12 Ways to Ask Someone to Wait in English

60,593 views ・ 2017-01-24

Learn English with Bob the Canadian


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Hi Bob the Canadian here.
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In English there are a lot of ways to ask someone to wait.
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Let's go through a bunch of them.
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The first one is obvious.
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You can just say, "Wait" and someone usually will respond by waiting.
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But you could also say, "Wait a second."
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or "Wait a minute."
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And all of those would work interchangeably.
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But there's more.
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You could also say, "Hold on."
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Or
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"Hold on a second."
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Or
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"Hold a minute."
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And all of those would also encourage someone to wait.
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But there's more!
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You could even say, "Hang on."
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Or
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"Hang on a second."
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Or
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"Hang on a minute."
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And all of those would also encourage someone to wait.
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Now as with a lot of things in English in the spoken form we use a few short forms.
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And with waiting it's really just the word "second".
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We sometimes in spoken English say, "sec"
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So you might say, "Wait a sec." or "Hold on a sec." or "Hang on a sec."
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And all of those would mean the same thing as, "Hold on a second."
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or "Wait a second."
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In addition you could also say, "Whoa!" and that usually causes someone to stop right
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away.
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And there is also another phrase.
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You could say, "Not so fast."
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to ask someone to slow down.
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"Not so fast Bob, you're speaking too quickly."
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"Not so fast.
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Not so fast there."
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Another one, which isn't quite as familiar as the rest is the term, "Hold your horses."
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And "Hold your horses."
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means wait just like all the other ones.
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Well that's a number of ways to ask someone to wait in English.
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Bob the Canadian here.
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Learn English with Bob the Canadian.
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Thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe.
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Have a great day.
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Hold on. Hold on a sec. Wait a minute here.
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Whoa. Hold your horses. Stop.
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Whoa hold your horses. Stop. Hang on. Not so fast. Not so fast. Wait.
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Whoa!
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Whoa!
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Hold on a sec. Hold on a sec.
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Whoa! Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
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Wait a minute here.
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Whoa! Hang on. Hang on. What do we have here.
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Whoa! Hang on!
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Wait a sec. Whoa! Whoa!
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Hold your horses.
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Hold your horses.
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Whoa. Wait a sec.
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