Learn how to use the verb "Push"
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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 "push." |
| Let's get started! |
| Let's look at the basic definition of the verb "push." |
| The basic definition is "to use force to move something away from you, usually." |
| Examples: |
| "We pushed the car out of the garage." |
| "He pushed his chair into the aisle." |
| Let's look at the conjugations for this verb: |
| Present: push, pushes |
| Past: pushed |
| Past Participle: pushed |
| Progressive: pushing |
| Now, let's talk about some additional meanings for this verb. |
| The first additional meaning is to persuade someone with force. |
| Examples: |
| "My boss is pushing me to work more hours." |
| "Don't let them push you into a bad decision." |
| So, in both of these example sentences, we see a situation where someone is being persuaded to do something. So, when we use "push," it sounds like the person who is the object in the situation does not want to do the thing that's being discussed. |
| Okay, so in the first example sentence, that means someone's boss is pushing for more overtime work. So the boss wants more overtime; however, the person involved in the situation, the person in the situation does not want to work more overtime. The boss tries to persuade and they're kind of using force, so we use "push" to talk about that. The boss does not physically, I hope, push this person, but the boss pushes using words, trying to persuade, trying to use strong words to convince the other person to do overtime. |
| In the second example sentence, "Don't let them push you into a bad decision," it's like there's some outside force, an outside person that's trying to convince the listener, in this case, to make a decision, but the decision might be a bad decision for the listener. So in other words, it means don't let them persuade you or don't let them convince you to make a choice that's bad for you. Don't let them push you into a bad decision. |
| The second additional meaning for the verb "push" is "to advertise something a lot," to advertise something a lot. |
| Examples: |
| "We're really pushing our PDF cheat sheets lately." |
| "What products should we push at the trade show?" |
| Little joke about our PDF cheat sheets there, totally my joke. They didn't tell me to put it in. But anyway, so when I say we've been pushing our PDF cheat sheets recently, it means we've been advertising that product a lot. We've been advertising our PDF cheat sheets a lot, like on our live streams and on our website and everywhere, like on our social media. It means we're advertising that thing a lot. So that's the thing that we hope people see. We want people to check out that item. |
| The second example sentence is a question, "What products do we want to push at the trade show?" meaning what's the focused advertisement or what are the items we really, really want people to look at and we want to show as much as possible. What products do we want to push at the trade show? |
| Okay. Let's go on to the third additional meaning. |
| The third additional meaning is to try to go beyond something. |
| Let's look at some examples, first: |
| "Marathon runners push the limits of their bodies." |
| "The engineers are really pushing the capabilities of the software." |
| So, in these example sentences, we see there's some kind of limit like in the first example, it's body limits. So, marathon runners try to push the limits of their bodies, meaning the body has some established limit like that means the body can do this amount. So, in this case, it's marathon running, so maybe the body can run 3 to 4 hours at a time, for example, or the body can run this speed, I don't know. It's a lot. So, marathon runners try to push this limit. It means they try to go beyond this limit. That's the image we're looking at her. So, marathon runners try to push the limits of their bodies, try to go beyond the limits of their bodies. |
| The second example sentence is the same, but we're talking about software capabilities. So here, the capabilities of the software are the limit. So, "The engineers are pushing the capabilities of the software." So now, the software can do this, but maybe, the engineers are making updates or making changes, and they're trying to go beyond the current limits of the software. So this is maybe a nice visual, I suppose, for this meaning of the verb "push." |
| Okay. Let's look at the fourth one. |
| The fourth additional meaning for the verb "push" is "to approach a number," to approach a number. |
| Let's look at some examples: |
| "Sales are pushing into the millions this year." |
| "Grandpa is pushing 90." |
| So we use this when we're, like wanting to express, usually, a high number, actually. When we're talking about low numbers, we don't really use "push." Push sounds like you're approaching a big milestone. |
| So, in the first example sentence, sales are pushing into the millions, it's like we're gonna reach this milestone of millions of sales, so that's a really important number, so we can use pushing into which is like, it sounds like it's an achievement. We're going to move into the millions of sales, but pushing sounds like a little bit like it was kind of a struggle maybe and so, it's like a special achievement to reach this point. |
| The second example sentence is similar, but we see it with age. So "Grandpa is pushing 90" means he's almost 90. Maybe, he's 89 right now or 88 perhaps, but he's nearly at the level of 90 years old, so that might be a difficult thing to do, to live to 90 years old. It sounds like an achievement and so, it sounds like something that could be a struggle. So we can use "pushing" to refer to nearly reaching that point. |
| We typically use this in the progressive form, actually. We don't use this in past tense or in present tense, really. We don't say, like "he pushes" or "she pushed 90" or something like that. We tend to use it in the progressive form to mean like this is happening now. "Sales are pushing into the millions." "Grandpa is pushing 90," like right now, he's approaching 90, so, interesting one. |
| Let's move on to some variations for this verb. |
| The first variation for the verb "push" is "to push your luck," to push your luck. |
| So this has a very long explanation. "To push your luck" means "to try too hard to get more of something you already have and then risk losing what you already have with you." |
| Okay, so let's look at some examples. It's hard to see, okay. |
| First one: "He agreed to take out the trash; I probably shouldn't push my luck and ask him to clean the kitchen too." |
| "Don't push your luck; the department isn't likely to make any more budget changes." |
| So, in the first example sentence, he agreed to take out the trash, so that's like the achievement, the speaker got that. He agreed to take out the trash. The speaker also wants this person to clean the kitchen, but they think, "Oh, I shouldn't push my luck," meaning I shouldn't try too hard to get something more from this person. I shouldn't try too hard for more from this person because he might quit and stop doing the task he originally agreed to do. So, I want him to clean the kitchen, yes, but I'll stop. I shouldn't try too hard because he might quit. |
| The second example sentence, there's kind of a subtle thing going on there. The second example sentence says, "don't push your luck," so that's an advice statement. "The Department isn't likely to make any more budget changes." So this sentence implies, we can guess, that the listener already got some kind of budget update or maybe a budget increase. The person speaking in this situation is advising don't try to get more, in other words, like don't try to ask for another budget change or another budget update because if you ask, you might lose the update you already received. |
| So, "don't push your luck" means don't try to ask for more of the thing. You might lose what you already gained. |
| The second variation for the verb "push" is "to push around." |
| "To push around" means to bully someone, to have mean behavior towards someone that has no meaning, there's no reason for it. You just push them around. They're smaller or they're not as powerful as you and so you can actually visually see this, like to physically push someone around or to push someone with your words as well. |
| Examples: |
| "Don't let your coworkers push you around!" |
| "You shouldn't push people around just because they're different from you." |
| So, "to push around" means, probably in most cases, using your words to push people around, though I can't think of many cases except in like schools or someone would physically just push people around. |
| Yeah! |
| In most cases, it's with words, so you're using, like, mean words or kind of bullying behavior to try to make yourself sound better than another person. So don't push people around. In other words, you should try to be equal with other people. So, both of these example sentences show that. |
| The second example sentence, "You shouldn't push people around just because they're different from you" means you shouldn't bully people just because of a difference, because of the way they look or the way they sound or where they work or live or whatever. So, you should not do that. You should not push people around. In other words, you should be kind to people. |
| So, those are a few new ways I hope that you can use the verb "push." If you have any questions or comments or if you know another way to use the word "push," please feel free to let us know in the comment section of this video. |
| Thanks for watching this episode of Know Your Verbs and we will see you again soon. Bye-bye! |
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