English Phrasal Verb Go Out — 7 Different Meanings

Hey,

it's Annemarie with Speak Confident English and welcome to this week's Confident

English lesson.

This is exactly where you want to be every week to get the confidence you want

for your life and work in English.

One of the things my students love to do is add new vocabulary to their everyday

English vocabulary. That's easy for them to use in conversation,

and it's even better when that vocabulary is a phrasal verb.

Native speakers use phrasal verbs all the time,

so it's important for you to understand them and know how to use them as well.

In this lesson today we're going to talk about the phrasal verb go out.

What's interesting about this phrasal verb is that it has multiple different

meanings.

So in this lesson you're going to learn how to use the phrasal verb,

go out in seven different ways,

and you'll know how to use it correctly. I'll give you examples as we go.

Plus at the end of this lesson,

I've got three common idioms you can use with the words go out.

All right, let's get started with our seven meanings of the phrasal verb.

Go out in English.

Number one to go out can mean to be social or do social activities or to go out

of the home to enjoy something social. For example,

I love going out with my friends on the weekend or I love going out to a

restaurant on Friday nights for dinner.

Last weekend we went out to a new pizza restaurant with our friends and all of

those examples.

The phrasal verb go out means to go outside of the home and do something social.

The second meaning of the phrasal verb go out is to go on a date or to be dating

someone romantically.

One common question that teenagers often ask or hear is,

will you go out with me? What that means is,

will you be my boyfriend or girlfriend? Will you date me?

Another way to ask someone on a date is to say,

will you go out to dinner with me?

Or if you want to talk about to people who have been dating, you could say,

Dave and Sarah have been going out for two years now.

Number three to go out can mean to leave or exit a room or a building.

When children are young, you'll often hear them say, let's go out and play.

Another example. You'll have to go out the back door.

The front door is broken,

meaning number four of go out is to stop,

to cease or to fail to function. For example,

if you have a big storm and a tree falls on your power lines,

your electricity will go out. In other words,

your electricity will fail to function.

If you go camping with friends for the weekend,

you might stay up late at night chatting until the fire goes out.

Meaning number five is to no longer be fashionable in style or popular.

For example, ripped jeans went out a few years ago. In other words,

they stopped being stylish a few years ago.

Can you think of anything that used to be fashionable or trendy,

but after a few months or a few years, it went out, it went out of style.

If you've got an example, share with me in the comments below.

Meaning number six of the phrasal verb go out refers to the movement of water

away from the land. For example,

if you think about how water in the ocean or the sea moves away from the land,

if you live close to the ocean,

you probably know when the tide goes out every day or maybe you live somewhere

where the tide goes out very quickly,

so you have to be very careful when you're in the water. And finally,

example number seven. In this example, the words go out,

go together with 'my heart.'

If you've been following me for awhile,

you know that I've done several lessons on collocations.

Collocations are groups of words that native speakers use together naturally.

Let me give you an example first and then we'll talk about the meaning.

Right now Sarah is spending all her free time taking care of her sick mom.

My heart really goes out to her. That has to be so difficult.

What do you think I meant in that example?

My heart really goes out to her that collocation is an expression of sympathy.

It's a way for us to express that sympathy or compassion when someone else is

going through a difficult or unfortunate time. All right.

Now that you've got seven meanings of the phrasal verb go out in English,

let's talk about three common idioms.

Idiom number one is to go out of one's mind to go out of one's mind.

Here's an example of how we would use it.

For the past three weeks I've been working overtime and weekends at work.

I'm going out of my mind. What do you think that means?

If you're not sure, let's try another example. First,

imagine one of your friends turns down or says no to an amazing job offer.

Your response might be, are you out of your mind? Why did you say no?

So what do you think that means to go out of one's mind?

It means to feel crazy or irrational.

Idiom number two is to go out on a limb for someone to go out on a limb.

Here's an example. I'm going out on a limb here,

but I think I'm going to win the lottery or I'm going out on a limb here,

but I'm willing to bet my entire paycheck that he'll win the game.

What do you think that means?

Let's look at that second example little more closely.

I'm willing to bet my entire paycheck that he will win the game.

What will happen to me if he doesn't win the game?

I will need to give my entire paycheck to someone.

That's a pretty risky situation.

To go out on a limb means to do something risky or dangerous to be in a

vulnerable situation without any support.

And finally our last idiom is to go out like a light to go out like a light.

Here's an example. He must have been so tired yesterday.

He was out like a light. What do you think?

It's something related to being tired.

He must have been so tired yesterday.

Last night he was out like a light to go out like a light means to go to sleep

very quickly. I'm curious,

are you the kind of person who goes out like a light or do you stay awake with

your mind thinking and thinking and thinking about different things that

happened during the day?

Now that you have these seven meanings of the phrasal verb go out and three new

idioms I want you to practice,

I want you to share two or three sentences with me using the phrasal verb.

Go out and I want each sentence to use a different meaning.

You can share your examples with me in the comments below this video. With that,

thank you so much for joining me. If you found this lesson useful,

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you can email this lesson directly. Have a fantastic week.

Thank you so much for joining me and I'll see you next time for your Confident

English lesson.