Learn how to use the verb "Land"
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| Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Know Your Verbs. My name is Alisha. And in this lesson, we're going to talk about the verb "land." Let's get started. |
| Let's start with the basic definition of the verb "land." |
| The basic definition is “to arrive on the ground after traveling by air or by sea.” |
| Some examples… |
| “Our airplane landed safely.” |
| “The boat will likely land in Chile.” |
| Now, let’s look at conjugations for this verb. |
| Present: land, lands |
| Past: landed |
| Past Participle: landed |
| Progressive: landing |
| Okay, now, let’s talk about some additional meanings for this verb. |
| The first additional meaning is “to arrive on a website or web page.” |
| Some examples… |
| “I clicked the link and landed on a strange website.” |
| “He keeps landing on error pages!” |
| So, this use of the verb “land” is specific to the internet. So, when we arrive on a web page or on a website, we can use the verb “land.” It’s like we arrived at that place, we reached that place on the internet. |
| So, in the first example sentence, if I click on a link and “landed” on a strange webpage or a strange website, here we see the past tense use of the verb, “I landed (past tense) on a strange website.” I arrived at a strange website. |
| In the second example sentence, “He keeps landing on error pages” means he keeps arriving on error pages or he keeps arriving at error pages. So, in other words, for some reason, he’s seeing a lot of error pages when he clicks links or when tries to use the internet, he lands or he arrives at an error page. |
| So, for the internet specifically, we can use “land” to mean “arrive” on a website. |
| The next additional meaning is “to acquire something greatly desired.” |
| Some examples… |
| “I landed my dream job!” |
| “She landed a date with the guy she likes!” |
| So, this use of “land” is used usually for something positive. We use it when we get something we really want. |
| In the first example sentence, “I landed my dream job!” it means I got my dream, but we use “land” to show that it’s kind of significant to us. “I got my dream job” is okay, but to say “I landed my dream job” sounds like you made like a big achievement. There’s something special about that thing you got. In those cases, we can use the verb “land” to really emphasize our excitement. |
| In the second example sentence, “She landed a date with the guy she likes,” we see the same thing. She’s really excited to get this date with this guy, so she really likes the guy, she got a date, but the verb “got” is changed to “land” here or “landed (in past tense)” because we’re showing it’s some kind of like special achievement. “She landed a date with the guy she likes” sounds more like a special thing than she got a date with the guy she likes. |
| So, when you want to express a special achievement or getting something that’s really exciting to you, you can use “land” to talk about that. |
| The next additional meaning is “to come to a stop in a particular place.” |
| Some examples… |
| “I threw my bag across the room, and it landed on the sofa.” |
| “The fighter landed a punch on his opponent’s face!” |
| So, these two example sentences show us how “land” is used to mean something is coming to a stop somewhere. |
| In the second example sentence, it’s actually like a fist, so the expression he landed a punch means the punch arrived at someone’s face or arrived on someone’s face in this case. So, you might hear this used for fighting, actually. This is a great example of how “land” is used for fighting. So we use “land a punch” or “land a kick” which means you successfully touched or you successfully attacked another person. So, landed a punch on someone’s face or landed a kick to someone’s head, for example. We use this for fights, for physical fights. |
| In the first example sentence, however, it’s an object that’s moving through the air. “I threw my bag and it landed on my sofa.” So you can think of this like it arrived on my sofa. It was moving through the air and stopped on my sofa. That was the place where it like finished its movement. We use “landed to talk about that finishing move. |
| So, we see, yeah, two examples here. One is with like physical fights, like body parts moving. The other is with an object that’s moving through the air. So, we can use this to talk about movement and stopping the movement. |
| The next meaning is “to succeed in communicating.” |
| Some examples… |
| “My points just aren’t landing in these meetings.” |
| “The comedian landed some great new jokes at her show.” |
| So, this use of “land” is specific for communication. We use it when we are successful in communicating an idea. |
| In the first example sentence, “My points just aren’t landing in these meetings,” it means my points aren’t being understood or I’m not communicating effectively. I’m not explaining my points effectively, so I’m unable to communicate successfully in these meetings. So, that’s quite a long expression to use, all of those examples I just gave, so we use land. In this case, my points aren’t landing in these meetings meaning I’m just not able to communicate effectively in these meetings. |
| In the second example sentence, we see it in a positive situation, “The comedian landed some great new jokes at her show.” So meaning, she told the joke and the audience reacted favorably. The audience had a good reaction, so she can tell she was communicating effectively. Her joke was told. She told the story, she told the joke, the audience had a good reaction, the communication was successful. So in these cases, we can say “She landed a joke.” She landed something, meaning she communicated that idea successfully. |
| Let’s move along then to some variations in this verb. |
| The first variation is “to land (someone) in (something).” This means to cause someone to be in a negative state or a negative situation. |
| Some examples… |
| “She forgot to pay a bill and landed her roommate in trouble.” |
| “My classmates landed me in detention for disrupting class.” |
| So, this is used, as you can see, in primarily negative situations. |
| In the first example sentence, “I forgot to pay a bill and landed my roommate in trouble.” So, this means by my actions, I forgot to pay a bill. Because of this action, I caused someone else, in this case, my roommate, to be in a bad situation. So my roommate got in trouble because of my actions. So, I landed my roommate in trouble, is how we can explain that situation. So, because of something I did or another person did, there’s someone else that’s affected by that in a negative way. We use “land (someone) in (something)” to describe that. |
| In the second example sentence, “My classmates landed me in detention for disrupting class.” So, through the actions of my classmates, I had to go to detention. So, I can explain that relationship by saying my classmates landed me in detention for disrupting class. This sentence suggests that my classmates were doing something bad, I had some relationship to it, but maybe I wasn’t really doing anything bad in class. However, their negative actions got me in detention, landed me in detention. |
| Detention, by the way, is like waiting after school. You have to stay after school as punishment. You have to stay in the school. So, detention is a bad thing for students. |
| So, “I was landed in detention.” That means somebody else did something to me and put me in a bad situation. |
| So, I hope that you found a new way to use the verb “land.” If you have any questions or comments or know a different way of using this verb, please 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-bye! |
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