Make out

To “make something out” means to be able to see what something is.

Today's story: Tokyo's public toilets
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Make out

Today’s expression is to “make out.” Like many English phrasal verbs, this one has multiple meanings. I’ll let you look up the multiple meanings in a dictionary if you like, but the meaning we’re going to talk about today is this: to discern. To discern, or to make out, is to be able to see what something is. You recognize it.

“I can’t make out what that street sign says,” you might say. “Let me get my glasses. Oh yes, it says Sawyer Avenue.” If you can’t make out what a sign says, you can see that there is a sign. You can see that there are letters on the sign. But you can’t discern, you can’t see clearly, what the sign says. You can’t make it out.

I wear glasses when I drive because I can’t make out written words at a distance. I can read just fine when something is up close, but I have trouble making out words and small objects at a distance. That makes me far-sighted. About ten years ago, I started noticing that I couldn’t read road signs quite like I could before, so I finally got glasses. Now, I wear the glasses to sports games—or, at least I did—and I wear them while driving. If I’m in a meeting at work—ugh, again, something from the past—but I used to use my glasses if I knew I’d be sitting at the back of the room. I needed to be able to make out what was being presented on the screen at the front of the room.

Transparent toilets: you can clearly see inside when they are empty, but you can’t see inside when they are occupied—at least, not really. You can make out general shapes. You’ve seen this type of glass before. If there’s a person behind the glass, you can’t make out whether that person is a man or a woman, but you can definitely tell that a person is there. You can make out general shapes, but nothing more specific than that.

What is a common scene on television these days? A television reporter or commentator broadcasting from home. And it’s now becoming a favorite pastime of many television viewers to try to make out what’s in the background, what’s in the living room of the person speaking. One of the meteorologists in Chicago—on Channel 7—tells us the weather forecast from home. And on most days, you can see her perfectly-behaved beagle on the couch behind her.

That doesn’t have anything to do with “make out”: I just wanted to tell you about the dog. But if you see a commentator and that person has a bookshelf behind him or her, it’s always fun to try to make out what books are on the shelves back there. The camera is focused on the face of the person speaking. (We’re supposed to be listening and paying attention to the person, not to the background.) But sometimes you can make out the books in the background.

In one recent political speech, you could clearly make out a biography of Ulysses S. Grant, a famous war general and president in American history. In another, you could make out a book about Van Gogh. That’s ironic because while we could make out the book about Van Gogh, it’s very hard to make out what’s going on in a Van Gogh painting because they are so blurry.

The problem now is that the commentators are wise to this, and I think they purposely arrange books and memorabilia on their shelves just so they can appear smart. I bet Amazon sold a lot of very thick books with important-sounding titles just as commentators started setting up home studios—but that’s only speculation!

You can also use “make out” if you can’t hear something clearly. This is something near and dear to the hearts of any language learner. We hear something, but we can’t make out what was being said. It’s just like a blurry street sign, but with your ears. You know they said something, maybe you caught a word, but you just didn’t understand all the words. You couldn’t make out what was being said.

Sometimes that happens even in our own language. You might be watching a movie and you just didn’t catch a line. Either the character didn’t speak it clearly or you were distracted. “Did you hear what that guy said?” you might ask. “No,” your friend might respond. “I couldn’t make it out.”

Quote of the Week

Today’s quote is from the architect Louis Sullivan. He was active in the late 1800s and was one of the first designers of modern steel-construction high-rise buildings. His most famous quote—and I’ll give you the full quote in a second—but his most famous saying is that “form follows function.” Form follows function: it means that in design of buildings, the form a building takes—what it looks like, its shape and size—has to support the activity going on inside it. It’s no good to design a beautiful building first and then fit some activity inside it later on. No, he said, you first think of the function of a building, and then you design to support the function. Here’s the full quote, now that you know the context:

“It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function.” So says the architect Louis Sullivan.

See you next time!

Two quotes of the week in a row by men named Louis who lived in the late 1800s. We’ll have to change things up next Monday. Thanks for joining us for this lesson. I hope you enjoyed it. We’ll be back with another lesson on Thursday. This one is about Regis Philbin, the man who spent more hours on television than anyone else in history. Imagine that, more hours on TV than anyone else in history. He had a remarkable life on camera and he passed away in July, so we’ll talk about Regis—or Reege, as his sidekick used to call him—on Thursday.

Remember you can join our free Facebook group by visiting PlainEnglish.com/Facebook. I’ll post a link to the new Tokyo restrooms in there: you can see for yourself whether you’d feel more, or less, comfortable using these than the normal ones. See you in the Facebook group!

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Story: Tokyo's public toilets