Learn how to use the verb "Roll"
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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 "roll." |
| Let's get started. |
| The basic definition of the verb "roll" is "to move something by making it turn over on itself, in this motion," to roll. |
| Examples: |
| "Roll that ball over here!" |
| "The kids are rolling down the hill at the park." |
| Let's look at the conjugations for this verb: |
| Present: roll, rolls |
| Past: rolled |
| Past Participle: rolled |
| Progressive: rolling |
| Now, let's talk about some additional meanings for this verb. |
| The first additional meaning is "to wrap something around itself," usually in like a ball formation or it can be in this formation. |
| Examples: |
| "I rolled the dough into a ball." |
| "She rolls her hair up in the mornings." |
| We use it in this way to mean putting something onto itself and kind of wrapping it. So, if you imagine like a piece of paper or like a tissue or something, we wrap it onto itself, but we use "roll" when we want to form, like a tube sort of thing. Yeah, like a tube or a ball as well, so we can roll something into a ball too. But it's this motion, to roll something, or this, like I just did with this tissue, to roll something into a tube or to roll a tissue, to roll a newspaper, to roll a magazine, to hit a fly on the wall. |
| In the second example sentence, "She rolls her hair up in the mornings," it sounds like she is actually wrapping or rolling the hair around itself and putting it up. So, we use "roll" to talk about this. It's usually some kind of circular or like a tube shape that's formed. |
| Okay. Let's go to the second additional meaning. |
| The second additional meaning is "to move something on wheels." |
| So that means wheels are attached to the object like a chair or a table and we move it. We use the verb "roll" to talk about that movement. |
| Examples: |
| "He rolled across the office in his chair." |
| "The medical team rolled the patient into the operating room." |
| So, in these example sentences, we're talking about movement with some kind of furniture item like a bed or a chair that has wheels attached. In the first example sentence, his chair has wheels attached, he rolled across his office in the chair. So sitting in the chair, he rolled. He moved across the office because of the wheels on his chair. |
| In the second example sentence, it's a patient probably on a hospital bed with wheels attached to the bed. So the patient was rolled into the operating room, so that means the patient was moved via this bed with wheels. |
| The third additional meaning for this verb is "to make something even" or "to make something smooth using a roller." |
| Examples: |
| "They rolled paint onto the walls." |
| "Let's roll the dough out flat." |
| So, these sentences are quite specific to a kind of tool that we call a roller, a roller. So, I've used it to talk about paint and dough, for baking. So, it's a kind of circular object. For paint, it's usually attached to a handle and the roller part is where the paint collects, so we dip it into paint, pick it up, and use this motion to roll paint onto a wall. So the roller rolls. It moves in this sort of motion and the paint is smoothly distributed, so the paint goes onto the wall because of the rolling motion. It becomes smooth because we roll it. |
| In the second example sentence, it's about a baking tool called a roller, so it's like a wooden, maybe plastic tool that's like a cylinder or a long tube sort of thing and we use it in this motion, again, this sort of rolling motion, back and forth, to make a smooth dough. |
| Let's go to the fourth additional meaning for this verb. |
| It is "to make a trilling sound," to make a trilling sound. |
| Examples: |
| "The drum rolled alone in the hall." |
| "She rolls her "r"s when she speaks." |
| So, the first one might be difficult to imagine, but we have this expression called a drum roll. So, it's like before there's a big announcement, there's like this "drrrrrr" sound that comes from a drum, so that's a drum roll. So, "The drum rolled alone in the hall" refers to a drum or a drummer making that sound on a drum. |
| In the second example sentence, we talk about the "r" sound. So this is common among, I know, like Spanish speakers, for example. To roll your "r"s is to make that same sound when you pronounce your R, that /r/, /r/ sound. It's called rolling your "r"s. The /r/, the /r/ sound is called rolling your "r"s or a rolled "r." That's the word we use to talk about that trill. So it's called a trill, we can use it as a noun, "trill," but we also use the expression rolled "r" to talk about that sound. |
| Let's go on to some variations of this verb. |
| The first variation is the expression "to roll up your sleeves," to roll up your sleeves. |
| "To roll up your sleeves" means "to prepare for work." The image here is that you're wearing long sleeves. However, if you're going to do a hard work, you might sweat or you might get dirty, so by rolling up your sleeves, your long sleeves, you are better prepared or you are more prepared to do hard work. So, this is sort of the image, like, oh, I'm getting ready to do some hard work. |
| Examples: |
| "Let's roll up our sleeves and get started." |
| "She rolled up her sleeves and began her work." |
| So, in both of these, it's about preparing to begin something, to prepare like to start your work, to roll up your sleeves. |
| The second variation is actually a pair. I put these two together. |
| It is "to roll up" and "to roll down." |
| So, "to roll up" and "to roll down" refer to moving something or causing something to move up or down by turning a lever or a crank of some kind. So, it's usually like a crank. So, I know lots of young people might not remember this or might not have experienced it even, but a great example of this is in cars. So cars, before, buttons were used, there was an actual crank to roll down and to roll up the window in cars. |
| So, examples: |
| "Roll down your window!" |
| "We roll down the curtains every day." |
| So "roll down" just means that something comes down as a result of this motion, and roll up means something goes up as a result of the same motion. That's all. So we can use it any time we have to use a lever or something else to roll another object. |
| Let's go to the last bonus one which is the expression, "roll out," to roll out. |
| I didn't include any example sentences here because it's not used in a sentence. It's used just like an exclamation. It means "to leave." "Roll out!" It's like super casual. It's used usually among young people like maybe college-age people, I suppose. |
| "Roll out" means leave, like let's go, let's leave, roll out. So, it has kind of like a rough image, I suppose. I don't know if it's used that much anymore, but I don't really use it, but now you know. If you see it in the movie, "roll out" means leave or let's go. |
| Great! So, I hope that you find a new way of using the verb "roll." Of course, if you know a different way of using the verb "roll" or if you have any questions or comments or if you want to practice making an example sentence with this verb, 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 agai soon. Bye-bye! |
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