Speaker 1: Have you been bugged out recently? Has anything weirded you out?
Have you been creeped out by anything or anyone lately? Well,
don't freak out. Today's lesson is all about Halloween phrasal verbs.
Speaker 2: Welcome to another Happy English podcast, coming to you from
New York City. And here's your English teacher, Michael all Ry.
Speaker 1: Thank you Jan and thanks everyone. It's Michael here from
Happy English and I help people speak English better. This
is Happy English Podcast, Episode seven sixty nine, Halloween phrasal
Verbs Today. I've got some phrasal verbs that will help
you talk about your feelings and reactions related to Halloween.
This vocabulary is really useful for sounding more natural. Let's
dive in. Let's say you go to a Halloween party
and maybe you're a little uncomfortable because it's in an
old house on a dark street. Then you get to
the party and there's a weird vibe. You don't know
many people, and everyone is dressed up in scary costumes.
It seems like the party bugged you out. Something bugs
someone out, and it's not like full blown fear. It's
just like, ooh, it's a little off. Yeah, that party
was a little too much for me. Or maybe you
get home from the party and you start hearing strange
noises in the middle of the night that would totally
bug me out. And what if you want to describe
something that's like a little stronger, a little creepier, and
makes you feel a little more uncomfortable, Well you can
say that you got weirded out, or that something weirded
you out. Weird Out is definitely a step up on
the spooky scale. Weird Out is a feeling when something
is just plain strange and unsettling. You know, it's like
you're exploring an old attic and you find a dusty
doll with one eye missing. The other eye is looking
right at you. You'd be like, that doll really weirded
me out. It's like something is not quite right here.
It weirded me out. If you want to describe a
more intense feeling, something may creep you out. When you
get creeped out, you feel scared or uncomfortable, usually by
something scary or even emotionally disturbing, like when you're watching
a horror movie and there's a dark, shadowy figure lurking
in the background and you're like, Ooh, that totally creeped
me out. It makes you want to sleep with the
lights on. That's the level of creep out. Like when
I walk around this city after midnight and there's nobody
else walking but me. Those empty streets in the city
at night creep me out. What about if you walk
into the kitchen at night, turn on the lights and
suddenly you see something crawling across the floor. That would
gross me out. Something that grosses you out makes you
feel dis disgusted or even nauseated, Like when you open
a package of cheese and you find out that it's spoiled.
The smell of that cheese can totally gross you out.
And that's why I don't like horror movies. Some of
those bloody chainsaw scenes really gross me out. How about you?
Does that gross you out? Do bugs gross you out? Okay,
so we got bug out, weird out, creep out, and
gross out. These are all like kind of negative and
you can use them for those not so pleasant Halloween feelings.
But Halloween's not all that bad, right for some people.
There's a lot of excitement on that day, and don't
freak out. But this phrasal verb has two meanings. Yeah,
it can go both ways freak out can be positive
or negative. Let's say your friend jumps out from behind
a door wearing a scream mask. Yikes, you may freak
out and scream in terror. Or if you get to
work late, your boss may just freak out not exactly
what you want at nine o'clock in the morning. But
on the other hand, like if your favorite band announces
a free surprise concert in the park, you might freak
out with excitement. Or you tell your kids that you're
gonna take them to Disneyland, I'm sure they'll freak out
with joy. Freak Out is all about the intensity of
someone's reaction and the context. Remember context is king okay,
are you tired of being scared? Then you can totally
take action with the next two phrasal verbs. You want
to make sure that ghosts or other evil spirits stay away,
you can do something to ward them off. Ward Off
means to keep something bad away, or to protect yourself
from something like. In the old days, people used to
believe that garlic could ward off vampires. And I gotta
tell you, considering the amount of garlic I use when
I cook, it's no wonder that I've never seen a
vampire in my house, and I remember when I was
in Istanbul. You can always see the Turkish blue eye everywhere.
They say it's supposed to ward off bad energy and envy.
So ward off is about protection. It's about preventing something
bad from happening. And then we have scare off, which
means to make something go away by frightening it. That's
why people decorate their houses with scary objects and creatures.
They want to scare off evil spirits and make sure
that they don't get bothered by them. On the practical side,
if a wild animal like a raccoon comes near your
house making a loud noise, maybe just what you need
to scare it off and send it back to where
it came from. Well, I hope that wasn't too spooky.
Happy Halloween, and keep in mind the best way to
remember vocabulary like this and any other word or phrase
in English is to take that word or phrase, write
it in a sentence that's true for you or true
in your world, and then memorize your sentences and check
this out. You need more experience practicing your English, well,
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just visit Myhappy English dot com and choose podcast lesson
seven sixty nine. Remember, learning another language is not easy,
but it's not impossible, and I'm here to help you
on your journey.
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