Let's Learn English! Topic: Describing Aging Things and Places! 👖🏛️🏚️ (Lesson Only)

Well, hello and welcome to this English

lesson about describing things and places.

I think a more accurate title would be describing

old things or things that are getting old, or

describing ugly things or things that don't look great.

I don't think I'll be describing anything

that looks beautiful in this lesson.

I will certainly be describing a lot

of things that look like this building.

A little bit run down, a little

bit ramshackle, a little bit derelict.

And I'll describe all of those

terms and more in this lesson.

So once again, welcome to this English

lesson about describing things and places.

Hopefully you're able to learn some new vocabulary.

An eyesore.

When you describe something as an eyesore, it

means that you don't like how it looks.

If you're familiar with the word eye, this is my eye.

And the word sore, like if you

hurt yourself, you have a sore.

Sometimes you might describe a building or an old

piece of furniture or an old car that's just

sitting in front of someone's house as an eyesore.

You would prefer that things look newer or at least

if the windows weren't all broken like on this building.

Uh, maybe someone has an old car in their front yard and

you would like it if they would get rid of it.

It's an eyesore.

So when you say something is an eyesore, it

simply means looks ugly and old and it's falling

apart and it should just be cleaned up, towed

away, fixed up, or maybe even demolished.

Maybe this building needs to be demolished, like

flattened so they can build new ones. Who knows?

Lackluster.

So when something is lackluster, it means that

it's kind of boring, it's kind of plain.

There's nothing amazing about it.

This couch is a little bit lackluster. By the way.

There are two spellings of lackluster.

You can flip the E and R and spell it the American way.

This is, I think, the Canadian and British way.

Um, you can describe many things as lackluster.

A boring English lesson can be lackluster.

A four door car that's just painted gray and

doesn't have anything extra you could say is lackluster.

But certainly when I look at this

coach, it looks kind of lackluster.

It doesn't look comfortable.

It's not a very nice color.

I'm not sure where it is.

It looks like there's water on the floor.

That's a little bit strange.

But I would describe it as lackluster.

Or boring would be another word

you could use boarded up.

You probably have driven by buildings in your

City or town that have been boarded up.

When they take wood or plywood and put it over the

windows and doors, we say that a building is boarded up.

Often old buildings like this one, when

the windows start to break, they will

then decide to board up the building.

In my town, there's one building that is boarded up.

I should actually make a video in front of it someday.

It's boarded up because no one's using it.

They're not sure what the current owner is going

to do with it, and they don't know what

the next owner will do with it.

So in order to protect the

windows, maybe they're already broken.

They have boarded up the building.

Decrepit.

We also use this to describe really old people.

I just thought of that.

People who can hardly walk,

we say sometimes are decrepit.

It's not a nice description, but when

you say a building is decrepit, it

means it's starting to have major problems.

You can see there's a large crack.

This building has a large crack beside the window.

When I think of something that is decrepit, it makes

me think of something that's going to fall down soon.

So, yes, an old person who's decrepit might fall down.

But also buildings like this one, I

would say are decrepit at any moment.

If there's a little earthquake or if the wind

blows too hard, the building might fall over.

It is decrepit and ramshackle.

Is similar.

But it doesn't have to be ready to fall down.

It just has to look like

someone isn't taking care of it.

You can see here some of the

plaster has fallen off the building.

The chimney on the roof looks like it

could be fixed up a little bit.

It looks like it's kind of worn from the weather.

The roof probably leaks.

So this is definitely not a new house.

It's definitely old, and it's starting to look old.

So we would say it is ramshackle.

Um, it's always nice to live in a newer apartment,

but maybe you live in an older part of town

and you live in kind of a ramshackle apartment.

That wouldn't be very nice.

As a university student, I lived in one house in

my time at university that I would describe this way.

The rent was really, really cheap.

But it wasn't a great house to live in.

It was a ramshackle house.

Dated.

So this is a good one too.

It might take me a few seconds to explain this.

When something is dated, it means

it looks really, really old.

When something is dated it means it's no

longer in style, it's no longer fashionable.

Sometimes people think my shirts look a little dated

because they're from about 10 or 15 years ago.

This carpet definitely looks dated.

It looks like it's from the 1970s.

The paneling on the far wall, the

wood paneling looks a little bit dated.

It looks like it's from the 80s, the 70s or 80s.

And if you look way over on the far side,

the couch, the curtains on the wall look very dated.

This simply means something is more

than 20 or 30 years old.

You know, styles come and go.

The way things look kind of comes and goes.

And sometimes if you don't, you know, paint

something or change something every 20 or 30

years, it starts to look dated.

Um, when we moved into this house, after we bought

this house from my mum, some of the rooms were

painted colors that didn't look fresh and new.

It looked dated.

So we painted every room before we moved in.

Run down.

Notice there's kind of a building theme here.

This building is starting to look run down.

When you say a building is run down,

it means it's again starting to have problems.

There's a hole in the ceiling.

I think these windows.

It looks like something's growing on the windows.

Definitely it's not used.

This building doesn't look used to me.

Oh, and there's another hole on

the far side of the ceiling.

There's a hole in the roof.

By the way, the ceiling is what you look up at.

If you climb onto a building

and look down, that's the roof.

So it's just the two different sides.

But in this case, I could say the ceiling has a hole

in it or the roof has a hole in it, because it

wouldn't matter which side I'm standing on to look at it.

There's a hole on both sides.

But this place definitely looks run down.

Um, yeah, it needs someone to take care of it.

Abandoned.

So this can mean a building is really

old or it can even be newer.

It simply means that no one lives

there or no one works there anymore.

An abandoned building can look like

this where things are starting to.

It looks a little bit decrepit.

It looks a little bit.

What are some of the other words?

Like ramshackle.

It looks a little run down.

Um, but did I do rundown?

Yeah, that was just the last one.

Um, but definitely abandoned also includes the

fact that no one lives there.

An abandoned house doesn't have

any people living in it.

An abandoned building.

There are no people who go and work there. Every day.

So it usually means something that's

old and maybe run down.

But it can also be a new building.

Sometimes there's actually a building close to me

where they almost finished building it and then

they boarded it up and it's just abandoned.

I don't know what happened.

I don't know what the story is.

It's a mystery.

Dilapidated.

So it's kind of a funny word.

And it's not used too often, but I

do hear it every once in a while.

Dilapidated means well used. This.

I thought this couch was a great example.

Um, this picture of a couch came from

furniture used in university housing or dorms.

So it has duct tape on it.

It's definitely.

People have sat here a lot because the

cushions are starting to get a little squished.

So when something's dilapidated, it can still

be used, but it's going to look

really, really run down and worn out.

Um, if a car is dilapidated, um,

it might have rust on it.

It might have a door that doesn't quite close. Right.

It definitely means that something is old. Worn.

Well, used would be another way to describe it.

Um, dilapidate.

I try to get rid of

my vehicles before they are dilapidated.

Here we go, more with vehicles.

A rust bucket.

So this is an informal term for a

really old car that has rust on it.

This car has some rust on the front.

Um, and this is only used for a car like, oh, I'm

going to put my sports car in the garage for the winter

and I'm just going to drive an old rust bucket.

That means you're going to find a car that. That runs.

But that, yeah, definitely has rust on it.

It's kind of a funny term, a rust bucket.

Um, it's. I try to.

I try also not to have rust buckets for vehicles, but

my one van is a bit of a rust bucket now.

It has a little bit of rust along the bottom on

both sides, so hopefully it lasts a little bit longer.

Falling to pieces or falling apart.

This is a phrase term that

I've taught in other lessons.

Something is falling to pieces or falling apart.

It literally has pieces disappearing.

So this row of, I guess, couches, chairs.

There's no cushions in the bottom there. It's.

They've fallen apart.

It's probably rotted.

And there's no.

There's no way that you could sit in these.

Um, we had a bread machine in our

kitchen and the lid didn't close right.

And it would fall off sometimes and

then was just starting to fall apart.

So it was Falling to pieces.

It was falling apart.

Um, definitely time to replace something

if it's starting to fall apart.

A gut job.

So this is kind of a fun term.

Um, your gut is your stomach.

But we also use gut to mean

to remove everything in a place.

If I bought a house and I walked into this

kitchen, I would say, oh, this is a gut job.

What that means is that I am going

to take all of these cabinets out.

I don't even know what that appliance is over there.

I don't know what's on the wall, but

I am going to gut this place.

It is a gut job.

I'm going to remove all of the

ugly paneling, all of the cabinets.

I'm going to take everything out.

I'm going to make it all nice, and

I'm going to put all new stuff in.

If you ever watch home renovation shows in English,

sometimes the people will look at a house and

they'll say, oh, this bathroom is a gut job.

It means they're going to take out

the toilet, the sink, the bathtub.

Everything is so old and probably falling

apart that it's not worth fixing.

To me, this is definitely a gut job.

I would definitely rip all this out, go to

the home furnishing store or the home renovation store

and get new items for that room.

Neglected.

So when something is neglected, it means that.

It doesn't mean there's a raccoon

living there, but it can.

Buildings, cars, furniture, you need

to take care of them.

When something is neglected, it means

no one is cleaning it.

No one is fixing things on it.

No one is with a car, no one is changing the oil.

Um, with a yard, no one is cleaning up leaves.

Um, with a roof, no one is

looking for holes made by animals.

So when you use neglected to talk about something

that isn't beautiful or that's getting old, it.

It definitely means that there's no

person taking care of it.

There's no person maintaining it.

No one is coming and checking on things.

So if a building's neglected, then eventually

animals can find a way in.

If a car is neglected, eventually it stops running.

Because if you don't change the oil or check

for oil leaks, eventually the car will break down.

Derelict Notice.

A lot of these words have similar meanings.

Like, let me see here.

Decrepit, ramshackle, rundown, derelict.

These all are very, very similar.

This is a derelict building.

A derelict building also will most likely be abandoned

because it's be hard to live in this, right?

Like, if you see it looks like

both end walls Are just gone.

Let me see if I can make it a tiny bit bigger.

Um, I'm wondering if the roof leaks.

I actually wonder if that ladder is

even safe to climb on anymore.

But this building is definitely derelict.

It's definitely falling apart.

You could say that as well.

So derelict also has in the meaning, the sense

that no one is there fixing things in shambles.

So after a storm goes through a

city, it can be in shambles.

After a teenager lives in a bedroom for a

few months, the bedroom can be in shambles.

It can simply mean things are a mess.

It can mean that things have

been destroyed a little bit.

Um, I'm trying to think of another thing.

Sometimes if you look in someone's

car, it's just in shambles.

Like, there's just garbage everywhere.

Um, but definitely after a hurricane goes through a town or

city, There will be areas that are just in shambles where

people need to clean things up, Things need to be repaired,

Things need to be taken care of, for sure.

Crumbling.

So when something is crumbling, it means that it was

solid, and now it's starting to break into little pieces.

This sidewalk is crumbling over here.

The sidewalk looks nice, but way over there,

you can see it's starting to crumble.

It is crumbling. Crumbs.

When you eat bread, little pieces of bread fall

when you cut bread, and those are called crumbs.

So we use this word to describe other things as well.

This sidewalk is crumbling.

The road is crumbling a little bit.

Where I walk along the road, there's a

few spots where the pavement is crumbling.

So it was solid and nice, and now it's

starting to fall apart, and there's tiny pieces.

So it is crumbling.

Uh, I have to watch one spot on the road

because the road kind of goes like this, and it's.

Even the side of the road is

it's crumbling, and there's chunks of pavement

everywhere, and it's a little bit unsafe.

If I don't look down when I walk

through that section, I could injure myself decaying.

So decaying is a little bit different.

A sidewalk can crumble, Brick can crumble.

But when we use the word decaying, we're usually

talking about something more organic, like wood, um, trying

to think of something else that will decay.

But it means that maybe there are insects eating this.

Maybe there are other things that are

causing it to fall apart like this.

If I looked at a sidewalk like

this one, I would say it's crumbling.

If I looked at a piece of

wood, I would probably say it's decaying.

Or falling apart.

That would be how I would describe it.

Um, but yes, sometimes, you know, wood isn't the

greatest thing to have exposed to the elements.

Do you know that phrase, when something's exposed to

the elements, it means rain and snow and sun

can all hit it and cause it to delay

faster or decay faster or disintegrating.

So crumbling and disintegrating are very similar.

Um, but I could use disintegrating

to describe this as well.

Basically, it's just another version

of something falling apart.

It's solid, and little pieces are

starting to fall off of it.

It is disintegrating.

Um, this wall looks like it's disintegrating.

It was probably at one time a really, really nice wall.

And now it's starting to fall apart.

Starting to disintegrate.

It is disintegrating.

Fragile.

Sometimes they'll find something

that's really, really old.

And every time you move it or

touch it, it starts to fall apart.

It's really, really fragile.

I have a really old report card

from when I was in kindergarten.

So from when I was five years old.

A report card is where the teacher

describes how you're doing in class.

But it's really, really fragile.

The paper doesn't.

If you bend it, it'll start to fall apart.

This piece of clothing, obviously

it's thousands of years old.

You can't wear this anymore.

It's probably kept in a special

room because it's so fragile.

So when something gets old, sometimes it gets

very delicate and fragile, and you have to

be careful how you move it.

And sometimes you can't even touch it.

Really, really old books are like this.

I think you need special gloves in

order to look at an old book.

And then when you open it, it might.

It's just really fragile.

You have to be very careful.

Don't drop it, don't bend it.

And sometimes don't touch it.

Worn and worn out. Yeah.

I found two nice chairs for this one.

This chair is worn.

So worn is a general description for something that's

been used a lot and no longer looks the

way it looked when it was brand new.

This chair is definitely worn, but

there's no real holes in it.

I think you could still use

this chair, but it's definitely worn.

This chair, on the other hand, is worn out.

You can see there are holes in the bottom part.

Um, it's close to falling apart.

Um, so hopefully you get the subtle difference.

When something is worn, it can still be usable, you

know, oh, his shirt was a little worn, but he

Wears it on Saturdays to do yard work.

But when something is worn out, you

usually stop using it because it's a.

It looks like this holes and everything else battered.

So I couldn't find a great picture.

So this is an AI Picture, I think.

I don't always use AI pictures,

but I think this is one.

When something is battered, it means that it gets

hit by wind and rain and maybe waves constantly.

So if you go and visit a lighthouse,

the rocks around the lighthouse will look battered.

They'll be rounded a little bit

where the water hits them constantly.

Um, if you have a house beside the ocean, it

probably gets battered with rain and storms, and maybe some

salt from the waves even hits it, and it starts

to look a little bit worn out.

It starts to look battered.

So definitely these rocks would be battered.

And it looks like even on a really windy

day, the lighthouse itself would be battered in tatters.

Now, some of you might think these look

like brand new, fashionably awesome jeans, but to

me, they look like they're in tatters.

When something is in tatters, it means there's holes.

There's.

We usually use this to describe clothing.

If this shirt had, like, five holes, and if

this pocket wasn't here and two buttons were missing

and there was a big rip in my collar,

I would say the shirt is in tatters.

It's definitely worn out.

Um, I do know that some people wear jeans. Like.

Like, some people buy jeans that look like

this because they enjoy the look fashionable.

But for me, when my jeans look like

this, I usually say, oh, they're in tatters.

There's, like, little strings hanging

off and there's holes everywhere.

Um, they are in tatters.

Oh, I like this phrase.

Sometimes we just say that

something has seen better days.

This laptop has seen better days.

Uh, maybe you're visiting a friend and he has

an old car that he doesn't drive anymore.

You might say, wow, this car has seen better days.

It simply means that a long time ago

in the past, this laptop was brand new.

This laptop was young and ready

to help someone watch YouTube videos.

But now it's old and the screen is cracked.

It's definitely seen better days.

You can use this to describe a house,

a car, a computer, almost anything that looks

like this, that looks really old.

Um, would we use it to talk about people? Not really.

I don't think so.

I was trying to think.

Yeah, but you could say, you know,

oh, that building has seen better days.

Um, like, maybe a hundred years ago,

it looked amazing, but now it doesn't.

Ratty so when something looks ratty, we

often use this to describe clothing.

You could use it to describe

a building, but more so clothing.

This shirt looks kind of ratty.

Again, I'm assuming this shirt has been worn for a

long time and the holes are from wearing it.

But maybe this is just a fashionable look right now.

But definitely this shirt looks ratty.

Um, people's hair can look ratty.

Let's say I had long hair, and I got up in

the morning, and it was pointing in all different directions.

I hadn't washed it or combed it yet.

You can say, oh, your hair

looks really ratty this morning.

So when something looks ratty, it looks like this.

It's a little bit worn out.

It has a few holes in it.

It's starting to not look so good.