Welcome to engVid.

I'm Adam.

In today's lesson, I want to give you a few more phrasal verbs, because I know they're

very popular with students.

Everybody wants to learn about phrasal verbs, and again, what are phrasal verbs?

They're a combination of a verb and a preposition, and the problem that a lot of people have

is understanding what these things mean, because in many cases, when you combine the two words,

the verb and the preposition, you have a very completely...

You have a completely different meaning than the two words themselves.

Now, this is especially true with the phrasal verbs I'm going to show you today.

Okay?

These ones, you probably can't even guess the secondary meanings.

Some of the literal meanings, like taking the words as they are, they might make sense,

but then the secondary meanings, you really can't understand just by looking at the word.

So, somebody needs to tell you, so that's what I'm going to do today.

So, for example, let's look at the first one.

Size up.

What does it mean to size up a person or a situation, or to size someone up?

Now, a lot of people think of size up, maybe, you know, you go to a hamburger restaurant

and they ask you if you want to size up, so you go from a medium french fries to a large,

from a medium drink to a large drink, sure, that's what it means.

But to size someone up means to measure the person.

Not physically, you're not measuring height or width or weight, what you're measuring

is the person's ability, or the person's confidence, or the person's value to you in some way.

Right?

So, when you...

For example, when you go to a job interview, yes, the interviewer is asking you questions

that they have and they ask everybody, but what they're really doing is they're sizing

you up, they're trying to see what kind of person you are, whether you will be good for

the company, whether you will get along with your co-workers, whether you're competent,

so all these things they're measuring about you by not so much the words you say, but

how you say them.

Are you using your hands?

Are you confident?

Are you slouching because you're a little bit nervous, right?

So, all these things help them measure you.

And you can do this for a person, you can do this for a situation.

So, for example, I want...

I have a big company, I want to buy a smaller company, but before I do that, I want to go