AEE 2415: 5 Phrasal Verbs to Wash Away English Stress
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This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2415, five phrasal verbs to wash away English stress.

Welcome to the All Ears English podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English? We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection with your American host, Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz.

and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA. To get real-time transcripts right on your phone and create your personalized vocabulary list, try the All Ears English app for iOS and Android. Start your seven-day free trial at allearsenglish.com forward slash app.

Do you want to wash away the anxiety of phrasal verbs? Listen in today as we explain five different phrasal verbs and what they mean for connection conversations.

Are you still translating from your native language into English in your head? Are you always getting confused between the different grammar tenses? Let's figure out what you need to work on. Find your current English level with our five-minute quiz at allearsenglish.com slash fluency score.

Hey, Lindsay, how are you? I'm doing fantastic today, Aubrey. How are you? Great. I have a question. When you were a kid, what did your parents say to tell you dinner was ready? Oh, what did they tell me?

They said dinner's ready. They just said dinner's ready. My mom always said wash up for dinner every time. That's how we knew dinner was ready. We'd hear her yell, "Wash up for dinner." Wash up for dinner. I love it. I love it. What does that mean, wash up, Lizzie? It means wash your hands. Go and wash your hands and get ready for dinner. So many different things are said and it says so much about our families.

Really interesting. Do we have a... Well, it probably was because we were playing outside. So we were probably all muddy and filthy often, right? We were like playing outside on a farm. So it was like, didn't you just like come in and wash your hands? Oh, you had a good life, a good childhood, right? I love that. We got a great question about this phrasal verb, wash up, and other phrasal verbs with wash. There are so many in English, and we're going to dive into some of these today.

Yeah, guys, by the way, don't forget to send your topic questions into support at ellersenglish.com and we'll make sure they get on our list if they're a good specific question. Here's the question.

"Could you please help me out with a phrasal verb like wash, like wash over me and wash up, especially because I was confused when someone said the wreckage washed up months later. Thank you so much for your help." This is from one of our loyal listeners. Yes, such a great question. And I can see where this would be confusing if you're reading an article and it says the wreckage washed up and the only time you've seen wash up is to mean wash your hands, right? Wash something.

that's a totally different meaning of the same phrasal verb yes oh my gosh really interesting i love this guys before we get into the answer for our listener today don't forget the best place to get transcripts for the podcast get tappable keywords that you can save to your power list is inside our ios android app aubry where can we get the app

Yeah, go to allearsenglish.com slash app. A-P-P. This is the best place to add vocabulary to your list. It's really easy. We organize it for you. So then five, six, seven keywords, every transcript, every episode, you're going to be able to add to your own vocabulary list. Yeah, so go over, use the app to make your own list. Good stuff. Okay, Aubrey, where should we start? The question was about wash up.

Exactly. And wash over me. But let's dive in first to wash up. This does have two very distinct meanings. The first is the wreckage washed up months later. That means to wash up on shore, on a beach. So something was in the ocean or maybe a sea, a really big lake, and the waves pushed it onto the beach. So we'd say it washed up on the beach by ending up on the beach after it was out in the water.

This happened to me once. I was in Block Island in Rhode Island, which is kind of a, it's like a version of Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket, but less yuppie, less fancy. It's a better Nantucket. And I was down on the beach and we were walking around on the beach. It was a cloudy day. All of a sudden we look over there and there's a huge whale carcass.

just a huge whale i'd never seen anything like it before the whale carcass was washed up on the beach it was super cool it was a really cool experience actually um there's real nature right there in front of you yeah yeah it's interesting because i had a different i'm like oh that's so sad i know i felt like it was so cool i'm like let's see oh well died don't worry that feeling was in there too but it was more just the stark size of it and it inspired a sense of

awe about nature, right? Yeah, absolutely. Because it's one thing to see whales breaching in the distance. And it's right there washed up on the shore. Yeah, I'm sure it's crazy how gigantic it is. Incredible, incredible. So what else do we need to know here, Aubrey?

Yeah, so this can happen animals, of course, but also like if someone loses jewelry, you'd say, I lost my necklace in the water, but it washed up on the shore the next day. So this is just a phrasal verb that we use to mean something came from the water and ended up on shore on the beach.

But then what your parents said to you was not anything about something coming up onto the beach, right? Exactly. It's the same phrasal verb, wash up, which means to either wash oneself, your hands, your body. I'm going to go wash up. I will say this after playing sand volleyball because I'll have sand all on my feet and legs from diving in the sand. I'm like, I'm just going to go wash up really quick.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also we use it to mean like to clean up after a meal or wash the dishes, right? I might say, I'll wash up. You guys go sit and chat. That means I'm going to do the dishes and clean the kitchen. Mm.

I love it. And then we could say wash away if we want to add the preposition away. And this is to be removed by water. So I might actually say in my style, I might say I'm going to wash away the sand from my legs. Right. It's not very natural for me personally to say wash up for whatever reason. I didn't say it as a kid, but I might say wash off.

off. Wash off the water. Wash the water off. Yeah, we have wash off. We'll just jump to that one here. So that's to remove something from the surface of something by washing. And that's how I would say that more often too, right? I need to wash the sand off my feet. I need to wash the dirt off my hands. So we'll say wash off when we're talking about just like something on the surface. So a few options here really.

Oh my gosh. What else, Aubrey? What else do we need to know for our listeners? And for wash away, we'll also say this if like imagine after a crime scene and they're asking why don't we have, you know, footprints? Why don't we have this? And they'd say, well, they rained that night. The rain washed away the footprints. So that means it just was removed by water. But we wouldn't say the rain washed off the footprints, right? If they had been made in mud or in snow or something, then we would say wash away. They got washed away by the rain. Yeah.

Yes, I love it. And then what about wash down? This is totally different, right? Right. Yeah. It's crazy how many phrasal verbs there are with wash. You add a preposition, it becomes a totally different meaning. So this means to drink something after eating. So I might say, I ate a handful of pretzels and washed them down with a glass of beer. Yeah. It's a casual way of saying that you needed liquid to consume the food, right? Or you're just saying, I drank something after that. Exactly. Right. Washed it down.

I love it. And then wash over. Did we talk about that one yet? I don't think so. This one's next. And there are two meanings for this. So the first meaning, this is kind of a crazy one because the meanings are complete opposites. Oh, no. First, it means to affect someone strongly. So for example, waves of nausea washed over him. And that means he was

very nauseated, right? Wasn't feeling well. I'd always say, oh, waves of this or waves of anger or irritation might wash over someone means they're being very affected by it.

Oh my gosh. And then the second meaning, literally, I've never thought about this before, Aubrey, but the second meaning is literally the exact opposite. We're going to have to do a separate episode maybe in a couple months just about these two, the two meanings. We could find a few other phrasal verbs that do this, where it's the exact same verbs with opposite meanings. So this one, the opposite meaning is

to happen to someone without affecting them. Like for example, if someone insulted me, I might say, I let her insults wash over me. That means I didn't let them affect me at all. I just totally ignored them. So how would our listeners know from the context, which one it is? I think just the context, right? What are they saying? Because you wouldn't say that

If you're talking about nausea, waves of nausea washed over him, that's not something that you wouldn't care about, wouldn't let affect you. That clearly means you were being affected by that. And then insults, this is sort of the tricky one because it could be that you let it affect you really strongly. Her insults washed over me. They really affected me a lot. So it's all going to be about

intonation i think i think there's context here too it's sure it's intonation it's what do you know about that person and what their attitude is right are they easily hurt or not yeah i think i think the verb let gives us a little bit of a clue i allowed something to just not impact me uh interesting because i could say you know

I let her insults wash over me, meaning they didn't affect. But then if it's like, I let her insults... Well, I agree. I wouldn't say I let her insults wash over me if they really affected me. I might say like,

her insults really washed over me. And then I'm saying they like did affect me. So it's kind of the words around it. And then the other piece I would say is body language. I think someone might tend to shrug their shoulders. Like they don't care when they say that. I let her insults wash over me. Good point. So you're hearing it in your intonation and there probably would be body language as well that you're saying like, no, I didn't care. It didn't bother me. Ooh. I love the idea of another episode in the future of taking two or three of these phrasal verbs that have exactly the opposite meanings.

Yeah, let's do it. Hit follow guys so you don't miss that episode. That's going to be interesting. It's going to be a really good one. All right, good stuff.

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Make it an Abercrombie summer. Shop their newest arrivals in-store, online, and in the app. Okay, Aubrey, we are back from break. And here in our signature role play, you are attending a dinner party at my house. Well, that's good because I love to host dinner parties. Perfect. Because I love to attend dinner parties. I like to host too. Perfect. All right, I'll start us. I'm just going to wash up. I was painting our kitchen today and just noticed I still have paint on my hands that I need to wash off.

We've been meaning to paint. It's such a big job though. Waves of anxiety just wash over me whenever I think about tackling that project. Also, I need to take some ibuprofen. Can I trouble you for a glass of water to wash it down with? Of course. I'll grab one for you. Nice. Yes. Yeah, we used a lot of them, but pretty natural conversation at the same time, right? Absolutely. That's what's tricky or what's interesting about phrasal verbs.

They have such different meanings that native speakers, as we're using them, we're not even really thinking about how they're related to wash or that wash is part of it because the meanings are so different. So you might hear them all in one conversation like this. Yeah, exactly. So let's go through it. So here you first said, I'm just going to wash up. So

Do you mean you're going to wash dishes or wash your car or what do you say? You'd have to go from context, right? I mean, I'm going to wash my hands. I'm just going to wash up means I'm going to wash my hands. But if I, if it's after dinner and I'm offering, or especially if it's at my house, I think I'd say I'm going to wash up. I wouldn't say that at someone else's house. I'd be like, can I help clean up?

Right. That's really interesting too. There's kind of like a homey meaning to wash up, right? Yeah. It definitely implies like you're cleaning your own mess or your kitchen, right? You wouldn't offer to help at someone else's house saying like, can I wash up or can I help you wash up? No. That's really subtle. That's not how I would say it. Yeah. It's subtle, but it's interesting. It's important to know. And then you said, and just notice I still have paint on my hands that I need to wash off. Okay.

Okay. So now we're kind of...

Fascinating. Then you said, we've been meaning to paint. It's just such a big job though. Waves of anxiety wash over me whenever I think about tackling that project. So is this

kind of the more serious one where it actually takes you over? Or do you just let it go and you don't care? Yeah, this is interesting because this is both in the vocabulary and the way you said it. If you go back and listen to Lindsay's intonation, first of all, if you're saying waves of anxiety, you're not going to be like, oh, those waves of anxiety didn't bother me at all. No, you would say this differently. You would choose different

vocabulary, right? Anxiety on its own is already heavy. And then also your intonation. You were like, waves of anxiety wash over me whenever I think about, so we could hear the seriousness in the way you said it. Yeah. And it's also just a common conversation topic you might have with friends that are homeowners. Oh yeah, I know I need to redo my kitchen and this and that. And you're always talking about things you need to, at least in my circle, people talking about things they need to fix in their house.

They want to upgrade their kitchens, their bathrooms, that sort of thing. But maybe you're using the word stress and someone's asking if something's stressing you out. You're like, no, I'm just letting that stress wash over me. And that's when you're saying like, I'm not letting it affect me at all. But you would use a serious word, maybe stress instead of anxiety. Interesting. Well, there's a lot of subtleties here today, Aubrey. And then you said, I need to take some ibuprofen. Can I trouble you for a glass of water to wash it down with?

Yeah. So this is that you just need liquid to wash something down. We'll often say this with medicine, food as well. But I kind of love this little bonus of saying, can I trouble you for something when you're asking for something? I do this a lot. I wouldn't be like, can I have a glass of water?

Like I often will try to be more polite and I'll say it this way. Can I trouble you for a glass of water? Right. You might feel like like a kid might say, can I have a glass of water? Right. Just very matter of fact. But as an adult, you might want to be a little more polite, a little more delicate about it.

Right. And this is one of those options, one of the ways that we ask politely for something. Yes. Guys, go to episode 2408 when you finish up today. The episode is called Effect or Effect? How to Avoid This Common English Mistake, where we battled

battled it out around those two words, right? Very common mistake for our listeners. Yes. And we gave you pro tips of how to know which to use, right? One's spelled with an A, one's with an E. They sound the same. So this is very tricky. Don't miss that episode to find out which to use.

yes i love it and i think a connection moment here is about you know kind of remembering the phrases we used as kids in our households you started the episode today by asking me that that's a conversation that you know you could have with a native speaker that could evoke positive memories for people for sure absolutely right anytime you talk about childhood like that especially something very simple like this right what did your parents say to call you in for dinner to let you know dinner was ready it'd be interesting everyone's probably going to have a different answer

Yeah. So start a conversation about that. Why not? And hit follow so that you're ready for that upcoming episode coming up in the next few months about comparing phrasal verbs that are exactly the same but have opposite meanings. I'm excited. Yes. It's going to be a good one. Hit follow, guys. All right. Good stuff. See you next time, Aubrey. Have a good one. Awesome. You too. Bye. Bye.

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