Name: Advanced Prepositions of Time: “throughout”, “ahead of”, “at around”, “out of”…
Uploaded: 2025-07-18T18:11:55.000Z
Duration: 19 min 25 s
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Past simple

Omnivore. The spores that ate the planet. Hi, James from engVid. And my crazy readings.

Adverbs of frequency

What a what? He's asking me to hurry up. We're almost out of time? Time for what? Oh, to start the lesson. Hi. Today's lesson's on prepositions of time. You might see a bit of a prepositional phrase where I put two words together, it's not just a preposition, but understand that these prepositions do tell us about time. I know you've done prepositions where it's about place or movement, right? But, you know, when we say, by, I got here by foot, or by nine o'clock, right? These ones are specific prepositions that we don't usually... Well, native speakers use, but you may not use, and I want to introduce them to you today so you can help master the language. Let's go to the board, shall we?

Present continuous

So, he's telling me to hurry up, and I'm going to find out why I got to hurry up. Well, the first one's not about hurrying up, but it's about the word through and throughout. When we use the preposition through, we talk about going, you know, through a doorway. There's a door and you go through, meaning to go from one space, cross an area, go to another space.

Go through. You go through a tunnel, right? You go through a doorway. Throughout means all the way through. So, throughout, because if you had a page of writing, you would have words all the way through it. Similar, you're going from one place to another. Okay? But what does this mean for time? When we talk about time, we say for an entire period and after. Huh? Well, okay. Here's an example. It rained throughout the night until the morning.

Or we can just say we rained throughout the night. That means the night is from 9pm, where

I am now, to maybe 6 o'clock in the morning, and it rained throughout the night. It kept raining, right? So, it rained throughout the night, and that's a period of time.

Next, out of. Out, right? We've got of, two of them together. Well, when we say you're out of something, it means to be out of time or use up your time. Example, I had a test.

It was two hours long. I got caught up reading some of it. It was really, really difficult, so then I ran out of time, meaning the clock stopped, the test was over, and I didn't have enough time to finish. Ran out. Now, you can use your time up, right? You will run out of time if you do that, use up the time, right? So, you have a certain amount, I was going to say allotted, but you have a certain amount of time given to you, allotted, and you use it up, okay? So, that's to be out of time. This is through and throughout time.

What is number three? Number three is, and you see I have at, around, and at, about.

What? At, around, at, about, what do you mean? Well, you can either say around or about.

Here's a sentence. I will be at your house around four o'clock. I will be at your house about four o'clock. Sometimes people say at before that. I will be at your house about, at about four o'clock, or at around, and both mean approximate. Funny enough, they mean approximate, which means not exact. Here's my problem with this. Well, it's not a problem. Sometimes when you say something like I'll be at your house around three o'clock, and you can say I can be, I'll be around, I will be at your house at around three o'clock, one is almost a little less approximate than the other. They're saying close, close, close, close, close. And if you were to ask me, well, which one is it? I'm like, I don't know. It depends on my mood if I want to be exact or not, because at is exact. I'll be at your house. That's an exact location, yeah? Around is approximate, but if I say to you, and I've talked to a couple of people about this, it's quite funny, and I've said, hey, if I say I'll be at your house at around three o'clock, or I'll be at your house around three o'clock, which is more, each person says something different. Well, that one's more exact. And the other one says, no, no, no, the other one's more exact. So, either one is okay. Both means approximate, not exact.

And if you hear someone say it, and they go, no, I'll be there around at around, that means not what you think. The only thing you can tell is by the expression on their face and the context.

Otherwise, these two, around or at around, and about or at about, same thing, approximate, meaning it means nothing. That's my joke. Anyway, so we've gone there. Let's move on to during.

During, it means a part of a period of something. And I love it. I write these expressions, unless I explain them. What does he mean? What does that mean? I kind of do that on purpose, so you have to watch the lesson. Otherwise, you'd read it and go, I got it, take a picture, no more.

Okay, so let's just say there's a meeting going on, and the meeting is about four hours long, and you hear someone say, James fell asleep during the meeting. That means there was a period of that meeting I was asleep for. Could be the whole meeting he fell asleep during, but usually we'll say he fell asleep during the whole meeting, right? We'll add something.

But it means there's a part of that meeting I was asleep, right? So, when you hear someone say during this, it means something else is going on that's a bigger thing, and in that period of time, something else occurred. Cool? So, it was raining during the night. Well, it might have rained a little bit, and I'll give you an example. It was raining during the night. You look outside, it's wet. You look in the sky, it's dry. You look outside again, it's wet. You turn to your friend and say, it must have been raining during the night. Sometime, a period of that night, water came down, and then it stopped. Cool? All right.

Ahead of. Now, hmm, your head is here. When we say something is ahead of, it means to be early.

So, if John is here, and William is here, and William is ahead of John, he's in front of.

And in this case, on a clock, we're saying ahead of. You're ahead of the other people, the meeting starts at 9, maybe you arrived at 8.30, you're early. Okay? Can you come ahead of the other guys? We need to talk about something first. Come early. So, ahead of means to come early.

Next, within. These two are going to be interesting, so you're going to have to pay particular attention to what I say, because they're almost going to sound the same, but they're not the same. Okay? This is where you show you're a very good student.

When you say within, within a period of time, right, it says between now and a length of time.

I will be in there, I will be there within 10 minutes. I'm saying within this second, like this second I make that statement, and 10 minutes later, in between those two times I'm coming. So, now is very important when you say within, now is a very important part of that statement. Now and whatever the end time is. So, between now and a length of time, I will be here within 10 minutes, I'll be here within two hours, from the moment I speak until that final time, within that two-hour range. Okay, got it. What's so difficult? Between. After one time, but before another time. So, both of these are talking about two periods of time.

This one is talking about now and that end time. This one is actually talking about in between the two times. Imagine this one, when we talk about within. So, I say I'm going to start here, at three, right here, and I will be here in five minutes, so four. So, I'm saying I'm going to start here, I'll be here before this time, here. Between is a little different. It means you can imagine there's a little dot here, so between is going to be just after this moment here, but just before this moment here. That's between. And when you think of what between means, like if there are two trees and he's between the trees, one will be here, one will be here, you'll be in the middle. When we talk about within, you're actually saying this is the starting point and this is the end point. So, you're not in between, you're not in the middle, you're here, here. Two different points, the other one says we start in between.

Crazy, I know, right? But this is where we get really good at English, between when we say

I know English and I understand English. The context is different. If I tell you, hey, I'll be at your house between four and five p.m., that could be any time. That's not starting now. This could be one o'clock in the afternoon, and I tell you later on, I will be at your house between four and five. That has nothing to do with now. However, if I say I will be within,

I'll be there within 20 minutes or within three hours, I'm talking about now until that time.

So, this one can be separated by time. You can talk about another time, another day, another year.

Here, it's now until that time. Confusing? Eh, probably not. We've gone over it, but you know I'm going to do a test to help you get rid of that confusion.

All right, are you ready? Let's take a bit of a break and come back to the board.

All right, time for our test, our homework, and the extra. You ready? Let's go to the board.

So, the first thing I want to do in the test, we've got five questions.

I will ask them, and you will try and figure out which one we are talking about.

I'm going to circle it with a green so you know that's the true one. Green means go. All right, so Cheryl and Carly are coming off to work. They should be here. Is it between or within five or six p.m.? What do you think? Okay, if you said between five or six p.m., correct.

Remember, when we talked about between, when we talked about between, we said there are two times and you're here. Right? It wasn't within, because you can clearly see, and this is where context is important, this person is speaking to someone at an earlier time, and they're talking about later.

When we use within, they're usually saying now, but we have these two markers, so keep that in mind when you're doing context, okay? The context to help you is they give you two times, they're probably going to say between. Next, James fell asleep the meeting because he was tired.

Did you say during the meeting? Then you're correct. Remember that something's happening for a period of time, and during a part of that period of time, he fell asleep. It doesn't mean he was asleep for the whole meeting, but you know maybe 20 minutes in, 30 minutes, he fell asleep during the meeting. Now, the rain went on something the night, right up until the early morning. So, the rain went on something the night, right up to the early morning.

Okay, yes, that was a tough one, because that could have been during the night, or, but remember we said apart when we talked about during, okay, and we said it's a part of a larger thing. When I talked about throughout, I said it can be to the end and maybe a bit before, a bit extra, a little bit extra. So, in this case, it was through the night, right? It went throughout the night and to the early morning, just a little bit extra. So, throughout is the correct answer here. What about number four? Josh is on his way home now. He should arrive around. Yeah, because this is should, right? We're looking at a modal here and it's like the right thing or kind of, so this modal tells us around, right? You should do something is like, it's the right thing to do. It doesn't mean you're going to do it, but it is the right thing to do. It's approximately, giving an approximation. In this case, when we said around, he should arrive. I think so. That's what he should do. Don't know. Maybe, maybe a little earlier, a little late. Through makes no sense here because you can't go through nine o'clock. You're not a car hitting a wall. Okay? And now finally, number five. The test was very difficult and I couldn't answer all of the questions. I, out of, ahead of time. What do you think? Sorry, time's up. What time now? I ran out of time. Ran out of. Remember? You have no more left. If you were ahead of time, that would be early, but you said it was very difficult and you couldn't answer. So clearly, you ran out of time. Cool? All right. So now we answer these questions and I hope to give you not just the answers to the questions, but the understanding that you have to look at context, showing you that different words can give you the word you want to use. Yeah?

Expanding, not just I know the answer to this, but I know how to think about these things. That's what I want for you. So, before I finish with expressions of time, I've got three extra ones for you and of course, your homework. Red is for blood because it's dangerous. All right. So, by the time. By the time I explain by the time and you read it in a dictionary, you may be more or less confused. I'm joking. I don't like the dictionary definition for this one.

Please check it out if you wish to, but I will give you the best word for it. Are you ready?

Before. Yes, all the gods are hailing me right now. Before. It's the simplest way to explain it.

I love looking through the dictionary to explain, like, and it was like, oh, by the time this extra... By the time, like, oh my god, this is so difficult. What's the easiest thing? Before.

What do I mean? Something's going to happen. Let's just say store's going to close. Before the store store's going to close. Before the store closes, be here. By the time the store closes, be here. All right? Don't come after. That's no good. So, when we say by the time, we're saying here. Here is the end of that time and you have to arrive at least by here. At least. If not before is better. That's it. Before. Before this. I know, simple. And some of you are going, but I'm reading and it's so difficult. I told you this was a hard one. It took me a while to find the easiest word to give to you. On the dot is easy. So, if we did by the time, you could look at it this way. Time is going this way. Notice the arrow isn't touching because you want to be here by this time. Not after, not at. Simple enough. On the dot. Bang. Right there. On the dot. If you are, it's 5 o'clock. On the dot. It's exactly 4.59, 5.58, 5.57, 5.59. Bang. 5 o'clock. On the dot.

Exactly. Just in time. If you're like me and you know you're walking somewhere and the door is about to close and somebody opens it up and they're walking through and all of a sudden you're like Usain Bolt or some other fast runner and you run just in time so you don't have to do the door yourself. You know, you're too lazy to open the door. You want to just in time or the door would have closed on you. Okay? So, just in time means the time was almost up, but you finished similar to this, but not exactly the same. You finished just in time because any more, it would have been in trouble. Okay? That's the difference. So, this one, if you were any later, too late. This is your limitation. So, even though they look kind of similar, they're not the same.

And how we're going to practice this is doing the homework. So, here's your homework, and I want you to go work on this. Okay? And in the comments, leave the comments below, you will get 10 points for every question you get right. So, you can get a total of 30 points, and you guys know how you vote. You give them a thumbs up. If you're on YouTube, you give them a little thumbs up or a little check mark if you're anywhere else, and that tells the person who wrote it they did a good job. And we kind of want to show our appreciation because if you watch this whole video and you're still here, you've put the time in, and if you take the time to actually figure it out, it's nice to give someone a little pat on the back going, hey, way to go. You're really here to learn the language. Okay? So, number one, they... Oh, by the way, I should say I've noticed a lot of you guys do do that, and thank you for the ones who put the thumbs up and actually go through and read the comments and help other people out because you've also made corrections.

Thank you. So, here we go. So, the first question for homework, they got there just before the plane left. I was told you should say that the plane took off. I know that is correct, but it didn't have much room. Okay? I've only got this much room to work with.

So, the plane took off. They got there. I can't tell you. Sorry. That's your homework.

Next, the ambulance will be there 10 minutes. Oh, that sounds like you need to... Starting now.

They've got to get there somewhat now. That's a clue, by the way. I'm giving you a hint.

Now, the last question of the day is the test was over and Nina wasn't finished. She something, she ran... Time. What could that be? Well, you're smart, and I know you watched the lesson because you're still looking at me. As pretty as I am. Okay? No, I'm not that pretty, I know. I look like a dog's breakfast. Anyway, listen. Thank you very much for doing the lesson. Thank you very much for studying with us. I always appreciate that there are people out there who want to better themselves. And on that note, if you want to learn or take on other lessons with other prepositions, that of time or prepositions of place or how we do things, you want to go to the source.

You want to go to www.engvid.com. Okay? Where there are myself and other teachers, we'll be happy to help you. There's probably about a thousand lessons, if not more right now.

Go check it out. Anyway, have a good one, and I'll see you soon. I'm out of here. Hint, hint.