Settle Down: Definition and Examples (Phrasal Verbs)

8,383 views ・ 2015-10-11

To Fluency


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

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Hello. This is Jack from ToFluency.com and in this English lesson I’m going to talk
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about the phrasal verb ‘settle down’. So, I’m going to show you how I used it,
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give you further examples an explanation and then I’ll have a question for you at
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the end. So, here is the video of how I used this phrasal verb.
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Now, we wanted to settle down in the US. So, after a couple of years we moved here to Asheville,
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North Carolina and it was then when I went full-time teaching one-to-one lessons.
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In the video, I said, “Now, we wanted to settle down in the US.” And, what I was
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talking about was how I was living in Spain and before that I went traveling but after
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a couple of years of teaching in Spain, my wife and I wanted to settle down in the US.
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Now, to settle down means to live permanently in one place. So, it’s to move to a place
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and to stay there. Something that’s quite similar - a phrase - is ‘to put down roots’,
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to put down roots.
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Now, to settle down could also mean to get married and to live a quieter life and what
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we did was a combination of the two. We actually were married already, but we moved to the
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US to live there permanently and we wanted to settle down to have a quieter life, to
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have a house, to have kids and do all those things you do when you settle down.
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I’m going to show you some more examples now. “Football managers want their players
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to settle down.” And, a very famous football manager, Alex Ferguson, he always talked about
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how he wanted his players to settle down. He wanted his players to have wives and kids,
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to get a house because the opposite of that is partying and going out and drinking and
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doing those things so he wanted his players to settle down.
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“Do you think he’ll ever settle down?” So, people ask this question about people
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who like to party a lot and maybe they’re a little bit older but they’re still partying
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and doing lots of things and they don’t have a girlfriend or a house. So, sometimes
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people ask this question, “Do you think he’ll ever settle down?”
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Now, this next one shows a different way that we can use this phrasal verb. “Settle down
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and tell me what’s wrong.” What this is trying to say here is calm down, ‘be calm
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and tell me what’s wrong’. So, we can also use settle down here when we want someone
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to calm down and this is used a lot by parents when they’re talking to their kids, when
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their kids are angry and screaming you say, “Settle down and tell me what’s wrong.”
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And, here’s another way to use it too, “Let’s settle down on the sofa and watch a movie”
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and this just means to spend some time on the sofa and not move from the sofa and to
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watch a movie, and this is another way that you can use it.
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Now, my question for this video is this, “Do you think it’s important for athletes to
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settle down in order to reach their full potential?” So, leave your answers below this video. Thanks
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for watching and I’ll see you next time.
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