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| Hi, everybody! My name is Alisha. Welcome back to Know Your Verbs. In this episode, we're going to talk about the verb put. So, let's get started! |
| Let's begin with the basic definition of this verb. The basic definition of the verb "to put" is to place something in a location. |
| Examples... |
| "Put your bag over there." |
| "Don't put your feet on the sofa." |
| Let's look at some conjugations for this verb, now. |
| Present: put, puts |
| Past: put |
| Past Participle: put |
| Progressive: putting |
| Let's talk about some additional meanings for the verb, "to put." |
| The first one is to write, to write. |
| Examples… |
| "Put your name on this line." |
| "She put her name on the list." |
| So when we say put in this way, we refer to writing, so you're adding some information to a written document or a typed document, as well. So, it can mean to write or, like, to type information. So put your name on this line means like write your name or type your name on this line. |
| In the second example sentence, "she put her name on the list," it means the same thing, she wrote her name on the list or she added her name to a list in some way. It means writing information. |
| Okay, let's go on to the second additional meaning. The second additional meaning is "to use words to express something," to use words to express something. |
| Examples… |
| "How should I put this?" |
| "You're putting it quite simply." |
| So, we can replace the word, put, with "express" like, "How should I express this?" in the first example sentence. But we use put because put sounds much less formal than express. "How should I express this?" It sounds way too formal, way too polite. Instead, we say, "How should I put this?" We use that expression when we're not quite sure how to say something, like we're maybe talking about a sensitive topic and we don't know the correct words to use or it's difficult to explain, you can say, "How should I put this?" |
| In the second example sentence, "you're putting it quite simply," it means you're expressing things quite simply. So, maybe it's a complex situation but the listener is explaining things or expressing things maybe too simply. So, the speaker in this case could say, "You're putting it quite simply." |
| Okay, let's go on to the third meaning. The third meaning is rather open and kind of vague which is "to cause to be in a situation," to cause to be in a situation. |
| Let's look at some examples. |
| "This change puts the whole company at risk." |
| "Your terrible driving puts us all in danger." |
| So in these examples, we see put is used to refer to a situation that some group of people or some person is caused to be in. So in the first example sentence, "This change puts the whole company at risk." This change causes the whole company to be at risk, in a situation of risk, in a condition of risk. We use put to refer to that, to refer to being caused to be in the situation of risk. |
| The second example sentence is the same, "your terrible driving…" this is the reason why the people are in danger in this example sentence. "Your terrible driving puts us all in danger." Your terrible driving causes us all to be in a condition of danger. It's very clumsy, but we use the verb, put, to make this quite short and easy to say. "Your terrible driving puts us all in danger." Okay. |
| There are so many variations, so many phrasal verbs, to use with put, yeah, so check a dictionary for more. These are just a few I'm going to introduce, but check a dictionary for this. |
| The first variation for the verb, put, is "put aside," to put aside. So, to put aside means to stop thinking about something, to cease or to pause an activity while you do something else. |
| Examples… |
| "Put aside your worries and relax for a day!" |
| "I put my phone aside and tried to focus on my work." |
| So in both of these example sentences, we see that one thing is kind of being moved away from the focus. So for example in the first example sentence, "put aside your worries…," it means like stop thinking about your worries like put those to the side in your mind like… don't think about those things for a while. |
| So in the second example sentence, I'm talking about my phone where I'm saying I can literally put my phone aside, put my phone to the side of the thing I'm doing and focus on my work, I put my phone aside. So, we can use this to talk about a concept in our minds or to talk about a physical object as well. |
| Okay, let's go on to the next variation. So, the next variation is "to put someone down." It means to disrespect someone or to make fun of someone, to make them feel bad about themselves. |
| Some examples… |
| "Don't put down your classmates. It's rude." |
| "His boss keeps putting him down in front of his coworkers." |
| So in both of these examples, we see situations where one person is being disrespected by another person. So, "Don't put down your classmates. It's rude." So in this case, the listener is maybe a kid in school who is disrespectful to his or her classmates. So a parent or a teacher might say, "Don't put down…" meaning don't disrespect your classmates, don't be mean to your classmates, don't make fun of your classmates. So, you know, be kind to them in other words. Don't put down your classmates. You could also say, don't put your classmates down, if you like. That's fine, too. |
| In the second example sentence, we see a work situation like, "his boss always puts him down in front of his coworkers," means the boss disrespects this person in front of his coworkers. So, it's a disrespectful situation, again. |
| But one point about this, the expression, "to put someone down," refers to disrespect with regard to humans. However, when talking about animals like we had to put the cat down or we had to put the dog down, it means, usually, due to some serious sickness or some serious injury or illness, the owners of the pet, usually a pet or the animal, decide that the pet should have doctor-assisted death. So, to put down an animal means to choose to allow the animal to die peacefully instead of suffering. So, we use that expression, "I had to put my cat down." This is a much more soft expression than, "the doctor killed my cat," which is essentially what happens. But, it's because of some kind of suffering or some kind of illness or injury the owner wants to prevent, we use the expression, "to put an animal down" in those cases. |
| We do not use this for people. We don't say, "I had to put my brother down" though we do actually have an expression for babies which we use when we put babies to bed like, "I'm going to put down the baby for bed." We do have that, but please be cautious of the differences between animals and humans with this expression. To put someone down has very different meanings. |
| Okay, let's go on to the next variation which is "to put up with." To put up with means to tolerate something. |
| Examples… |
| "I don't want to put up with this crazy schedule anymore." |
| "Don't put up with their bad behavior." |
| In these examples, "put up with" refers to tolerating or being able to stand something or continuing to live with something. In the first example sentence, "I can't put up with this crazy schedule anymore" means I don't want to live with this crazy schedule anymore, I can't stand it, I don't want to do it anymore. |
| In the second example sentence, "don't put up with their bad behavior," it means don't tolerate their bad behavior. So, put up with something means, like, to continue living with something and we often see it in the negative form as in, don't put up with something. |
| Okay, so those are a few new ways I hope to use the verb, put. I hope that you found something new and as I said, there are a lot of phrasal verbs that can be used with put, so please check a dictionary if you'd like to see some more. |
| Thanks very much for watching this episode of Know Your Verbs and we will see you again soon. Bye-bye! |
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