Name: 6 UNCOMMON uses of COMMON English words
Uploaded: 2019-01-17T07:31:13.000Z
Duration: 8 min 52 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In today's lesson, I want to talk to you about
six words that all of you already know; they're

very common, very easy words, but I'm going
to show you the uncommon uses for these words.

Now, the reason you want to know uncommon
uses of words is: A) to sound more like a

native speaker who will use these words regularly,
and B) they will actually help you get a better

vocabulary range; more variety to your speech,
to your writing, and when you read you'll

We're going to start with the word "down".

Now, obviously everybody knows "down" is,
you know, down there.

Do you know that "down" can also be a verb?

For example, you can down a drink, you can
down a plane.

"Down a drink" basically means have a drink;
finish the drink.

If you have a glass of beer, you down it before
you leave the bar.

"Down a plane" means: "Pew" or-sorry-I should
say like this.

Shoot down the plane and bring it down to
Earth.

So, in Canada, for example, I live in Toronto
and the hockey team here is...

You know, it's starting to be a little bit
better now.

But if I want to go watch a hockey game, the
drinks and the food at the... at the arena

So what a lot of people do - we go to a bar,
we down a few beers at the bar, and then we

head to the arena and maybe have one beer
over there.

Don't drink if you're not into drinking; if
you're underage, you didn't hear any of that.

Now, in a lot of countries, you know, there's
wars and stuff like that, and in some countries,

there... the rebels or the local army is a
little bit underequipped, and for them a big

victory is gotten simply by downing an enemy
airplane.

So if they're able to down a plane from the
enemy, they're very happy about it, even though

So, "down", bring down, or take down a drink.

Now, the foot, you know the two things at
the bottom of your body, here.

Most people know them as a noun; the two things
there, but we can also use "foot" as a verb.

"To foot the bill", or "to foot the cost",
or "to foot the expenses" means pay for or

So, if I go away on a business trip, I expect
that my company will foot the expenses; hotel,

Your car breaks down and you're in the middle
of nowhere, and there's nobody to call and

there's no, you know, a bus, or a taxi, or
anything - you're basically going to have

to foot it to the next town to call a tow
truck to go get your car.

You know "break", like break the glass, break...

Or "to brake" means to slow down in the car.

Now, notice that I'm using the past tense.

I'm not using "break"; I'm using the past
tense "broke", but here, this is an adjective.

Pull out your pockets, and lint falls out.

Out of work for, like, a year is broke and
he can't go out to have a drink with us or

to watch the hockey game because he's broke.

If something breaks the bank it means it's
overly expensive.

If you actually spend the money on it or if
you invest in it, you will become broke.

So, a lot of companies, they want to invest
in innovative, new things for their company-equipment

or technology-but they don't want this investment
to break the bank; basically cost so much

But at the same time, if you invest in something
properly or not, the investment in that thing

"Make" means you will become very successful;
"break" means you will fail miserably and

"Make or break", this is a common expression.

Something will make or break something else.

So, a lot of you are thinking that you want
to go to university.

Keep in mind that you need high scores, you
need a good letter, application letter, etc.

But no one piece of the application will make
or break you.

Everything together will make the difference.

So don't stress out too much about any one
particular thing.

So, here are three; let's look at three more.

Okay, so now we have three other words we're
going to look at.

Now, for a lot of you, you're thinking: "Oh,
like, mother, right?

Well, the British say: "Mum"; the Canadians
and Americans...

They sound very similar, but if you pay attention,
you can actually hear the difference between