Apr 30, 2018
A Phrasal Verb a Day #126 - TO PILE UP
= put lots of things on top of each other to make a pile (often passive)
Transcript
Hello, here is another phrasal verb for you. This one is ‘TO PILE UP’, ‘TO PILE UP’. Now, in the last episode I told you about the expression ‘TO PILE IN’ meaning when a large number of people go in, like go into a building, and I also mentioned the word ‘pile’, you know, like a pile of clothes on the floor for example.
And, you know, when I was a kid my mum and dad used to get very angry with me about the state of my bedroom, and my mum would say things like ‘Luke, can you clean up your bedroom, please?’, like ‘What are all the, what are all these clothes all piled up here?’, ‘Why are there so many clothes all piled up in the corner?’ So, the clothes were piled up in the corner. You see, it was passive, (a) passive example there.
So, you know, when I was a student I lived in a student house and no one wanted to do the washing up and so all the plates would pile up in the kitchen until eventually we’d have to, just sort of, do all the washing up in one go. After all the plates piled up and up and up, eventually it’d be necessary to actually do all the washing up and it would take hours because of all the piles and piles of plates everywhere.
Okay, so that is ‘TO PILE UP’. There you go. Another phrasal verb for you. There’ll be another one of these soon, but for now goodbye.
:)