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Mar 26, 2018

A Phrasal Verb a Day #59 - to hand down

TRANSCRIPT

Hello everybody. It’s Luke here and it’s time to learn another phrasal verb.

This one is “to hand down”. “Hand down”.

And let’s see. As a verb it’s usually used in the passive form.

There is also a noun associated with this phrase too. So let’s see.

The first use of the verb “hand down” is to give knowledge or skill to someone who’s younger than you. So to kind of give knowledge or skill to the younger generation. Alright? And it’s often used in the passive form like,

“These stories have been handed down from generation to generation for years.” Okay?

“These skills have been handed down from generation to generation.” Alright?

“These are stories which were told by parents to their children and then from those children to their children. So the stories are handed down from generation to generation.” Alright?

Let’s see. We also use this expression to mean to give clothes or toys or other things to a younger child when the older child doesn’t need them any more. Typically with clothes. Right. So for example, when I was a kid my brother used to hand down a lot of his clothes to me. A lot of his clothes were handed down to me. Alright?

Now, here’s the noun. We used the expression “hand me downs” to refer to those clothes which are handed down from an older child to a younger child. Okay. “Hand me downs”.

So I used to wear a lot of hand me downs. I used to wear a lot of my brother’s hand me downs.

So he would, you know … My parents would buy clothes for him and then when he’d grown out of them they would be handed down to me. So sometimes I would wear my brother’s hand me down clothes. Okay?

So that’s in fact really three phrases. One – “to be handed down”.
Like, “Skills or stories are handed down from generation to generation.”

Another one meaning, “Clothes are handed down from one child to another.”

We had ‘hand me downs’. “I used to wear a lot of hand me downs when I was a kid.”

And also “to grow out of something”, did you notice that one?
“to grow out of something” That means … Well, it could be clothes, for example when a child has grown too large for the clothes that he used to wear. So, he grows out of them. But also it could be other things like, for example, musical tastes or habits. For example, when you’re a teenager you might have certain habits that you grow out of. Okay.

Like, let’s see, let’s see, let’s see. I used to play a lot of sports. But did I grow out of that or did I just become lazy? Difficult to tell. What did I grow out of? Well, I used to be really into playing computer games. I used to love playing computer games. I still do but to a certain extent. I’ve kind of grown out of it. I don’t play games as much as I used to. But I’ve still got some games consoles. Perhaps I will hand them down to my kids when I eventually have them.
That’s it for this phrasal verb episode.

I don’t know why I said “phrazzzal verb episode” like that. But I did!
Speak to you again, very soon. Bye for now!

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