Pour out

Pour out

Today’s phrasal verb is pour out. You might know the word pour, which usually means to serve or dispense something from a container. So, if you’re thirsty, you might pour a glass of juice from the carton in your refrigerator. That’s pour.

Pour out has a few different meanings. Like a lot of phrasal verbs, there’s the literal, maybe the original meaning, and then there’s the more metaphorical meaning. So, now picture your thirsty self again, but instead of juice, you want milk. And when you open the container, you realize it smells bad. In that case, you need to pour out the milk—meaning, you need to empty the container, in the trash or down the drain. So, someone might look in the fridge for the milk and ask you, “Do we have any milk?” You would answer, “It went bad; I had to pour it out.” You had to empty the container.

All right, that’s the literal meaning of pour out. Now let’s talk about a couple of metaphorical ways to use “pour out.” Earlier in the show, I said that students came pouring out of classrooms when they heard the fire alarm. That means everyone started coming out of the classrooms. And what happens at school after the last class on a Friday afternoon or in this case when an alarm sounds? People come pouring out, until nobody is left inside. And we usually combine pour out with the word come: people came pouring out. That’s how you usually hear it: after the game ended, people came pouring out of the stadium, for example.

And here’s one more way to use “pour out”: when you talk freely about thoughts or feelings that you had been keeping a secret. Have you ever had a friend who poured out his or her emotions in a long conversation? Or maybe you were angry and poured out your anger to a friend or family member.

So, remember three ways to use pour out. You can pour out milk that’s gone bad or coffee that’s cold, people can come pouring out of a building, and you can pour out your emotions to a sympathetic friend.

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