Phrasal Verbs with "AWAY"

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(bright music)

A very common question I get is,

"How can I learn phrasal verbs?"

Well, these books, the long lists

of unrelated phrasal verbs, a thousand of them?

Who needs... no one needs that. Put it in the bin.

(garbage crumpling)

What you need is to learn the prepositions,

because they have general meanings.

If you learn those general meanings,

you'll learn all of the phrasal verbs, the same way we do.

And today we're focusing on, (pops) away.

I've made lots of phrasal verb videos.

You can find some here and at the end of this video.

So let's start with the most obvious,

the most general meaning of away,

and that is to separate one thing from another thing

to create distance.

I saw a fire, so I...

ran away, easy, right?

I created distance. I separated myself from the fire.

How? I ran.

This is how simple phrasal verbs are.

The preposition holds the meaning,

to separate or create distance from something.

The verb shows how something happens.

The preposition shows what happens.

So if you think phrasal verbs are difficult,

let's learn like 20 in one second.

Think of different verbs with movement:

Run, walk, walked...um...

(upbeat dance music)

I danced away.

I separated myself from the fire by dancing.

And think of any verb that uses motion, fly, drive.

Put that with away, now you understand that.

You've learned at least 20 new phrasal verbs,

because you learned the preposition

and how a phrasal verb works.

(makes exploding sound)

Now, you could at the end of this, say, I ran away

from something, from the fire.

If you're like me, and you have a chocolate problem,

you might say to your friend,

"Keep me away from the chocolate.

"I'm on a diet, seriously, keep me away."

Let's change that verb and change the situation.

How else could we use this?

If you see a zombie, and you want to say, "You...

"get away from me, you creep!"

(sighs) Zombies.

In this situation, you could change get away to go away.

Move away is a bit softer,

so maybe a person at a party, you're like,

(soft music)

"Can you just move away?"

So, get away, it can mean leave,

but it can also mean escape.

For example, you are running away from the police,

and (breathing heavily) (sirens blaring)

are the police still following me?

(sighing) Ah, I think I got away. Oh, I'm so tired.

And if you know it means escape,

get away with, can mean this.

Let's imagine that you steal one million pounds

from the queen, so the police arrest you,

you go to court, but then...

the judge says, "Innocent, no punishment for this guy.

"Yeah, yeah, you can leave, it's fine."

When you do something bad, like steal millions from someone,

but there's no punishment, you avoid punishment

for doing something bad, you get away with it.

You avoid the punishment.

To be specific, to say what the bad thing was

change the verb to the -ing form.

So it looks like this.

I got away with stealing one million pounds

from the queen, oh my God!

But usually with crime, you would say the name of the crime,

so, "I got away with theft. I got away with embezzlement.

"I got away with," type of crime.

Also, with away, you can show

how you got rid of something, disposed of it.

Now getting rid of something

doesn't necessarily mean throwing it in the bin.

It could mean giving it to charity

or giving something of yours to someone else.

You don't own it anymore. You give it away.

But, maybe I do need to throw something in the bin,

sometimes like when milk is old,

you have to pour it away,

get rid of it.

So it's like doing something

or using something until it finishes,

like when you get paid at the end of the month,

and then you go straight to the pub

and spend all of your money drinking.

Your friend could say this,

"You're just drinking your money away. It's such a waste."

You're getting rid of your money by drinking,

but we can take this to the next level.

You could say, "You're pissing your money away."

Now yeah, this is slang, rude, informal.

Don't use it with your boss, teacher or parents.

They might be upset with you,

but it's a fun expression to use

when you want to say something is a waste of money,

like going on the London Eye.

For me, that is a waste of money.

That is pissing your money away.

Go to Primrose Hill. You have great views, and it's free.

London Eye is so rubbish. Don't go on there.

Let's try this in the comments.

What do you think is a waste of money?

For some people, the PlayStation 5

is a good way to spend money.

For other people, it's a waste of money.

You're pissing away your money on a PlayStation 5,

but what about the Dyson Airwrap? What about that?

Is that a good way to spend your money

or is it pissing your money away?

Let me know in the comments, what do you think?

What do you think is pissing your money away?

So, you use something or do something until it finishes.

Okay, with that in mind, let's imagine you go to a party.

How do you spend all of that time? What do you do?

Maybe you meet someone special,

and you're talking to each other all the time.

So all of that time until the end,

until it finishes, (something drops) you're talking.

So you spent the whole night talking,

you talked the night away.

Well, maybe you spent the whole night dancing.

You danced the night away.

Another way that we use away is when someone feels

really comfortable doing something,

but maybe for a long time,

and also, maybe it's annoying, like this.

If someone is talking to you for hours,

and they don't shut up,

ah, he's been talking away all night.

Talk away, this just means he feels very comfortable

talking for a long time,

but like I said, maybe it's annoying,

but also, maybe you're having a lovely time.

Ah, we've been talking away all night.

I feel great. He feels great talking for the whole time.

So it's not necessarily negative to talk away.

It can be really nice.

We were talking away for the whole evening. It was lovely.

It just shows that you're

really comfortable doing something,

and it implies for a length of time.

So let me know in the comments,

have you ever just talked away on a date?

Has it been lovely or maybe your date talked away for hours

or maybe you did something else to spend a whole night?

What did you do? Let me know in the comments.

Maybe you want to tell someone

to feel comfortable doing something like this.

If your friend asks you,

"Is it okay if I smoke in your house?"

And you want them to feel comfortable doing that,

you could say this, "Yeah, of course, smoke away."

I want you to feel comfortable smoking.

It's just kind of a funny and friendly way to say,

"I want you to feel comfortable doing this thing."

Don't ever smoke in my house. That is gross.

Also, if you're at dinner and someone wants to start eating,

you want to say, "No, no, don't wait for me, eat away."

Remember that away means to be separated from something

or to be distant from something,

yet we use this to say, "I'm not here."

So if you are on your lunch break at work, for example,

and someone asks, "Hi, is Becky at her desk right now?"

Um no, she's away from her desk right now.

Ah, she's on holiday, yeah, she's away all week.

And finally there are some expressions

that you might just want to use, like this one.

When something is eating away at you,

it's making you feel bad,

and you need to tell someone about it

or do something to fix it, like a secret.

I have a secret, and it's eating away at me.

I need to tell someone.

Do you have any secrets eating away at you?

Please feel free to tell me them in the comments.

I promise, I'm not gonna tell anyone.

It would just be between me and you.

Also, this last one actually is really obvious.

If someone wants to ask you a load of questions,

maybe in an interview or maybe a police officer

wants to ask you questions, you want to say,

"Yeah, feel free to ask me anything."

You can say, "Ask away,"

but we have an expression for this, which is fire away.

Ask questions and feel comfortable doing it.

Thanks for watching.

The worksheet for this lesson is available in my eBook.

It's available on Patreon. The link is in the description.

Seriously, the eBook is huge now.

There's like 50 worksheets in there.

Have you even seen 50 of my videos?

(bright music)

But this gives you an even better way

to practice your English

and remember the vocabulary and grammar you just learned.

See in the next class.