Learn how to use the verb "Order"
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| Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Know Your Verbs. My name is Alisha. And in this episode, we're going to talk about the verb "order." Let's begin. |
| Let's start with the basic definition of the verb "order." The basic definition is to request something, to request food at a restaurant or a café, to request items from a catalog or from the internet, for example, "to order." Okay. Some examples, "I ordered a pizza." "Did you order new office supplies?" |
| All right. Now, let's look at the conjugations of this verb. Present: order, orders. Past: ordered. Past participle: ordered. Progressive: ordering. |
| Now, let's talk about some additional meanings for this verb. The first additional meaning is "to command." So, "to command" means to ask someone, but very, very strongly. Could be a military situation, could be a school situation, your parents could be really strict with you. Let's look at some examples. Okay. "The general ordered everyone to clean." "We were ordered to return to our homes." So, in both of these example situations, someone or some entity, some group, some organization is commanding someone else to do something. |
| In the first example sentence, "The general ordered everyone to clean." It means the general, in this situation, commanded, so strongly asked everyone in the situation to clean. So, this could be like a military situation. Everyone in the group has to clean the cafeteria, for example. So, it's a strong command, a strong order. Another important point about the idea of a command is that if you don't listen, if you don't do the thing you're ordered to do, if you don't do the thing you are requested to do, there might be a bad outcome, a bad result, bad consequences. So, you should probably do that thing. "The general ordered everyone to clean." If you don't clean, you could get in trouble. |
| The second example sentence was, "We were ordered to return to our homes." Here, we're using the passive voice. We were ordered by whom? We don't know. We don't know who gave the order, but we were ordered to return to our homes. So, again, this is a command. If we do not return to our homes, there might be some bad results, some bad outcome. So, we should do that. So, "ordered" means command in these cases. Okay. Let's go on to the second additional meaning for this verb. |
| The second additional meaning for this verb is "to arrange" or "to organize something." Examples, "I ordered everything according to color." "The files are alphabetically ordered." So, in the first example sentence, "I ordered everything according to color" means I arranged or I organized everything, for example, clothes or maybe pens or supplies according to color, which means probably things of the same color are grouped together or are organized, are arranged together. But I use the verb "ordered." "I ordered everything according to color" means I arranged or I prepared everything according to color. We just used "ordered" instead here. |
| The second example sentence uses a very common expression, "alphabetically ordered." Means, according to the letters of the alphabet, the material is arranged. So, this could be for example, a list of names, or a list of books, or a list of movies, but they are alphabetically ordered. Meaning, the top of the list begins with "A" or the letter closest to "A," maybe "B." And then the bottom of the list is "Z." So, everything follows the order, so the sequence of letters in the alphabet. Everything is alphabetically ordered, alphabetically arranged. |
| Okay. So, now, let's talk about some variations on this verb. The first variation is the expression "out of order." So, "out of order" means broken or suspended from use. We cannot use that thing. It's somehow not safe to use, or it's not working, not functioning correctly. Examples, "The vending machine is out of order." "The company printer is out of order." So, both of these mean that the machine, in the subject of the sentence, is broken, or there's some other reason why we cannot use that thing. So, "The company printer is out of order." Maybe it's broken, maybe it's missing a piece, maybe there's no ink, maybe there's some other problem related to it. "Out of order" is kind of a vague open reason. It can mean a few different things but, in general, it just means this thing cannot be used right now. It is out of order. |
| The second variation is a pair, actually, of phrasal verbs, which can mean the same thing. It is "order in" and "order out." Depending on who you talk to, these can actually mean the same thing, but it's just personal preference. "Order in" and "order out" just mean getting takeout or delivery food. So, you might here say -- oh, I'll just read the example sentences. "Do you want to order in tonight?" "Let's order out for lunch." So, you might hear -- I don't know. Depending on the person, people might choose "order in" or "order out." I know I definitely say "order in" when I mean delivery because it sounds like I order something, I request something, as in the basic definition of the verb, and the food comes into my house. That's my logical thinking. "Order out" is also used, but it means like to get takeout or to get delivery. In other words, not to cook, but not to go sit down at a restaurant either. There's some kind of delivery or pickup happening, "to order in" or "to order out." Just depends on the situation. |
| Let's talk about one more variation. The variation is "to order around," "to order someone around." So, "to order someone around" means to command them unnecessarily. So, it's like you ask someone to do small tasks, lots and lots and lots of things. You could do them yourself, but you make the other person, you force the other person to do these small things for you. It's like just because you want some power over that person. It's typically not a good thing to order someone around. Examples, "I'm tired of my boss ordering me around." "He kept being ordered around by his friends." |
| So, in the first example sentence, "I'm tired of my boss ordering me around," it means the speaker's boss asks them to do lots of small things that really aren't that necessary or they're time-consuming, very tedious, like lots of small details to take care of. So, the speaker is frustrated, the speaker is unhappy that the boss figure is asking so much and maybe for no reason. So, they used the expression "order around." "I'm tired of my boss ordering me around." |
| In the second example sentence, "He kept being ordered around by his friends." "Ordered around" here refers to the behavior his friends are abusing. So, we've included friends in quotation marks there because the idea is that friends, true friends do not unnecessarily ask people to do things for them, like, true friends aren't going to force tasks on their other friends. That's not very nice. So, "to order a friend around" is probably pretty rude, or there's like a power thing, a power situation happening there. So, "to be ordered around by your friends" is probably not a good thing and not a good sign. Okay. So, that's one more variation. |
| So, I hope that you've got a few new ways of using the verb "order" and you learned a few variations that include this verb. So, if you have any questions or comments, or if you want to try to use this word in a sentence, please feel free to do so in the comment section of this video. Thanks very much for watching this episode of "Know Your Verbs" and we'll see you again soon. Bye-bye. |
| Female: Can you sing the alphabet backwards? |
| Alisha: The alphabet backwards? Opposite alphabetical order? Z, Y, X, W, V, U, T. No. |
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