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Ian: You're listening to “Coffee with Gringos.” I’m Ian Kennedy.
Paige: I'm Paige Sutherland.
Ian: And today we are going to jump into some business phrasal verbs that will be very helpful to anyone who is trying to expand their vocabulary, especially in the context of the office. So, when we are working in a typical office or typical job with business English, it's very common for us to have certain specific phrasal verbs. So, in an earlier episode, we talked about buzzwords, which are industry specific vocabulary words that are similar to this, but if you remember listeners, a phrasal verb is a verb plus a preposition. So, when we put two words together, they take on a different meaning when they're together. So, it helps to have, especially, a native explains these words to someone who's learning the language. So, Paige, and I thought it would be useful for us to go through a few of these today. So, as always, if you get lost, check out that audio guide and transcript at www.dynamicenglish.cl. Okay, Paige—I'm going to kick us off with the first one today and then we'll pass it on to you. We'll just go back and forth and talk about some ones that we're familiar with and that you hear a lot when you're in the office. So, the first one I'm going to start out with today is “to branch out.” So, to branch out is basically to expand or extend someone's interest or something they're working on, something they want to pursue. So, we hear this a lot when perhaps somebody is leaving a company to start their own or maybe a company is expanding into a new market. Basically, we're extending or doing something a bit different so, in this context, we could use an example of, “I'm leaving the company to branch out on my own.” This would be like saying, starting my own company or “They are going to branch out and try a new project in the Latin American market.” We might hear it in this way as well. This is a good one to know when you're thinking of this context and pretty useful. What about you, Paige? Is there one that you can particularly think of to start with?
Paige: Yeah, I think a pretty common one back in the old days when we used to go to work and we didn't work from home was the phrasal verb “drop in.” That was very common for your manager or your boss to say, “Hey, my drop-in hours are Thursday from three to five pm.” So, drop in is don't make an appointment, come spontaneously during these times. It's more informal, so drop in. So physically, you're walking into their office, you're just dropping into it. And so that's very common lingo in the office when we used to go to the office that you would just drop into each other's office during office hours. So that one I find is very common.
Ian: Yeah, that's a good one to use. Like you said, it's a little bit more informal, it's a bit more casual, and maybe if you just want to talk for a moment or you need to get a quick approval for something, it can be done during that time. So, it doesn't have to be something really structured or specific necessarily. It's usually like if it's an if it's a good drop in, it's usually an in-and-out kind of a thing. So that's a really good one to start with. So, another one that I can see here is “to close down”. So, when we take these two words together to make the phrasal verb, close down is basically to say we're shutting down, we're stopping operating. We hear this a lot in the case of a company that's decided to close down a specific location, a specific branch, maybe the entire company is closing down in unfortunate cases. But a good example could be “The firm has decided to close down its Chicago branch, the Chicago location.” So, it's how it sounds on its own. We usually, like I said, use this in an unfortunate way if business isn't going well and you have to close down or it could just be a strategic decision. “Amazon has decided to close down their brick-and-mortar stores to focus more on e-commerce and online sales.” That might be a more modern-day example that we see there.
Paige: Hey, Ian. Did you know besides the podcast, Dynamic English offers one-on-one classes with native teachers from all over the world?
Ian: Really? But isn't it just a bunch of grammar lessons?
Paige: Nope, it's completely discussion-based and focuses on topics the student is interested in.
Ian: That's amazing. But what if I'm not living in Chile?
Paige: No problem. Dynamic does online classes. You can be living anywhere.
Ian: Great, but I'm a little intimidated to take the class alone. Can I join with a friend?
Paige: Of course. Dynamic offers group classes of up to four. Plus, for the next month, Coffee with Gringos listeners get 10% off individual or group classes. So go online to www.dynamicenglish.cl and mention that you are a listener and get your discount.
Ian: Well, I'm sold. Sign me up.
Paige: To piggyback off of “closing down”, another good phrasal verb on that same vein is “lay off.” This is very common when companies are downsizing, they need to cut budgets. There's generally a lot of layoffs. It happens in very big companies pretty often, like a company like General Electric has a lot of layoffs when maybe they're not having a good quarter. So, you hear that quite often— “lay off” which is just simply that you have lost your job, and it's an economic reason. So, it's not necessarily you being terminated for conduct or for your work. It's simply just a budget issue that you know a lot of big companies have layoffs to pay the bills.
Ian: That's a really good distinction to make. I get this question a lot, actually. What's the difference between layoff and to be fired? So, these are not the same things necessarily. If you're fired, you've probably not performed well, you've probably done something wrong and they're terminating you. They're canceling your contract for that reason. But a layoff is, like you said, it's for an economic reason, it's a business decision. The financial department says we’ve got to cut costs. Unfortunately, it's usually employees that suffer from that cut so, it doesn't necessarily mean the same thing. So don't be confused by that. If you hear someone say, “I was laid off” there not necessarily saying that they've been fired. These are different things. So good to point out there.
Paige: And it's often time at the office. So generally, if you're new, you're going to experience a layoff before someone that's been at the company for five years. So, it's really just like, “John's only been here two months, he's going to be laid off before Steve who's been there ten years.” So, a lot of it really is not performance at all. It's just they have to make cuts and you've been here the shortest.
Ian: Exactly, just a business decision that turns out to be unlucky for that employee. Another good one that I talk about to students, especially here is “look forward to.” this is a phrase that we use a lot in English, I usually say, especially, to usually when you're closing out an email or maybe some sort of a communication, it's common to say that you look forward to seeing someone talking to someone having a meeting with someone. So, looking forward to saying that you are excited or you're pleased about something that's going to happen in the future. So, like I said, this is very common to say, “We look forward to hearing from you soon.” “We look forward to the introduction meeting.” “We look forward to the project kickoff.” We're just saying that we are feeling positive and excited about a challenge that's coming up in the future. So, this is used, like I said, all the time in communications like email, especially. So, I always tell students, this is a really important one to highlight. All of these are but this one is, especially if you're worried about your emails or closing out sort of a conversation with someone.
Paige: Yeah, definitely something that I use a lot. Another one that that's pretty common is “take over.” This could be used in many ways. It's really to take responsibility over and it could be if I'm going on vacation next week, I'll say, “Oh, Cindy is going to take over all my responsibilities while I'm on vacation.” Or it could be taken over that I'm leaving the company and Cindy is taking over my job permanently. It's really just taking control, taking responsibility over the duties that I had at that job.
Ian: And too, like you said earlier, to follow in the same vein of making a change or someone leaving, the one that I can think of here on the list is “to step down.” So, when we look at “step down” here, this is basically saying to resign or leave a position and I think it's most common for us to hear this when we're talking about someone who is maybe executive level in a company. You might say that, “The chairman or the CEO was forced to step down due to ill health or for retirement.” that it's a way of saying that someone is leaving. But I think it's almost a gracious way of saying that someone's leaving. A lot of times I think companies want to fire a CEO, they will make a deal with this person and say look, we're going to give you the opportunity to say that you're retiring or you're moving on or you are stepping down specifically. And it's a way for them to have an agreement to say we're not going to say we're kicking you out or firing you with this as a mutual agreement for us to leave. So, you might read in the media or read in a business report or something that so and so CEO is stepping down from the board and they may or may not give you the real reason for why that is. But that's sort of the language that's used in that kind of writing or communication. So, it's just someone's leaving, someone else is going to be coming into to fill that position.
Paige: That's a very good thing to point out because every time I've read “step down”, I'm always like, hmm, there is more to the story.
Ian: Exactly. It's mostly never a willing choice when you step down. Generally, it's you are forced to step down. And the last one we're going to wrap up with today is “to take off.” Now, this is one that we use basically to say, a company or something a product or service, a brand, whatever it might be, it has become very successful or very popular in a really short amount of time really quickly. If we want to use this in a visual way to represent the meaning of this, “take off” is also the phrasal verb we use to describe when an airplane is leaving to fly. So, the idea is, you're going up very, very quickly and if we think in the same sort of way, this is how we're describing a company or something that success or popularity. So, it'd be really common for us to say, “The business has really taken off in the last year” or “business has really taken off since the beginning of the pandemic.” And this is just a way of saying it's not really slow growth. It's actually the opposite. It's really quick growth usually, and it's become really popular. We use this all the time. You might even say, “We want our product to really take off in this market in the next quarter” or whatever it might be. We're just talking about that big increase in a short amount of time. So, when you think of takeoff, think of very successful. Okay, so those were some really important ones that we that we talked about today. There are many more that we didn't have time to cover, but we encourage you to go online check out those business phrasal verbs, go to Dynamic English’s website to see what resources they have for there as well and other business English materials also. So, make sure to check out the audio guide and transcript online at www.dynamicenglish.cl. And as always, thanks for listening.
Paige: We'll see you next time.
Paige: Coffee with Gringos was brought to you by Dynamic English, where you can learn English simply by using it. If you're interested in taking classes or just want to learn more, go to our website at dynamicenglish.cl. Thanks for listening.
Key Vocabulary, Phrases & Slang:
1. to kick off (phrasal verb): to start.
a. We are going to kick off the episode today with one of my favorite phrasal verbs.
2. lingo (noun): the vocabulary or jargon of a particular subject or group of people.
a. They like to use a business-specific lingo in the office.
3. brick-and-mortar (adjective): a traditional street-side business that offers products and services to its customers face-to-face in an office or store that the business owns or rents.
a. Amazon will be closing all of its brick-and-mortar stores to focus on ecommerce.
4. to piggyback (verb): to reinforce or to present a similar idea.
a. To piggyback off of your last word, I would like to talk about “take over”.
5. gracious (adjective): courteous, kind, pleasant.
a. It is a gracious way to let someone retire instead of firing them.
6. to wrap up (phrasal verb): to conclude; to finish.
a. Let’s wrap up today’s episode with another one of my favorite phrasal verbs.