Learn how to use the verb "Buy"
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| Hi, everybody. My name is Alisha. Welcome back to Know Your Verbs. Today, we're going to talk about the verb "buy." Let's go. |
| All right. Let's begin with the basic definition of the verb "buy." The basic definition is to pay money for goods or a service, to buy something. Examples, "I bought a puppy. He buys flowers for his wife every month." Okay. Now, let's look at the conjugations of this verb. Present, "buy, buys." Past, "bought." Past participle, "bought." Progressive, "buying." |
| Okay. Now, let's look at some additional meanings for this verb. First one. The first additional meaning for today's lesson of the verb, "buy," is to give someone money so they do what you want them to do, or so they don't do something that you don't want them to do. This is different from the original definition. In the original definition, I said to pay for goods or to pay for a service. In this case, you're giving someone money in exchange for an agreement. We can understand this meaning of the verb, "buy," as bribing someone. We can think of it the same way, to bribe someone for something. Examples, "The judges have been bought. The scandal stated that the Parliament representatives had been bought by an electric company." You might also hear it as in like to buy someone's silence. That's, specifically, you're giving them money to not say anything. "To buy someone" means it's very general, like to give them money in exchange for an agreement of behavior of some kind. "To buy someone silence" is a specific kind of agreement. You're specifically giving them money to say nothing. We often use it in the passive voice, like, "the judges were bought." In that case, we're not saying who. We're not saying who bought the judges. We're just saying the judges were bought, or the judges had been bought. Someone gave the judges money to do or not do something. "Bribe" is one is one way to understand the verb, "buy." |
| The second additional meaning is to believe, to believe something. Examples, "I don't buy that for a second. They're never going to buy your story about getting lost on the way to the airport." In both of these, "buy" means believe. In the first example sentence, I used, actually, a really common expression which is "I don't buy that for a second." I don't buy that for a second. This "buy" means believe. It doesn't mean give money for something. "I don't believe that for a second" means even for a one-second period of time, I don't believe that thing. That's totally not believable. I can't believe that. I don't buy that for a second. That's a really common expression. In the second example sentence, I said, "They're never going to buy your story about getting lost on the way to the airport." In this example, I said, "They're never going to buy your story." Here, again, "buy your story" doesn't mean give you money for a story, it means believe your story. They, some people, they are never going to believe your story, this story that is fake about getting lost on the way to the airport. Or, maybe, the story isn't actually fake, but it's just not a believable story, in other words. "Buy" means believe in these cases. We'll often the use "buy," like "I don't buy that," "I don't buy it," "I don't buy your story," I don't buy your lies," something like that, relating to speech or communication or storytelling. That's a pretty good hint for this meaning of the verb "buy." Maybe, a little extra hint here, this is often used in negative statements like we saw in these examples. We'll also see this used with the preposition "into," like "don't buy into her lies," meaning don't believe her lies. "To buy into something" can also mean to believe something that someone else is saying, but we use "buy into" that thing as well. |
| Let's move along to some variations of this verb. The first variation for this lesson is to "buy time." To buy time. This means to stall. "To stall" means to delay an activity or to try not to do an activity. You're trying not to do that for some reason. We used the expression "to buy time." Examples, "I called in sick today and bought myself some time to finish the project." "He's just buying time and waiting for the company to make a decision." All right. In both of these, we see that someone is stalling or someone is trying to delay something, or someone is trying to get extra time to do something. In the first example sentence, I said, "I called in sick today and bought myself some time to finish my project," meaning I gave myself some extra time. We use the verb "buy" because it's like it's not free, really. I bought myself some time, yes but I had to use a sick day at work, for example. I bought some time. In the second example sentence, "He's just buying time." It's like we don't know how, but somehow he's stalling. He's delaying, doing something, until a company makes a decision, maybe about his work. These just mean giving yourself extra time, like you're stalling or delaying something else. We use "to buy time" to talk about that. |
| Let's go on to the next variation, then. The next variation is "to buy out." To buy out. "To buy out" means to purchase all or part of a company so that you are the owner of that company. Examples, "Company A was bought out by Company B last year." "To buy something out" means a company, Company A, who does not control yet Company B, purchases part of that company or purchases a majority of that company, just enough sometimes so that they can control the company. That means that, essentially, Company A purchases Company B and controls that company then to. To buy out. To buy out. All right. The next variation for "to buy" is the expression "to buy the farm." "To buy the farm" is a strange expression, which means to die. To die. As you can imagine, it's a casual expression for "to die." It's used in light situations, even though death is a heavy topic, I think. Examples of this. "If you keep riding that motorcycle, you're going to buy the farm." "The old man bought the farm last week." Both of these expressions, "bought the farm," just mean to die. In the first example, it's a warning, like if you keep riding that motorcycle, you're going to buy the farm, means you're going to die. It's dangerous, in other words. In the second example sentence, "the old man bought the farm," it doesn't actually mean, I suppose it could mean in some specific situations, that yes an old man did buy a farm in fact somewhere; but in very casual informal settings, we could say also the old man died last week as well. "Bought the farm" means die. |
| How do you know which one? Just from context. Just pay attention to the conversation. If it's about a farm, if the conversation is about a farm and living on a farm, it's probably about a farm, buying a farm. If the conversation is totally unrelated to farms, it probably means die, or it could. Just pay attention to the conversation in the context there. |
| Those are a few different meanings and a few variations of the verb, "buy." I hope that you picked up something new from this lesson, and I hope that you can use it in your everyday life. Of course, if you have any questions or comments, or if you want to try to make a sentence with the use of this verb, "buy," that we talked about in this lesson, please feel free in the comment section of this video. Thanks very much for watching this episode of Know Your Verbs, and we'll see you again next time. Bye-bye. |
| To some variation. |
| Yeah, I was a Barbie fan when I was a little girl. Twenty Barbies and one Ken. You needed to buy another Ken doll, that's for sure. You need another Ken in that group. Oh, don't look here. |
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