Scale back
Today’s word is a phrasal verb, scale back. In the original context, I said that some cities and towns are scaling back their St. Patrick’s Day parades because they’re starting to get out of hand. So, some places want to make their parades smaller, by restricting public alcohol consumption or reducing the street closures that accommodate large parades. You can use “scale back” when you want to reduce the size or intensity of something.
Let me share a few more examples. I saw in the news that stock analysts are starting to scale back their predictions of how many new iPhone X’s that Apple would sell. These analysts initially predicted strong sales, but now they think that Apple won’t sell as many as they initially thought. They’re scaling back their forecast—meaning they’re reducing their forecast. Some ski resorts in the United States have had to scale back their seasons this year because they haven’t gotten enough snow.
In your personal life, if you’ve been working a lot, you might want to scale back the hours you spend at the office. Or, maybe you’ll scale back your spending if you want to save more money. When I go on vacations, I tend to want to fill my days and nights with activities—and I sometimes come home more tired than when I left. For my next vacation, I need to scale back the number of activities and learn to relax a little.
It’s common to say you need to scale back your plans or a proposal if you think you need to reduce the size or scope of a project.
That brings us to the end of today’s episode. Remember that new episodes come out every Monday and Thursday morning, so click “follow” on Spotify or “subscribe” on Apple Podcasts or your podcast app to make sure you get every episode. Thanks for listening to Plain English and we’ll be back with another episode on Thursday
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