Ride out
Today’s English expression is “ride out.” This is a phrasal verb that means, to experience something unpleasant and unavoidable, with the hopes that it will end soon. “Ride out” is a phrasal verb, so there’s a subject and an object. The subject is the person who is suffering, the object is what causes the suffering.
A common way to use this is to talk about weather. “We have to ride out the storm” is a very common phrase if you’re stuck in a storm. You could be out sailing a sailboat in the ocean, you could be out on the golf course, you could be riding a bicycle or a motorcycle—anywhere that’s a storm would cause you to be uncomfortable. You can say, “We have to ride out the storm.” And if you say that, you mean, you have to experience the unpleasantness or danger of the storm and hope it’s over soon.
Remember the pieces: you need the person suffering and the thing causing the pain. So who’s suffering? That would be us—we. What is causing the suffering? That’s the storm. We have to ride out the storm, means, we have to suffer through the storm, we have to experience the unpleasantness of the storm, and hope that it’s over soon.
Sometimes you have a choice: you can ride something out or you can escape it. In today’s lesson, we talked about refugees from Ukraine . In the first week or two of the war, many people with savings, passports, and access to cars left the country. But a lot of people stayed, either out of necessity or because they thought they could ride out the war in their homes.
Remember what I said about “ride out:” you experience the unpleasantness in the hope that it will end soon. Many Ukrainians wanted to ride out the war in their homes. They knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant, but they thought at least the war would end soon. But months after Russia’s invasion, they discovered they couldn’t ride it out. It was too dangerous where they lived. Many people spent days or weeks in basements, without heat, and without enough food. Only then did they decide to leave. They determined they couldn’t ride the war out.
Now let’s go back to a previous example—a thunderstorm. Imagine you’re playing golf and it starts to rain. You can ask your golf partners, “Should we ride out the storm or should we cancel our game?” That means, should we sit in the suffering—should we stay out here and get wet and hope the rain ends soon—or should we go inside and end the game?
If you’re out on a sailboat, you might not have any choice. You might be far from the nearest port. In that case, you have no choice but to ride out the storm. You have to suffer through it and hope it ends soon.
Here are a few other circumstances you can use with “ride out.” A company can ride out a recession. In an economic recession, sales often fall. Some companies have a reserve of cash, or the ability to borrow money. These companies can ride out a recession. They can experience the unpleasantness, the unprofitability, for a while and hope it ends soon.
Other companies don’t have the ability to ride out a recession. They either have to close or change their services so that they don’t lose money.
A politician can ride out a scandal. A scandal is unpleasant for a politician: negative articles, investigations, the possibility of having to resign. But you know what? Public attention is fleeting. That’s what Boris Johnson, the prime minister of the U.K., has discovered. He was caught attending boozy parties with Members of Parliament during Britain’s lockdown.
A lot of people thought—hoped—he would be forced to resign because of it. But the prime minister was able to ride it out. He experienced the unpleasantness, he hoped for it to end, and you know what? It ended. He had to pay a fine and it looks like he’ll escape with his job. The scandal was called “Partygate,” and he rode it out, unfortunately, without any real consequences.
Quote of the Week
Today’s quote is from Inayat Khan, an Indian professor who lived around the turn of the Twentieth Century. He said, “Some people look for a beautiful place. Others make a place beautiful.” I like that one, “Some people look for a beautiful place. Others make a place beautiful.”
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Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
