2020-04-30
10 分钟Hi there, this is Harry, and welcome to another podcast where I try to help you to understand English in a better way that you can communicate both in a personal way, in normal English and also in your business English.
And we use phrasal verbs, expressions, and also were appropriate to introduce you to certain grammar rules.
Okay, well, what do I have for you in this particular podcast?
Well, we're going to look at verbs and prepositions that we use with those verbs.
And in particular, these are verbs connected with disasters, something disastrous that happens.
So we'll give you the verb and we'll give you the preposition and we'll give you an example of it.
Okay, let's start with number one, to burn something down.
Burn.
To burn is the verb, and the preposition down.
To burn something down is to set fire to it and burn it to the ground.
So the fire broke out in the kitchen and the building burned down very quickly.
To burn down, barbecue fell over and the tree caught fire and it burned down in minutes.
Okay, to burn something down.
Number two, write something off.
To write something off, the verb, to write the preposition off of write something off.
When we write something off, we indicate or decide or agree that we cannot make money on it, and therefore we have to just write it off as zero so it becomes an expense.
For example, if there's a problem in the factory and there's a burst pipe and there's a bit of flooding and stock gets damaged that we cannot sell, we have to write it off, meaning it's a loss to the company.
We might be able to claim some money back from insurance, but basically we have to write it off.
Whatever the cost of that stock, we value it and we write it off in our accounts.
Okay, we can crash our car and write it off completely means the car is of no use, it will have to be scrapped.