"OFF" Phrasal Verbs - Business English

http://www.engvid.com/ Learn these common business English phrasal verbs with "OFF" that will help you understand business and financial discussions in English. These phrasal verbs might even save you some money! I'll teach you the meaning of phrasal verbs like: lay off, rip off, write off, take off, and more. Take a quiz on this lesson here: http://www.engvid.com/off-phrasal-verbs-business-english/

TRANSCRIPT:
London, London, London. Hi. James, from EngVid. Secret London. I was actually born here. Beautiful place. Love it. Now, I want to teach you a lesson today on phrasal verbs. We're going to work on five phrasal verbs.

But this is specific. These are business phrasal verbs, so if you're in business or you're learning about business, these terms will come up regularly. Now, phrasal verbs and idioms in English are used, and you're expected to know them like that. So let's go to the board and see where's Mr. E.

Mr. E wants to teach us something today about "off". Well, the first thing we have to learn, specifically, "off" has about five meanings. But today, we're going to concentrate on two. And all of these ones here are basically going to, you know, relate to those two meanings. "Off" either means to move away from something or to go down. All right? To make smaller or reduce in size. And these phrasal verbs are used in business quite often. If you know anything about what's happened in the last five years, you're going to go, "Oh, my gosh. That's what they were talking about."

So let's talk about the first one, "take off". If you're like me and you work a lot -- I don't work a lot. Okay. I don't work lot. I'm being honest. But sometimes, you need a vacation, and I take vacations. So you need to "take off". But in English, what we say in business, when you go to your boss, and you say, "Boss, I would like some time off." They will say, "Would you like to take some time off?" Or you might say, "I want to take some time off in the summer. I want to take off a month." So you'll hear this phrase "take off" "take off". And it means for vacation. But there's also another meaning, which is really, really good. And this is -- remember; we're talking about "away from" when we're talking about "off" because of "take off". You can see the airplane. The airplane takes off. That's for your vacation because I know you're going somewhere sunny like Canada in January. Anyway. Don't come here in January. It's not sunny; it's cold.

But another thing -- see how the airplane is taking off, so it means it's leaving? Airplanes go up. When somebody goes up and things are going really well, they say, "My business is taking off." It means it's doing well. So your boss might say -- or he or she might say, "I really want this idea to take off because it will be good for the company." It means they want the idea to be successful. If something takes off, it's successful. "We started a new water brand, and it's taking off in Italy." They love it. Canadian water. Who knew? Okay? And it "took off". It means it's successful. It's doing really well.

Now, let's look at another one. This is close to my heart because recently, I found out there's a company across the sea -- imagine a country called "India" -- where they actually took everything about me except my face and my name, and wrote my bio out. It's called a "rip off". But we'll get to that.

If you have a store and you have products --books or markers, okay -- and you see someone come in, and then they take it, and they run out of your store, and they don't pay you, you would say, "I wasn't paid." You can say, "That person ripped me off." That means that person stole from me. And we use that for when someone takes physical objects and takes them without paying from a store. So you can say, "The store was ripped off" because the product was taken and no money was given for it." Okay? That's one form of "to rip off".

Another is if you were the customer or client. If you go to my store and I sell this water for five dollars, and then you walk to Mr. E's store and see the exact same water but more water inside going for one dollar, you'll say, "I was ripped off." It's similar to being stolen from because what it means is, "I paid more than the value of the object." The object is only worth a dollar, but these people made me pay five. I feel ripped off. Something was taken from me, and it wasn't fair. I didn't get the value. Rip off. Water is a rip off. It's free, people. Check the clouds. It comes down regularly. Anyway. Next.

The next thing for "rip off" is to steal an idea. Told you this was business phrasal verbs. Lots of times, McDonald's says, "Burger King's got a new burger. Let's rip it off." And they make the same product, and they call it the McSomething. Burger King did it first; McDonald's steals it.