Stick around
Do you stick around to the end of every episode of Plain English? I certainly hope you do, because every minute of listening to English counts! And “stick around” is the phrasal verb we are going to talk about today.
It means to stay in a place or an area. We say “stick around.” The 30 second rule on Spotify says that if you listen to a song for 30 seconds, then the artist gets paid for your stream. If you stick around for 30 seconds, then the artist gets paid. If you don’t stick around that long, then Spotify doesn’t count it as a stream and the artist doesn’t get paid.
Usually—not always, but usually—we say “stick around” when we’re talking about staying in a place after most of the excitement is over. The Spotify example is the exception, but in some of these examples you’re about to hear, “stick around” means to stay in a place after the action or excitement has ended.
Let me ask you another question. When you go to the movies, do you stick around for the credits? The credits can cite hundreds of people! You usually can’t read their names on the screen. But you always see some people still in their seats as the credits roll. They are sticking around until the very end. Sometimes you get rewarded for sticking around: sometimes there are outtakes or extra clips or scenes after the credits, as an extra bonus for those fans who stick around to the end.
“I don’t want to stick around here too long,” you might say if you’ve got somewhere else to be. Maybe you want to leave a party, but your spouse or significant other wants to stay. Your date might say, “Let’s at least stick around until 11, and then we can get out of here.”
If you’re throwing a party, you never really tell people when to go home—unless you discreetly mention an ending time when you invite people over. If you host a dinner, guests will usually stick around for a little while after dinner. When the conversation starts to die down, people might head for the door.
Related: Episode 45: Phrasal verb: ‘Head for’
Maybe you’ve hosted a party and the guests stuck around for longer than you wanted. There’s no great way to send people home. Maybe you use your body language, or you stop holding up your part of the conversation! I try to not be that person who sticks around too long.
You can use it at work. If your part of a project is over, but your colleagues are still working on it, you might offer to stick around and help them out. Your boss might ask you to stick around until 5 or 6 o’clock in case a customer calls or something happens.
JR’s song of the week
I’ve hinted before at the generational differences between the producer and the narrator of this show. JR is my ambassador to youth culture. He explained TikTok to me, for example.
Related: Episode 204: TikTok, the social media app for 15-second videos
So JR told me that he heard a great new song on the radio a while back and he really liked. Liked it a lot. His sister and even his little nieces recognized and liked it. Then someone asked how he liked the original version—but he didn’t even know there was an earlier version! So he told me about it, and guess what? I knew about the original one, but didn’t know it had been remade.
The song is called “Fast Car” written by Tracy Chapman. That’s the original, the version I know. And the remake of “Fast Car” that JR likes is by Jonas Blue. If you were ever looking for a musical representation of the differences between JR and me, here you have it! Listen to these two versions—throw Tracy Chapman and Jonas Blue some love and listen to at least thirty seconds of each—“Fast Car” is the song of the week.
That’s it for today.
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Thanks for sticking around until the end! Coming up next time on Plain English: the rise of the ghost kitchen. And it has nothing to do with Halloween! I’ll tell you what that means next time. See you then!
Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
