Hey guys, I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking and welcome to this lesson on phrasal verbs with
"put". As an intermediate student or an advanced student in English, you should be familiar
a little bit with phrasal verbs and today we're going to focus on one, two, three, four
different phrasal verbs, all of which use "put". The first one is "to put down". Now
"put down" has two definitions. If we look at these two sentences, let's see if you can
guess what they mean by the context. The first one is "My boss always puts me down." So let
me ask you, do you think your boss gives you compliments in this sentence? No. Do you think
your boss criticizes you? Yes. Okay? So if somebody puts you down, it means that they
criticize you or they insult you. They say negative things about you. Okay? So if you
work for a company and your boss tells you your work is terrible or you're always late
and you will never be anything in this company, they put you down. Okay? They insult you.
They make you feel small. Okay? Now what you might notice about this phrasal verb is that
I put "me" in the middle of it. If you don't know yet, some phrasal verbs in English can
be separated. Some of them cannot be separated. This is a separable phrasal verb, which means
you can put the subject in the middle of the phrasal verb or at the end of the phrasal
verb. Now, the one rule here is that if you put it in the middle, you can put a pronoun.
You can put "me." You can put "him." You can put "her." However, you cannot put "me," "him,"
"her," okay? "Us" at the end of the phrasal verb. If you use something at the end, it
must be an identified subject like Mark, Mary, John, Jim. So you have to say, "Let's imagine
this is not me, but this is him, and him is Mark." So you cannot say, "My boss always
puts down him." "My boss always puts down Mark" is okay. Okay? So again, to put someone
The second example here is, "We had to put down our dog because he was sick." Now, if
your dog is very sick, if you have a pet, sometimes this is obviously a really tragic
situation, a very serious problem that can happen. It's reality. You might have to go
to the veterinarian, the pet doctor, and actually ask them to put down your dog, which means
to -- there's no nicer way of saying it -- to kill your animal. Okay? So if you put down
an animal, it means that you have to kill them because they are sick or they have some
kind of disease. Okay? So again, "put down," it can mean to insult somebody or to criticize
somebody or to kill a sick animal. Basically, to show mercy, to show pity for that animal.
Okay, the second phrasal verb we have with "put" is to "put back." Now, the sentence
is, "Could you put the milk back in the fridge?" So imagine that you live with a roommate and
they have milk, they have cereal, they pour milk into the cereal, they leave the milk
on the table. Okay? So what you want them to do is return the milk to the refrigerator.
You want them to put back the milk or put the milk back. Like I said before, this is
another separable phrasal verb. Actually, all of the phrasal verbs today can be separated.
Okay, so to "put something back" means to return it to its original location. Okay?
To return to the original location. Okay? And it's usually some kind of object that
you reach, you can take with your hand, and you have to put it back, return it to the
original location. So you can put books back, you can put fruit, vegetables, and food back
in the refrigerator. Not books in the refrigerator, books go on the bookshelf, right?
Okay, the next one is "put off." To put something off, in this example, "She put off her interview
because of an emergency." So this woman had an interview at a new company and she really
wanted to go. It was a very important interview for her. However, she had a family emergency.
Maybe her sister or someone in her family had a car accident or they're in the hospital.
So she had to call the company and say, "I want to put off the interview because I have
a family emergency." To put off does not mean 100% to cancel the interview. It means to
push it back in time. She will do the interview at a later time. So another word here is "to
postpone." She wants to postpone or put back. "Postponer" for you Spanish speakers, my pronunciation
of that is probably terrible. If you don't understand "postpone," it means to push back
in time. Okay, and again, you can also say, "She put her interview off because of an emergency."
Finally, we have "put up," and "put up" can have two meanings. The first one here, "They
put up a new statue in front of City Hall." Okay, so if you put up something, you can
put up a building, a statue, any kind of monument that you can think of, this means to build
or a word that might make you giggle a little bit, to erect something, okay? And finally,
we have, "Could you put me up for a night?" To put someone up means to accommodate them,
to give them a place to sleep and a place to eat. So if you partied, if you had a late
night, and you have no place to sleep, the buses are finished, the trains are finished,
everything is closed down, you can't find a taxi, you ask your friend, "Could you put
me up for the night? Could you give me a place to sleep? Could you accommodate me?" So again,
to put up can mean to build or erect, or it can also mean to accommodate. Okay, I'm going
to be honest, I am not 100% sure if I spelled it correctly, so check your dictionaries,
maybe you can correct the teacher. I'm pretty sure that's it, though. Okay, guys, so as
a review, to put down means to insult somebody or to kill a sick animal. If you have a pet
and they're very sick, they're very old, you have to put them down, or you can put down
somebody by saying negative things about them, criticizing them. To put back is to return
something to its original location. To put off something is to postpone or to push it
back in time. "I will do it later," like your homework. "I will put off my homework until
later." And finally, put up is to build something, to erect something, or to accommodate somebody,
to give somebody a place to sleep. If you want to test your understanding of these phrasal
verbs, and again, remember, there are many, many, many phrasal verbs that are very important
in the English language, you can check out the quiz on www.engvid.com. All right, guys,