at

a more or less C1 level.

When you get to the higher levels, it's

hard to say exactly which word is at what level, but in general, that was fairly advanced.

Now I have some homework for you.

I would like you to describe your

appearance, or if you don't want to describe yourself, the appearance of a

celebrity or person you adore.

Try to use some of this vocabulary if you

can, and bring in other more advanced words and phrases.

I'll be looking at as many as I can.

I'd also love to know if you've

experienced a similar journey with your appearance.

Don't forget to download that free PDF.

There's loads more vocab in there and a quiz so you can test your understanding.

The link is in the description box and don't forget you get the C1 ebook too for

free.

Don't forget to connect with me on all of my social media.

I've got my Facebook, I've got my Instagram, and this might be interesting

for you.

We have our C1 programme.

So if you're interested in learning English to a C1 level, that's the highest

level we do at the moment, just visit englishwithlucy.com and there you can

browse through all of my courses available.

We have B1, B2, and C1 in our 12-week

Beautiful British English courses.

That's it for me.

I will see you soon for another lesson.