Learn Some English Phrases About Time!

Welcome to this English lesson where I'm going to help you learn

some phrases you can use when talking about time.

In fact, the first phrase is time off.

Time off is a way to describe a time when you don't work for a little while.

I just took some time off.

If you're a regular viewer of these English lessons,

you know that I just took two weeks off.

I took some time off.

For two weeks I didn't do any work.

So when you have time off, it means you don't work.

In this English lesson, I'll help you learn nine more English phrases

that have the word time in it that you can use to talk about time .

The end of the school year

is approaching and I'm a teacher, as most of you know, so it's crunch time.

In English when we use the phrase crunch time, we mean it's a time of busyness,

usually towards the end of something or a project.

Towards the end of the school year it's crunch time for teachers.

It's crunch time for students, too.

There's a lot of work that needs to be done over

the next few weeks so that I can finish the school well.

I have to make exams. I have to give exams.

I have to grade exams.

I have to do a whole bunch of things before the end of June arrives.

So right now at school, it's crunch time for me.

Once the school year is done, once July arrives, I will have a lot more free time.

As you know, teachers in Canada don't work in the summer, so I'll have a lot of free time.

Free time is an English phrase we use to refer to any time

we don't have to work or do something important.

It's a time when you can do whatever you choose to do.

When you have lots of free time, you can watch more TV, you can play sports a bit more.

You can read a book, you can do all kinds of things because they are enjoyable and fun.

And this only can happen if you have enough free time.

I do not like to be late for work.

I don't like to be late for anything.

I like to be on time.

In English when we say on time, we mean to arrive somewhere

at the time you're supposed to arrive.

If I need to be at work at eight, I like to arrive at eight

or maybe even a minute before.

And then I would say that I am on time.

I don't like to arrive late.

When I go to see a movie, I like to be on time.

I like to watch the trailers for new movies coming out,

and I like to have some time to settle into my seat to get ready to watch the movie.

I like to be on time.

I certainly don't like being late.

So when you are on time, it means you arrive somewhere at exactly

the time you need to be there, or even a minute or two early.

In English, when we say just in time, we're talking about not being late,

but almost being late or almost missing something, but not missing it.

Here are some examples.

If someone said to me, Come to my house at 7:30 because we're going to leave to go see a movie.

If I arrived at 7:29 and 59 seconds, I would say I was just in time.

If I had arrived a second or two later, I would have been late.

So when we say on time, it means that you're there at the right time or a little earlier.

When we say just in time, it's like a split second before.

Here's another example.

If you go to take the train and if you arrive just in time,

that means that you just jumped onto the train before it left the station.

You were just in time.

You weren't on time.

If you were on time, you would have arrived a minute or so earlier.

You would have had time to walk there nicely.

But if you have to run to jump onto the train, we would say you arrived just in time.

As a teacher, sometimes I give tests or quizzes

and I tell the students how much time they have and when that time runs out, I say, Time's up!

In English, when you say Time's up, it means that you've given someone

a certain amount of time to do something and they don't have any more time.

They need to stop doing what they're doing.

So again, I often say this after students write a test for 30 minutes or an hour,

I'll say, Time's up.

Please hand your test in.

With our kids, when they were younger, we would tell them

they could only play video games for one hour or 2 hours.

And then when that time was up, I would go and say, okay, time's up.

You need to turn off the gaming console or turn off the computer because time's up.

We have a saying in English: Time will tell.

And it's something we say when we're talking about the future

and specifically how we don't know what will happen in the future.

Maybe you have a friend or a relative who's going to university,

and if someone asks you, do you think they'll get good grades at university?

You could say, “Time will tell”,

because you're not sure if they will or if they won't get good grades.

Maybe it's the beginning of the season for your favorite sports team

and someone says to you, “Do you think after the next few months go by, they will win

the championship?” You might respond and say, “Hmm, time will tell.”

So it's a really cool English phrase you can use when you don't know what the future holds.

Time will tell.

This next phrase is something you might say if you're frustrated

after you've been waiting for something.

And it's: It's about time!

In English,

we say, “It's about time!”, when we're waiting and then when something finally happens.

Here's a good example.

Let's say you're waiting for a friend because you're leaving to go on a trip

and your friend is supposed to arrive at eight and it's already 8:30.

They're late. They're definitely not on time.

And if they do finally arrive at 8:45, you might say, Oh, it's about time.

Let's get going.

Or imagine you're at a restaurant and you order your food and it takes forever.

You've waited for your food to come to your table for a very long time.

When the server eventually brings the food, you could probably say, “It's about time!”

It would be a little bit rude, but it's probably what you would be feeling.

So if you've ever waited for something to happen for a long time,

and when it finally does happen, you can say, “It's about time.”

As I mentioned, summer is coming soon and I'm looking forward to it

because I need some downtime.

In English when we say downtime, it means time where you don't do anything.

It's a little different than free time.

When I have free time I choose to do things that are fun.

When I have downtime, I usually take naps and really don't do anything at all.

I just kind of sit around and do things that don't require any energy.

So downtime refers to a time when you're not working.

You're not running errands.

You just sitting and relaxing and enjoying life.

It's nice when you live on a beautiful property to go sit under a tree,

just have a little bit of downtime,

just sit in a lawn chair and enjoy the shade and enjoy the day.

One of my main jobs as a dad is to drive my kids to different places.

I drive them to sports games.

I drive them to work, one of them has a part time job now, and sometimes I have time to kill.

After I drop them off at work or drop them off at whatever they're going to,

I don't want to drive all the way home again, so I have time to kill.

In English, when we say time to kill, It means you're kind of somewhere

and you don't need to do anything, but you kind of have to find something to do.

So often if I'm in town, I will get some groceries or I will do something else,

because if I only need to wait for an hour, that means I have an hour to kill.

I have time to kill.

I might as well do something productive with it.

Well, hey, thanks for watching this English lesson about phrases with the word time in it.

I hope in your next English conversation you can use some of them.

By the way, thanks for being patient, while I took some time off,

it was very refreshing for me.

I got a lot of things done

that weren't work related or YouTube related, but that I just needed to get finished.

So I really appreciated having a little bit of time off.

Anyways, if this is your first time here, don't forget to click that red subscribe button.

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if you have some time to kill, why don't you stick around and watch another English lesson?