Fill up

Fill up

Today’s phrasal verb is “fill up.” In the original context, you heard that portions of the network of tunnels behind the trapped soccer players filled up with water after the monsoon rains struck the area. Fill up means to fill something completely. So, the rain didn’t fill up the cave entirely because there were still pockets of air and dry areas. But some parts did fill up, and in those parts, there was no air above the water—the water filled those sections entirely, top to bottom. And in that sense, those sections filled up. They were filled completely.

Here are a few other common ways to use “fill up.” In the US at least, it’s very common to say you need to fill up your gas tank in your car. In fact, if you’re driving and you say to the other people in your car, “I need to fill up pretty soon,” everyone will understand that you mean to stop and get gas. If you only put half a tank of gas in there, you can say, I filled it up halfway. I filled it up halfway.

Have you heard the expression, “I’m full”? In English, that means that you’ve eaten enough and you’re not hungry anymore. You can say that a meal fills you up if that meal leaves you satisfied, if you’re not hungry afterward. Do you want dessert? No, you might reply, the main course filled me up.

During your dinner, your waiter might have come by periodically to fill up your water glass. Now, in this case, it doesn’t mean he fills it up right to the very top. But to fill up a water glass (or wine glass) means to pour enough so that it seems full—the most you would typically pour.

So by now you might be wondering why we say “fill up” instead of just “fill”…and unfortunately I don’t have any good answers. It’s just one of those little quirks of English that you have to get used to. So remember, fill up means to fill something completely.

Don’t forget the episode on Monday about the World Cup finale. And if you can’t keep track of when the new episodes come out because we keep changing the schedule—is it Monday for the World Cup, when is there one on Wednesdays? Is there a new one on Friday this week or is it Thursday? The answer is to just sign up to get the Plain English emails, because if you do that, you’ll get an email every time a new episode comes out. And that email will have a summary of the program in English, one extra word or phrase from the episode defined for you, and links to some more articles about the main topic. If you want to get those emails, just go to PlainEnglish.com/mail and enter your details.

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