Cut off

Cut off

Today’s expression is a phrasal verb, “cut off.” There are multiple ways to use “cut off,” but we’ll focus on just one meaning. I’m going to show you how to use it in the active voice and in the passive voice. Let’s start with the active voice. To cut something off is to block access to what’s important.

Imagine there’s a thunderstorm and a tree falls over a road in a residential neighborhood. There’s only one road between the neighborhood and the rest of the town. If the tree fell onto that street and blocked traffic, then the downed tree cut off the neighborhood from the rest of the town. The tree blocked access to the neighborhood. The tree cut the neighborhood off from the rest of the town.

It’s much more common, though, to use “cut off” with the passive voice. The residents of that neighborhood were cut off from the rest of the town while the tree blocked the road. Residents were cut off, that’s the passive voice, and that’s the way we often use it.

During the Facebook outage, businesses were cut off from their customers . The outage blocked access to their customers. The businesses were cut off. They weren’t the only ones. A lot of people who live in small towns rely on Whatsapp to communicate with friends and loved ones. We can say many people were cut off from their friends and family during the outage. Access to their friends and family was blocked.

I have three friends who have either just had babies or are going to have a baby very soon. New parents can feel cut off from the world in the first few weeks after the baby comes. Why? Because every moment of their day—and night—is now consumed with the baby and the baby’s needs. It’s easy to feel cut off from the world because you’re not seeing your typical network of people, you’re probably not reading the news, and you’re not running into friends and neighbors.

Is your family spread out, or does everyone live in the same town? If everyone in your family lives in the same town, and you move away, you might feel cut off from your family. That will probably happen if everyone typically communicates in person and if everyone visits everyone else’s house all the time or if there are big family dinners and parties every week. If you move away to another city, you’ll probably feel cut off from your family. In this case, nobody specifically cut you off; it’s more of a feeling. You feel cut off, even if nobody specifically excludes you.

These days, I live in a big city with good public services. And we obviously have cell phone service. But I remember when growing up, if there was a big storm, we’d sometimes lose phone and TV service. And in the really bad storms, we’d lose electricity altogether . That can certainly make you feel cut off from the world.

Inmates in prison feel cut off from society or cut off from the world. They may get visitors occasionally, some TV time, and they may even get some time on the Internet. But they are really cut off from the rest of the world.

We talked a while ago about India’s election, and how they send election workers to the most remote villages in India so that everyone can vote. One team had to take a voting machine on a boat through alligator-infested waters. Do you remember that? Some towns in India aren’t connected by road to the rest of the country. Those towns are really cut off from the rest of the country.

We also talked about the town of Hyder, Alaska. What was unique about Hyder, Alaska? The only road going out of town goes through Canada. There is no road connection from Hyder, Alaska, to any other place within the United States. To get anywhere, you must cross an international border. Normally, that’s a routine occurrence. But during the worst of the pandemic, people in Hyder were cut off from the world . They couldn’t cross the border except for a very limited number of reasons, like medical emergencies. One family member could cross the border to buy supplies once a week—that’s it. Flying anywhere was out of the question. The residents of Hyder were really cut off from the United States. That is probably the best example of “cut off” that I can think of right now.

Quote of the Week

Today’s quote of the week is this, “Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” That’s from Bertrand Russell, a British mathematician. He says, “Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

See you next time!

Well, that’s all for today, Monday, October 25, 2021. How did you survive the Facebook outage? Those of you in Asia, you lucky ducks, you slept through all the chaos. In Europe, this happened in the early evening, so it disrupted prime texting time. In most of the Americas, it was mid-morning through the afternoon. I survived. I hope you did too.

If there’s another outage and you ever find yourself in need of something to do, now you can explore 410 English lessons on PlainEnglish.com. They are organized by category and keyword. The keyword one is cool. So, today’s expression was “cut off.” At the top of the transcript for today’s lesson, you’ll see that one of the keywords is “cut.” If you click on “cut,” you’ll see all the other times we’ve talked about an expression or phrasal verb with the word “cut.”

So, you’ll see cut it close, cut down on, cut back on, cut corners, cut a deal, and have your work cut out for you. Look for those keywords at the top of the page. It’s just another great way to explore all the content at PlainEnglish.com. And the keywords are available for all free members. So, make sure you join as a free member and you’ll be able to explore our lesson history this way, too. That’s all for you at PlainEnglish.com.

Coming up on Thursday. Don’t call it a hostage swap. But three people are home after spending over 1,000 days detained in foreign countries—one returned home to China and two returned to Canada, within minutes of each other. We’ll talk about the Huawei executive, the Canadian diplomat, and the Canadian businessman who all caught flights home this month. That’s Thursday on Plain English. See you then.