Leave off
Today’s expression is to “leave off.” Where did we leave off? To leave off is to stop a task before it’s done, with the intention of returning to it. That’s the key part here. If you stop something before you finish, but you’ll never finish it—that’s giving up. But if you want to come back to it…that’s when we use “leave off.”
The interesting thing about this one is that we almost always use it in the past tense. Let me give you some examples.
Let’s say you’re a teacher and you’re going through a topic in a textbook. It will take a few days. The bell rings—does that still happen?—class ends one day and you stop on page 75. The next day, the students settle into their seats. You say, “Last time, we left off on page 75. Let’s pick up there.” Last time, we left off on page 75 means, last time, we stopped, temporarily, on page 75.
Dinner and a movie. Imagine you rented a movie for the family and about fifteen minutes into the movie, dinner arrives at the door. You pause the movie, get everyone’s plates settled, back on the couch, ready to go. But you forgot what was going on. You can ask the family, “Where did we leave off?” You don’t need to know the exact minute or second when you pressed pause. You want to know what was going on. “We left off when Anne saved the house from burning down.” That’s from the show, “Anne with an E,” which I’m watching now.
So to answer the question, “Where did we leave off?”, you can respond with either a specific place or location—a page number, for example—or you can respond with a context. What was going on? Where were we in the process?
Here’s a world-famous example of “leave off.” The Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The basílica, a church building, was designed by the Catalan architect Antonin Gaudí. Construction began in 1882. It’s still not finished. Gaudí, the architect, died in 1926. But he knew the task would not be complete when he died. So he designed it so that other architects could pick up where he left off. And indeed nine subsequent architects have worked on the project, which is scheduled—scheduled—to be complete in 2026.
That, by the way, is a common thing to say: “pick up where someone else left off.” That means, one person pauses or stops a task, and either the same person or someone else resumes it. Two weeks ago, you might remember, we did two lessons on the Super League. At the end of the first lesson , I said that the project was killed two days after it launched. That’s where we left off on Monday. On Thursday, we picked up where we left off, and we talked about the three big reasons the Super League failed .
We picked up where we left off: that means, we resumed the task or the story at the place where we paused before. And so that’s how you heard it in today’s lesson about multi-tasking . If you’ve been interrupted in a task, you will eventually have to return to that task. When you do, you’ll need to figure out where you left off. That’s not always easy. If you’re doing a complicated task and you stop suddenly, you have to pick up where you left off. But it takes some time and mental energy to figure out exactly where you left off, so you can resume in the right spot.
JR’s song of the week
Time for JR’s song of the week. It is “A Spy in the House of Love” by the dB’s. This is an 80s song that I had never heard before today. That’s why you don’t put me in charge of the playlist! The first two lines go like this: “Someone should tell you the rules of the road; things most people learned a long time ago.”
The rules of the road mean the general norms and behaviors that people in a culture take for granted. But if you’re new somewhere, then you don’t know those. So someone should tell you the rules of the road, things most people learned long ago. You need those people if you go to a new place; you can be that person for someone who’s new in your town or in your life. Good song, JR: “A Spy in the House of Love” by the dB’s.
See you next time!
dB, by the way, is short for “decibel,” the way we measure the intensity of sound. And if you didn’t guess that the dB’s were named for that, then their first studio album would give it away. Their first album was called “Stands for Decibels.” That’s clever.
And that’s all for today’s Plain English lesson. JR gave me an hourglass as a present last year. This hourglass is only 30 minutes. I think he gave it to me as a decoration, but I’ve been using it as a Pomodoro timer. Try that out sometime, 25 minutes of focused effort, then a quick break. It doesn’t have to be your whole day, but it does make a difference.
So now that this audio lesson is done, you have my permission to cognitively switch to something else. At least take a short break. And if you want even more of your favorite English practice, then head on over to PlainEnglish.com/367 for even more: we’ve got a great video lesson, as always, a quiz, some exercises, and more. It’s a great way to build your skills, build those listening skills, build those pronunciation skills with us here at Plain English. PlainEnglish.com/367 and if you’re not yet a Plus member, you can unlock all the best of Plain English by visiting PlainEnglish.com/Plus.
Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
