Learn how to use the verb "Find"
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| Hi everybody, welcome back to Know Your Verbs! My name is Alisha and in this episode, we're going to talk about the verb "find." Let's get started! |
| The basic definition of the verb "find" is to encounter something, or to encounter someone, often accidentally, not on purpose. |
| Examples: "I found twenty dollars in my coat pocket." |
| "She found a great apartment." |
| Now, let's look at the conjugations for this verb. |
| Present - find, finds |
| Past - found |
| Past participle - found |
| Progressive - finding |
| Now, let's talk about some additional meanings for this verb: to discover by searching or experimenting. |
| Let's look at some examples. |
| "We found that 20 of our students are from Brazil." |
| "He was surprised to find that cooking wasn't so difficult." |
| So these expressions show us the use of "find" to mean to discover something by experimenting or by searching. |
| In the first example sentence, it's probably by searching through data. So "we found that 20 of our students were from Brazil," that means we probably checked data, we were looking for something, searching for something and we discovered this information. So we can use "find" to express that. |
| In the second example sentence, it's more through experimentation. So "he found that cooking wasn't as difficult as he thought," so this implies, it doesn't directly say but we can guess from this sentence that by trying cooking, by experimenting a little bit with cooking, he discovered it wasn't difficult. So we use "find" to express this. |
| The next additional meaning is: to have a feeling about someone or something. |
| Examples: "I don't find him funny." |
| "She found her boss to be a kind person." |
| So these uses of "find" refer to having an opinion about someone or something. We commonly use an adjective or we commonly use "to be" before a noun phrase here. |
| So in the first example sentence, we see an adjective, "I don't find him funny," which means I don't think he's funny. "I don't find him funny," though, so this sounds a little bit more formal than "I don't think." |
| In the second example sentence, "she found her boss to be a kind person"; so we are using "to be" there to link "the boss" with "kind person." |
| "She found her boss to be a kind person," so this does not mean she discovered her boss and some kind of kind person relationship; no, it means she had an opinion of her boss as being a kind person. So this means an opinion, an opinion about someone or an opinion about something. |
| The next additional meaning is: to make a legal judgment. |
| So this is a very specific use of the word "find," you might see this in police crime shows, legal TV shows. |
| Examples: "We find the defendant not guilty." |
| "The judge found her guilty." |
| So we tend to use this before one of two situations: guilty situations or not guilty situations. What do these mean? Guilty means a person committed a crime, they did something bad in the eyes of the law. Not guilty means they did not commit a crime. So when a person goes to court; a court is a place where laws are enforced, where people discuss in theory whether a crime was committed or not; when people go to court and the decision is reached, we will often use the expression "to be found guilty" or "not guilty." So this use of "found" in this case, past tense, this use of "found" or "find" refers to the legal decision that's made. |
| In the first example sentence, "we find the defendant not guilty"; it means we, the court, have determined that the defendant did not commit the crime. So here in the first example sentence, "we find the defendant not guilty," defendant, we see the route there; defend is someone accused of committing a crime, so the person who is in trouble. Perhaps they are defending themselves, so in the expression, "we find the defendant not guilty," it means we, the court, the people in the court, have decided that this person is not guilty, this person did not commit a crime. "We find the defendant not guilty," this is a very quick and easy way to describe a legal decision. |
| In the second example sentence, "the judge found her guilty." A judge is a person who's, like, the top of a court. In U.S legal systems, the judge makes the decision. Here, "the judge found her guilty" means the judge decided, the judge determined, that she committed a crime. |
| So you'll see "find" and "found" in past tense used to talk about these legal decisions, quite common in tv shows as well. |
| Okay, let's move on now to some variations with this verb. |
| The first variation actually has two meanings. The expression is "to find oneself." |
| So "to find oneself" means to understand your condition or to understand your situation. |
| Let's look at some examples: "She found herself alone with tons of work to do." |
| "You're going to find yourself in bad shape if you don't take care of yourself." |
| So here, you see this is used reflexively, "she found herself alone," so in this case, "she found herself," she is actually the subject of the verb and the object. |
| "She found herself alone with tons of work to do," so that means she realized her situation, a situation related to herself; so she found herself alone. |
| In the second example sentence though, "you're gonna find yourself in bad shape" means you are going to realize that your body is in bad condition if you don't take care of yourself, is what this means. |
| So again, "you're gonna find yourself," so this is used reflexively; "you're gonna find yourself," subject and object are the same there, so this is one way to use "to find oneself." |
| The second way to use "to find yourself," it means to understand how you ought to be, to understand how you should be. |
| Let's look at some examples: "He says he's moving to New York to find himself." |
| "I found myself when I started working in this industry." |
| So when we use the expression "I found myself," we tend to use it when we talk about ourselves, like I, we tend to use it about ourselves a lot, like, "I want to find myself"; it doesn't mean like locate your body, it means, like, to understand how you should be. So this means, like, what's the best job for me, or what's the best lifestyle for me, what's the best city for me, these are all components, all parts to finding yourself. |
| We use the expression "to find yourself" to mean, like, understanding how your life should be or what is your best life, so the process of understanding that. So we use "to find yourself" to talk about it. |
| The last variation is "to find somebody or something out." |
| This expression means to learn information for the first time, and when it's used for people, it's like because they did something bad, you learn about it. |
| Okay, let's look at some examples: "Oh, no! She found out about our surprise birthday party plans." |
| "The criminal didn't think he'd ever be found out." |
| In the first example sentence, it's that someone learned about a surprise birthday party, they found out something they were not supposed to learn about. |
| We use "find out" to refer to the fact that it was like secret information or information that was supposed to be revealed later, perhaps something you don't really want to share but someone discovers, perhaps accidentally. In this case, it's an accident; she discovered a surprise birthday party plan, she found out about the plan. |
| In the second example sentence, we see it's about a person, "the criminal didn't think he'd ever be found out," that means the criminal didn't think he'd ever be discovered, that heed as he would, "the criminal did not think he would ever be discovered," meaning he didn't think anyone would discover or realize the crime he committed. |
| So to find out a person is like to discover their wrongdoing, to find out some information is like just to discover information that maybe you weren't supposed to find out or you weren't supposed to discover that information. |
| So those are hopefully a few new ways for you to use the verb "find." |
| If you have any questions or comments, or know a different way of using "find," please feel free to let us know 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! |
Comments
Hide