5 Phrasal Verbs with BLOW! 🌬 Vocabulary Lesson | Practice English

Hello! I'm Emma from mmmEnglish!

Back with another phrasal verbs lesson this week

and I wonder if you can guess

what the verb in our phrasal verb is this week.

Blow.

Actually, a lot of my students have trouble

pronouncing this word. Do you?

The two consonant sounds at the start are a

little tricky to push together

and so it can sound a little bit like you're

saying below.

It's quite hard to hear the difference between the two.

Blow.

And

below.

They sound very similar, don't they?

And that's because the first syllable is

unstressed in below and you can hear

the very, very lazy schwa sound

below.

Below.

Now, blow.

My tongue is already in the position of the

sound

when my lips part to make the

sound.

Blow.

Blow.

Blow is one syllable

and below is two syllables.

There's a little extra vowel sound in there

that you need to make sure that you include

when you say below

and you exclude when you say blow.

Okay, I got a little sidetracked there.

So I started talking about something different to what I

really wanted to talk to you about today!

Phrasal verbs with blow.

Blow.

So all phrasal verbs in English are

made up of a verb

and either a preposition like up

or an adverb like apart.

Now phrasal verbs are frustrating to learn

but super fun to use once you know how

and I have made a video with my top tips for learning

phrasal verbs. You can check it out right there

but one tip that I do want to share with you today

is don't let phrasal verbs overwhelm you!

There are hundreds and hundreds of phrasal verbs

that you will need to learn

but today you're just going to focus on five

and this week, I only want you to focus on those

five phrasal verbs.

Okay, let's crack on with the lesson!

Starting with blow off.

Now blow off has a few different meanings

depending on who you're talking to.

My American friends like to use this word

when they're deliberately not meeting someone

when they've made a plan or

they've said that they would

but they're deliberately choosing not to.

They don't care about the commitment that they made.

I'm supposed to meet Sam in 20 minutes

but I'll just blow him off.

But my British friends

always laugh at this phrasal verb because it means

to fart.

To pass wind?

Oh I don't know there's about a hundred different ways

to say that but

it's the air that comes from your bum.

Did you just blow off?!

In Australia we rarely use that phrasal verb for anything

but we do use the expression

"to blow someone's socks off"

which is an idiom used when someone or something

really surprises or impresses you.

He said the show blew his socks off.

Blow out.

Used with candles.

When it's your birthday you've got to blow out the

candles on your cake.

Have you heard of the expression

to blow someone or something out of the water?

It means to completely destroy or completely

beat something to show that someone or something

is much, much better than someone else.

Now I know that I can swim fast

but Katherine blew me out of the water.

Now you'll also see this phrasal verb

as a compound noun

which might confuse you for a second

but this is a noun.

Most often it's used when a car tire bursts

especially if you're travelling at really high speeds.

We were running on time, but we've had a blowout,

so I don't think we'll arrive at 6.

Now in Australia, we also use this phrasal verb

quite frequently to describe a sudden

increase in something.

Usually relating to money.

We've had a bit of a blowout.

We spent too much, we've spent too much money.

The government was under pressure

after the huge budget blowout.

To blow up.

Now, blow up has a few different meanings

one is used when something is destroyed

by an explosion.

Often it's used with bombs or cars or buildings.

The soldiers blew up the old shoe factory.

As the sun rose,

they saw that the hospital had been blown up.

Now this phrasal verb can be separable or inseparable.

You can also say they blew the hospital up.

You can also blow something up by filling it with air

like a balloon or a tire or a beach ball.

The front wheel on my bike needs blowing up.

Can you help me blow up these balloons?

When you're talking about a photo that you want

to make larger or bigger to fit in a frame,

then you would blow it up.

How much will it cost to blow up this picture?

Now you could blow up at somebody too,

which means to become really angry at them.

My dad blew up at me when I arrived home late.

I didn't mean to blow up at you before, I'm sorry.

Now there's an idiom that you may have heard before,

it's when something blows up in your face.

That's when something goes wrong unexpectedly.

Maybe it embarrasses you or makes you feel ashamed.

I'm worried that that plan is going to

blow up in your face, it's not a good idea.

Well, that blew up in my face, didn't it?

To blow apart.

To blow apart is used in a similar context.

When something is completely destroyed

in an explosion, it is blown apart.

After the gas explosion, the main factory was

completely blown apart.

But this phrasal verb can also be used to show that

an idea is completely false

by putting forward another much better argument.

The student's explanation blew apart

the professor's theory.

So the students explanation proved that the professor's

theory was incorrect or not true.

He blew it apart,

completely shattered it.

To blow away.

So a strong wind can blow something away, right?

The wind blows and if it's strong, it's going to blow

things away, rubbish, trees.

Really strong winds, cars, boats.

But you've probably heard me use this phrasal verb

to say that I'm really impressed

and pleased by something.

I use it all the time.

In fact, there is another video where you can watch me

explain it right here.

The fact that I'm sitting here in my home in Australia

teaching students all around the world, blows me away!

Well, how many of these phrasal verbs

did you already know?

Perhaps you knew all of them

but maybe you learnt a couple of new ways to use them.

If you enjoyed this lesson

make sure you subscribe to my channel by clicking

that red button right there.

I make a new lesson every single week.

Now if you want my top tips and recommendations

for using and learning phrasal verbs,

then make sure you check out this video right here.

Or just check out some of my other lessons

on that playlist there.

Thanks for watching and I'll see you next week.

Bye for now!