Learn how to use the verb "Leave"
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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 “leave.” |
| Let’s get started! |
| Let’s start with the basic definition of the verb “leave.” |
| It is “to go away from someone or something.” |
| Examples: |
| “We’re leaving the house in 10 minutes.” |
| “Our boss usually leaves the office at 7.” |
| Now, let’s take a look at the conjugations for this verb. |
| Present: leave, leaves |
| Past: left |
| Past Participle: left |
| Progressive: leaving |
| Now, let’s talk about some additional meanings for this verb. |
| The first meaning is “to end a romantic relationship or to abandon someone.” |
| Examples: |
| “I’m leaving you.” |
| “His wife left him last year.” |
| So, in the first example sentence, “I’m leaving you,” this is actually a very common expression seen in movies, in like serious breakups, “I’m leaving you.” It’s often, I feel, more often used among married couples than couples that are just dating, but people who are married. It’s like they’d been together for a very long time and one person decides they’re finished. So, “I’m leaving you.” |
| So, we see this in the progressive tense. It shows us the person has made a decision, “I am leaving you. They’re very… like it’s a very clear choice. |
| In the second example sentence, it’s past tense, “His wife left him last year.” That means it’s finished. So, their relationship has ended. The relationship ended last year. His wife left him. |
| The second additional meaning is “to let something remain in a certain condition.” |
| Let’s look at some examples. |
| “I accidentally left the air conditioner on when I went to work.” |
| “Don’t leave the the car running in the garage!” |
| So, as you can see, “leave” in these example sentences is used to refer to kind of a negative situation, like I forgot something within that state or in that condition and I like left my house or I left the room. So, your body physically walks away from the situation, but you have some other thing that remains in that condition. So, you can think of that condition, that thing remaining in that state. So, we kind of use “leave” to mean “remain” here. |
| So like in the first example sentence, the air conditioner remained on when I left the house for work, but when I want to emphasize that it was negative and I didn’t mean to do it, it was an accident, I can say, “I left the air conditioner on.” That sounds much more like, “Ah, I forgot.” Too bad. |
| In the second example sentence, it’s a command, “Don’t leave the car running in the garage!” So, running means “on” like in the turned-on state, in the turned-on condition. “Don’t leave the car running” means don’t allow the car to continue running, to continue being on when it’s in the garage, it’s dangerous. So, to leave something on or to leave something running is like to allow that to continue in that state, but usually because it’s like an accident or it’s often because of an accident. |
| The third additional meaning is “to put something somewhere in the proces of going away.” |
| So that means as you’re leaving a location, you place something somewhere. So, it’s like you’re doing two things at the same time. You’re moving away from a place and when you do that, you put something somewhere. |
| So, let’s look at some examples of this. |
| “She left dinner for us in the oven.” |
| “We left a package next to your door.” |
| So, in the first example sentence, she left dinner for us in the oven, there are two things happening there. One, the “she” in the situation has departed from the situation. Maybe this person, she went to work or she went to bed. She’s no longer involved in this situation. However, when she departed, she did something else. She put dinner for the other people in the oven. So there are two things happening there, she leaves the situation and she puts dinner in the oven. |
| The second example sentence, “We left a package next to your door” is the same thing. So, the “we” in this situation left the location (past tense). So, they went away from the location and as they did, in that moment, when they decided to depart, they left a package, they put a package, placed a package next to the listener’s door. So there are two things happening in this situation too. So when you say “I left something for you,” “they left something for us,” there are actually two things that happen there; they departed and they put something somewhere. |
| The fourth additional meaning is “to give someone responsibility.” |
| Examples: |
| “Leave it to me!” |
| “She left me with these reports.” |
| So, here, we’re seeing “leave” to mean responsibility or receipt of responsibility. |
| In the expression, “Leave it to me!” which is very common, it means left me take care of it, let me deal with it, I’ll do it, no problem, like it’s my responsibility, please give me the responsibility. |
| “Leave it to me.” |
| In the second example sentence, “She left me with these reports,” it’s like she gave the speaker responsibility for these reports, she left me with this, asked me to take care of them. In this case too, I suppose you could say like she came to the speaker’s desk, gave the speaker reports to take care of and then walked away. There could be a double meaning there, I suppose, but to leave someone with a task tends to mean like they’re left with some kind of responsibility. They have a responsibility to accept in that case. |
| Let’s go on to some variations for this verb. |
| The first variation is “to leave somebody or something out.” This means to not include somebody or to not include something. |
| Examples: |
| “She left out the spicy ingredient of the dish she was making.” |
| “You always leave me out of your parties!” |
| So, “to leave something out” means you do not include something. So, a key to understanding how to use this variation is that it’s something that was originally there and you make a choice or the subject of the sentence, in this case. There’s a choice made not to include that thing. |
| We see this in the first example sentence, “She left out the spicy ingredients in the dish she was making.” That means in the recipe, there were spicy ingredients to use. However, she chose not to use those ingredients. She left out those spicy ingredients in the dish. So, there was a choice made. |
| In the second example sentence, it’s about a person. Someone says, “You always leave me out of your parties!” which means you never include me in your parties. So, you always leave me out of your parties is like we are friends, I am here, but you make a choice not to include me in your parties. “You always leave me out of your parties.” So, this is when there’s a choice made not to include someone or something. |
| The next variation is “to leave somebody or something behind.” This means to move away from a place without somebody or without something. So, the nuance is often like you were forced to like not take that thing or you forgot that thing. |
| Examples: |
| “Leave him behind! We’ll come back later!” |
| “She left a pair of shoes behind because there wasn’t room in her suitcase.” |
| So, in the first example sentence, maybe it’s something you’ve seen in like an action movie, the expression “leave him behind.” It means like go away from this place without him. So like a person who is injured, for example, in an action movie, they can’t walk and they’re really sick, you might hear the expression “leave him behind” or “leave her behind.” It means go forward without that person. And then we follow this with the expression, “we will come back later,” so meaning, we’ll come back to help this person later. In that case then, it’s that there’s some situation, which makes it difficult to continue with that person at this time, so the advice is to leave a person behind, like to move forward without that person. |
| In the second example sentence, “She left behind a pair of shoes because they wouldn’t fit in a suitcase,” it’s like she’s forced. She has a limited amount of space, so she was forced to leave her shoes behind. She was forced to go away without this pair of shoes because there was not enough room in her suitcase. So we can use “leave behind” to show kind of this maybe negative or somewhat sad or unhappy situation in some way. So, “to leave someone behind.” Usually, not something you want to do, but that you must do. |
| So, those are a few new ways I hope for you to use the verb “leave.” If you have any questions or comments, if you know a new way of using the verb “leave” 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 again soon. Bye-bye! |
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