Look down on
Today’s expression is “look down on.” And to be honest, the way I’m going to use it is the literal way of using this phrase, but it’s not the most common way to use it. But even though this isn’t the most common way to use “look down on,” it’s still good to learn it and it’s not intuitive.
The word “look” is usually something a person does. I can look at you, I can look at a painting, I can look at my notes, I can look up in the sky, and I can look down at my feet. But when we say “look down on,” at least in this case, we’re not talking about a person. Instead, we’re talking about a place, a place that’s high above something else.
In today’s lesson, I was talking about the balcony at Buckingham Palace and I said “the balcony looks down on the Mall.” The balcony, obviously, doesn’t have eyes. But a person standing on the balcony could look down and see the Mall. I realize this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but nevertheless we say the balcony looks down on the Mall. And by that we mean, a person standing on the balcony would see the Mall if that person looked down.
Here in Chicago, we used to have a really ugly set of railroad tracks that went straight through a pretty central part of downtown. And we had these very tall office buildings right by those train tracks. Those buildings looked down on this ugly set of train tracks right in the middle of the city. Obviously the buildings don’t look anywhere, but the people in those buildings, if they had looked out the window, would have seen the ugly train tracks far below.
But then the city started one of the biggest public infrastructure projects in our history: the construction of Millennium Park. The city covered those tracks and built a beautiful public park on top of the train tracks. If you’ve ever been here and taken a picture at the Bean, or attended an outdoor concert, or skated on our ice rinks, then you’ve been to Millennium Park. Now, those office buildings nearby all look down on a beautiful park.
Just remember that the place has to be high and something else has to be low. And the key is that a person has to be able to go to the high place. You can’t use “look down on” to describe a high place if a person can’t go up there. For example, you can’t say that a tall radio broadcast tower looks down on anything because a person can’t go to the top.
If you live in an apartment on the second floor or higher, you can say that your apartment looks down on something. Your place could look down on a garden. JR once lived in an apartment that looked down on a swimming pool. Most of us apartment-dwellers just look down on the street.
Big cities usually have tall towers you can climb. If you’re in Mexico City, you might have had the privilege to climb the tall angel statue, which looks down on Reforma. In Paris, the Eiffel Tower looks down on the Champ de Mars.
You can also use this term in nature. If you go for a long hike up a mountain, you could say that the mountain peak looks down on the valley below. Or maybe the mountain looks down on a lake or a river, or just a lot of trees. In all these cases, we say a thing looks down on something below.
Quote of the Week
How about a quote from Queen Elizabeth II herself today? Here’s one from a 1957 radio broadcast. She said: “It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult.” Indeed that is true, and probably even more true today than when she made those comments over six decades ago. “It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult.”
See you next time!
That brings us to the end of today’s audio lesson for Monday, June 20, 2022. This was lesson number 478, so the fun continues at PlainEnglish.com/478.
Hey before Thursday’s lesson, I want to ask you a question. How big do you think the biggest living plant on earth is? And how old is it? Don’t go racing to the internet to look it up. You don’t need to research it or read anything: I will tell you everything you need to know about the topic on Thursday. Just think about it over the next few days, see how close you can come. How big is the biggest living plant in the world? And how old do you think it is—how many years did it have to grow to get that big?
That’s the topic on Thursday. See you then!
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