Make off with
To make off with something is to steal it, to take something that you really shouldn’t have. And the situation is typically this: you take something or steal it by trying to conceal your actions.
In the story I shared with you today, a burglar cut a hole in the roof of a wine store, lowered himself into the store on a rope, and then made off with hundreds of bottles of wine and liquor . The whole thing was worth $600,000.
He made off with those bottles: he stole them, and he concealed his crime. You form it like this: “make off with” plus the thing that was stolen. He made off with the wine and liquor.
Have you ever heard the name Stéphane Breitwieser? This is incredible, this might be worth its own lesson someday. Stéphane Breitwieser is one of the most prolific art thieves of all time. He’s French, he’s 51 now, but he stole all the art in his twenties. He never broke into a building at 12:30 a.m. He never broke a window, he never cut a hole in a roof, he never lowered himself into a building on a rope.
Stéphane Breitwieser brazenly made off with 300 pieces of highly valuable art from cathedrals and museums all over Europe, and he did it in broad daylight. He would buy a ticket, he would walk in the front door, and he would make off with one of the museum’s valuable paintings. He would just confidently walk up to a piece of art and lift it off the wall and conceal it under his overcoat.
Two. Billion. Dollars. Of art. That is what he made off with in his extraordinary career of art theft. And he never re-sold it. He kept it in his mother’s house. And when he was arrested, his mother, out of spite? I don’t know? She destroyed as much of the art as she could. She put some of it down the garbage disposal. What a waste.
The office I worked in was robbed once. I’ll never forget it. This was my first job in Chicago. It was in an old office building. We were a small company, I think about twelve of us in the whole office. I showed up, 8:30 or 9:00 or whatever it was. The door to the office suite was propped open, which it never was. And my friend at work was standing right by the reception area and before I could open my mouth, she said, “Jeff, we’ve been robbed.” I’ll never forget her voice in that moment.
Someone had broken in the night before and he—it was a he—he made off with computers, monitors, and other office technology. There was security footage. We watched it; we watched the whole thing happen. This was our whole day, by the way, we didn’t do any work that day. We just went to the security office and watched this footage over and over with the security guards.
Anyway, he didn’t break in the roof; he broke in the basement. There was an Arby’s fast food restaurant next door. He somehow got into the Arby’s, broke into the basement of our building through the Arby’s basement. Then he went up to the twelfth floor, got into the door somehow. And he was carrying a light metal cart. He loaded up the cart with as much as he could fit, he put another computer under his arm, and he made off with a few thousand dollars’ worth of equipment.
We were hoping he had made off with the fax machine, but no. We had this ancient fax machine that we all hated. Our bosses loved to fax. They faxed us all the time. And this stupid fax machine was always jamming. So we get robbed—this is perfect, we thought, did he make off with the fax machine? Maybe we can get a new one. No. No such luck.
See you next time!
That brings us to the conclusion of this Plain English episode. Five ninety-nine, how about that. And I’m still finding new expressions to talk about. When I started, I was a little worried that at episode 100, surely by episode 200, I’d just run out of English expressions and phrases to teach you. Not even close!
We have covered just a massive amount of ground together, you and I, and I have a little bit of news on that front, but we’ll have to wait a week or two until I tell you. So just keep your ears open for something new in a few weeks.
In the meantime, you can find today’s full lesson at PlainEnglish.com/599. And we will be back with number six hundred on Monday. See you then.
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