Head for
Today’s word is “head for.” Earlier in the program, you heard that people had only a few minutes notice before they had to leave their houses and head for safety. This means they needed to go toward safety. Head for just means go toward. It’s a fairly common little word that doesn’t make much sense unless you’ve heard it before—the verb “to head” or “to head for” really just means go toward. I think it started in the world of navigating ships. You would set the ship’s heading or set the ship’s direction.
There are tons of examples, and I bet you’ll start noticing them more if you haven’t noticed already. One of the most common ways to use this term is to say, I’m heading home. I’m heading home means I’m going home. After I go out to lunch, I have to head back to the office for the rest of the afternoon. At the end of a long night with friends, someone might stand up and say, “Okay, guys, I’m going to head out.” That means, the person is going to leave. If you were all staying in the same house though, the person might say, I’m heading to bed. You guessed it—that means, I’m going to bed.
One thing I love doing is taking a long road trip without a specific itinerary or route planned. I could get in the car and head west, and just see where I feel like going—just in the general westward direction.
That’s all for today’s episode. After I finish recording, I have to pack my bags because I’m headed out on a trip for work this whole week. Remember that a new episode will come out on Monday. The topic on Monday will be the Brazilian surfer who set the world record for surfing the biggest wave ever off the coast of Portugal. If you want to make sure you get the next episode, click “follow” in Spotify or “subscribe” in Apple Podcasts or your other podcast app. Have a great weekend; we’ll back on Monday.
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