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| Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Know Your Verbs. My name is Alisha. In this episode, we're going to talk about the verb "walk." Let's get started. |
| Let's look at the basic definition of this verb. The basic definition is to make progress on foot. Examples. "I walked around the neighborhood yesterday." "He walks around the office to stretch his legs." |
| Now, let's look at the conjugations of each verb. Present, "walk," "walks." Past, "walked." Past participle, "walked." Progressive, "walking." |
| Now, let's talk about some other meanings for this verb. First additional meaning for this lesson is to cause an animal to walk. Let's look at some example. "Make sure to walk the dog later." "Have you walked the dogs today?" Here you'll see "walk the dog." This is quite common for dogs. We don't really walk, meaning we don't really take the animal out and let go for a walk with the animal. We usually just use this expression with dogs. We don't usually say "walk the cat" or "walk the bird" or "walk the sheep." I don't know. We usually use it with dogs. "Walk the dog." It's part of the animal's exercise, the necessary exercise. We use "walk" before "dog," in this case. "Make sure to walk the dog. Have you walked the dog?" means caused the dog to walk. |
| The second meaning I want to talk about for this lesson is to accompany someone on foot. You're traveling with someone on foot. Examples of this, "She walked her friend to the station." "Will you walk me home?" First example sentence says, "She walked me to the station." We're following the past tense "walked" with the person being accompanied, in this case me. "She," my friend, maybe. "She walked me," she accompanied me to the station on foot is what this means, but we use "walked" to make it nice and short and easy to understand. "She walked me to the station." In the second example sentence, "Will you walk me home?" It's a request, meaning will you please accompany me home on foot. You're within walking distance. You can walk to your home. You're asking another person, "Will you please walk with me to my house?" To accompany someone on foot, we can use "walk" to do that. |
| Third meaning for this is actually more of an advanced meaning. This meaning is to avoid, as in to avoid criminal punishment. Let's look at some examples of this. "The defendant walked despite a lot of evidence." "I don't think he'll walk; the judge is tough." Here, "walk" means avoiding punishment but we use it in legal situations. I think the reason is because when a criminal or someone who has been accused of criminal behavior is not convicted, meaning they're not guilty or they are allowed to be free, they are not taken to jail, they can walk out of the courthouse or they can walk out of the prison or wherever they're being kept, wherever they are being held. They can walk. We use the verb, "walk" to mean avoiding punishment. But it's usually just used in criminal or legal situations. This is a more advanced use of this verb. "To walk." "I don't think he'll walk" means I don't think he'll be allowed to go free. I don't think he'll get away. I don't think he'll avoid punishment. I don't think he'll walk. |
| Now, let's talk about a few variations on the verb "walk." "To walk on eggshells." To walk on eggshells. Super interesting. "To walk on eggshells" means to exercise great caution. In other words, be really, really careful, to be super careful. The image eggshells are very fragile. It's easy to break them. "To walk on eggshells" means you have to be very, very careful. Otherwise, you'll break the eggshell. "To walk on eggshells" means you have to be very careful. Let's look at some examples of when we might use this expression. "My manager is in a really bad mood today. Everyone is walking on eggshells." "I had to walk on eggshells at that dinner last night." If you don't know this expression "walking on eggshells," you might think, "What is this person talking about?" when you hear this expression. Like, "Everyone is walking on eggshells today?" But it just means everyone is being really, really careful. Everyone is being really cautious. In the first example, "My manager is in a bad mood, everyone is walking on eggshells today," means everyone is being very, very careful because the manager is in a bad mood and people don't want to make him or her unhappy. In the second example, "I was walking on eggshells at dinner last night," means I was being very careful at dinner last night. Maybe, it was a high-pressure dinner situation. "Walking on eggshells" means being very careful. |
| Let's go to the second variation. I prepared two variations that are very similar here. They are "to walk into" and "to walk in on." Very similar. "To walk into," as one word, "into." "To walk into" and "to walk in on." Let's look at "to walk into" first. "To walk into" means to crash into something when walking. You're walking, walking, walking, and crash into something. Examples of this, "I walked into a wall this morning." "Have you ever walked into a glass door?" Yes, I have. I've walked into a screen door. Who has not? Who has not walked into a door, seriously? I do it all the time. It means you're walking and you--I hope, accidentally--you crash into something as you're walking. Of course, if you want to upgrade this you can say, "I ran into a door." That means your speed is different. "Walk into a door" and "run into a door." It's just the speed is different there, but you can change the motion verb if you like. |
| Now, let's take a look at "to walk in on." Different, very different meaning actually. "To walk in on." To walk in on something means to enter a situation accidentally. It's usually something scandalous or embarrassing. You walk in on something accidentally. Maybe, you don't want to see or you're surprised to see that. Let's look at some fairly mild examples of this. First, "She walked in on us gossiping." "They walked in on us watching YouTube videos at the office." You're watching YouTube. "To walked in on." Past tense is my first example. "She walked in on us gossiping." What was the situation? She walked in on, accidentally, us. "Us" meaning some group of people. We were gossiping and someone entered that situation accidentally. It was very uncomfortable. Oh, no. We were gossiping, maybe, about that person. We don't know. But some kind of awkward or uncomfortable situation. "She walked in on us gossiping," on us gossiping. In the second example sentence, "They walked in on us watching YouTube videos at the office." Again, they walked in on us. In this case, we're watching YouTube videos in the office. We could, of course, change the sentence like "I walked in on my co-workers watching YouTube videos in the office." We could change that around. It means accidentally entering a situation that's a little bit uncomfortable in some way. You can find many different examples of how this is used, but I'll leave that up to you. |
| Those are a few different ways, perhaps, for you to use the verb, "walk." I hope that it was helpful for you. If you have any questions, if you know of some other ways to use the verb "walk," or if you just want to try to make an example sentence, please feel free to do so in the comment sections. Thanks very much for watching this episode of Know Your Verbs. We'll see you again soon. Bye! |
| Is that how you walk? That's just running. |
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