Name: English Tutor Nick P Verb Phrase (141) Clam Up
Uploaded: 2019-07-01T16:41:00.000Z
Duration: 2 min 56 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...

Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Verb Phrase 141. The verb phrase today is to

The imperative

clam up. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If someone clams up he or she

To-infinitive

suddenly stops talking and refuses to speak anymore.

Okay.  Let's look at the note here. This phrase alludes to ... again you know,  it suggests,  it

comes from...  to the way a clam will close its shell tightly and keep it sealed,

especially for protection. Yeah. . So if you ever seen a clam and they closed that

show really tight and you know you'd practically need a tool in order to

break it or get it open,  that's what we mean.

So the clam does that he closes he has the ability to close his shell tightly

and he of course he's doing it to protect himself.  I guess in the same way

you don't want to say something because maybe the thing you say may hurt you or

harm you. So you're trying to you clam up you're trying to protect yourself by not

saying this,  by not revealing this information. All right. So let's continue.

Let's look at several examples we have here. Example number one. When the police

brought that suspect in for questioning he just clammed up. Yeah. We see this in

the movies all the time. They bring someone in. They don't want to talk. Well

in the movies they always make it look easy. You know,  maybe the police have some

dirt or something on this guy to try to make him talk. But sometimes they don't

in real life. A lot of times they don't.  They just may clam up and they won't  say

anything. They say nothing really in order to protect themselves. Okay. Let's

look at example number two here. When that mother asked her son what he was

doing when he cut classes,  he just clammed up. So to cut classes ... so I guess

he wasn't going to school. He went somewhere else. He was doing something

else.  He wasn't attending the school. The

mother ... the school probably informed the mother. So she knew that he wasn't

going to classes and she's saying well if you weren't going to classes,  what we were doing ?

Where were you ? Why didn't you go ? And of course,  he just went silent. He clammed up. He

refused to speak and say what he was doing. Okay. Let's look at number three

here. When they questioned that politician about his scandal he clammed

up and made an excuse to leave. So he clammed up. He just   stopped in this case.

He's not completely not talking at all.  He just will refuse to answer the

question. He clammed up and just made some excuse that he's got to go. He wants

to run away. He doesn't want to answer these questions. He wants to avoid them. Okay.

Anyway, this is perfect examples of how we would use it . I hope you got it . I

hope it's clear. Thank you for your time.  Bye-bye.