Hi. Welcome back to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. Today's lesson is, again, a phrasal lesson,
a phrasal verbs lesson. We're going to look at the verb "call". And again, a phrasal verb
is a verb plus a preposition that together sometimes have meanings completely different
than the words themselves. Okay?
So, which ones are we going to look at today? We're going to look at "call on". Sometimes
you will hear people say: "Call upon". More or less the same usage. "Call up", "call back",
"call for", "call in", "call off", "call to"-and this is a little different because you always
need something else here, but I'll show you that-"call into"-also you need something at
the end here, because by itself it doesn't really work-and "on call".
Now, "on call" is not a phrasal verb. In fact, it's not a verb at all. This is actually a
situation. So, I'm going to start with this one. So, for example, "on call" is when you're
available at any time for a certain position. So, for example, if I'm a doctor or a nurse,
at some point in my career, usually at the beginning, I will have a lot of on-call work,
meaning that I have to be ready. Anytime somebody calls, I have to go to the hospital and do
the work. A lot of jobs, for example, waitresses or even retail jobs, they give you an on-call
position. It means it's not part time, it's not full time, it's on call. When they need
you, they will call you, you will go to work right away. When they need you again, you'll
go back. So, it's... Could be used as an adjective or a noun. A noun as the situation, "on call"
Okay, let's get to the verbs. "Call on". So, if I call on you for help, that means I'm
asking you for help. So, you call on someone to help you do something. You also "call upon",
but this is not necessarily a person. You can call upon your wits, you can call upon
your intelligence. It means you want to draw. So you're asking your brain to give you the
tools you need to do something. So, this job is going to... Is going to call on all our
energy, all our brains, all our confidence to do this job. So that's "call on". Okay?
Okay, let's go to the next one. Excuse me. "Call up". A few meanings to this one. One is just telephone.
"Oh, yeah, I'll see you next week. I'll call you up sometime and we'll go out for a drink."
Okay? So you can say: "Call someone" or you can "call someone up",
basically means the same thing. But in sports or in the military, it has a different use.
In sports it's a promotion. So, many professional teams, they have the amateur teams or the
semi-professional teams that their youngest... Their young athletes play there, and when
they get good enough, they're called up to the big team, to the professional team. So,
for example, in hockey you have your NHL teams, your professional league teams, you have your
farm teams. This is the... We call these the "farm teams".
Okay? That's the ones that are
just learning, they are young guys, they are trying to get up to the major leagues or the
major teams. So, you call them up. They've done well, they're called up to the next level.
In military, some countries, they have a draft. It means that they pick out young people to
become soldiers and go to war. So, when they draft them, they're calling them up. Okay?
They're out of high school or college, or whatever the situation, and they're called
up to serve. It means they're going to the army. Okay.
So now we're going to look at "call back". So, of course, there's always:
"Hey, come back." So you're calling out to somebody, asking them to come back, to return. And the
same thing you can do with a telephone call. I call somebody at their office, let's say,
the person is not available, out to lunch or away from the office or in a meeting, and
I leave a message and I say: "Can you please ask him or her to call me back?" Basically,
return my phone call. Okay. Now, another common use of "call back" is when you have an interview
So, an "audition" is when an actor goes to try to get a part in a movie,
or a TV show, or a play, whatever. So they go for an audition, they go to show what they
can do. Now, if they are called back, that means they are invited to a second audition.
Or in an interview, they're invited to a second interview. So it's very uncommon these days
in professional situations, if you go to an interview, they're not going to give you the
job right away. They are interviewing many, many people, they will finish all the first
interviews, and then they will call back people for the second interview. So if you get a...
Some... It's also a noun. You can say: "a callback". If you get a callback, that means
you've been invited for a second interview; or in the case of acting, for a second audition.
Okay? So these are the common uses of "back".
"Call for". Now, if you call for something, if a situation calls for something, it means
it demands it or it requires it. Okay? Or so, for example: This situation calls for
special attention. Okay? That's what this situation needs. It calls for this, it calls
for that. So, for example, if I need... If I need to do something that's very, very expert
or very, very niche, I might... The job itself might call for an expert or a specialist.
So then I would call in a specialist, but I'll get to that in a second.
Another "call for", somebody comes... Your son or daughter comes home from school to get the mail from
their college they applied to, they open it: -"I got accepted! I got accepted!"
-"Well, this calls for a celebration!" and you go and get the wine: "Cheers, cheers, cheers."
So, to find something appropriate for an occasion. So, the occasion calls for a response. Okay?
So, calling for champagne always a good idea.
So, again, "call in". So, like I said before, if you have to call in somebody, means you
have to bring a specialist. Call in an expert, call in somebody who has knowledge about something
so you can do whatever the task needs to do. Another meaning of "call in", and again, going
back to the telephone: If you want to give a message, you can call it in. So, for example,
if I'm really, really sick... So, this morning, I woke up, I'm sneezing, I have a fever. I
really feel bad. I don't want to go to work. So, I don't go to the office, tell them:
"Look, I'm sick, I'm going home." I just call in sick. It means I telephone, I say:
"Yeah, I'm sick, I'm not coming in today." Okay, everybody understands. No problem. You can
call in your message. If you have to vote. For example, if I want to vote in my country's
election but I'm out of the country, some... Some countries will let you call in your vote.
You can call, leave your message, leave your vote, they accept it, that's it.
"Call off". If you call off something, it means cancelled. Okay? So you had a party
set to be outside, like a picnic or a barbeque, and it started to rain. So, you had nowhere
indoors, you have no cover, so you had to call off the party. Or you got injured the
day before the party, so you had to call it off, cancel it. Sometimes people use it to
mean postpone, but usually it means cancel. So, "call off". Now, another way we can use
"call off" is, like, somebody... The police are coming at you. Let's say I'm a drug dealer.
Okay? And I have my drugs in my pockets. And the police coming with their dogs, and these
dogs are barking, and they're going crazy, and I say: "Whoa, call off your dogs." It
means: "Hold them back, restrain them, don't let them go forward." We can also use it in
the military. So, the soldiers are about to go to attack, and the... Whoever they're attacking
comes out with their hands up: "Whoa, call off your soldiers. We're giving up." It means:
"Don't attack. Hold back." Okay? So that's "call off".
Now, "call to" by itself doesn't really mean much. So, we say: "Call to action", for example.
A call to action... Now, all of you, obviously, you're online right now, you've been to many
websites. In many websites you will see: "Sign up", or "Buy now", or "Find out more",
"Learn more", "Get more information". All of these buttons that are asking you to do something,
these are called "calls to action". So, in that case, they're actually nouns, they're
not phrasal verbs. But if you... If you're the person who wrote the site, the website
or whatever, you... You want to call your viewers to action, you want them to do something.
Okay? "Call to action". You can also say: "Call to mind". Now, this has a very different
meaning. Let's say you're walking along the street, you hear some music somewhere, and
it just calls to mind that vacation you had in Hawaii last year. So, basically, like,
recall. You know the verb "recall", to bring to mind? You can also "call to mind", it means
And "call into" is... Works on the same principle. You're always going to call something into
something. Call... So, you're going to "call into question". Sorry, my "q" is not so pretty.
"Call into question". So, somebody wrote an article, or an essay, or a newspaper column,
and you read it and then you say: "No, no, something's not right, here." So, you call
the publisher and you call the information into question, or you call the writer into
question. It means you doubt. You think there's something wrong and you want to investigate
the problem with that article, or with the writer, him or herself. Okay, that's basically
it for "call into". Always call into question or call into some sort of doubt, etc. And
then again, "on call", ready to work at any time.
So, I hope these are clear enough. And if you need to practice them some more, please
go to the www.engvid.com website, there's a quiz there. You can also ask me questions.
Please subscribe to my channel if you like this video, and see me again soon. Bye-bye.