Sweep away
Today’s word is a phrasal verb, “sweep away.” For the Chinese New Year, you want to sweep away all the bad luck from the previous year by cleaning your house, and sweeping your floors. By doing this, you are completely removing all the bad luck. And that is what sweep away means, to completely remove, or in some cases, destroy something.
It takes some practice to use this one, so let’s start with a few examples that are closest to the definition of the word sweep. Sweeping away bad luck is a good one; you can picture someone sweeping a house and getting rid of all the bad luck. A flood can sweep away cars and even houses. Picture the flood waters rushing in and just picking up cars and bicycles and things on the street and sweeping them away, or carrying them away—removing them from where they were.
OK, so now you have an idea of what “sweep away” means in a physical sense, so let’s move on to a more metaphorical sense. An election might sweep away established politicians in favor of new politicians. In Israel right now, people are protesting, saying they want to sweep away corruption among their elected leaders. So metaphorically, this means to get rid of something; to remove it completely. You might want to sweep away the old generation in favor of new leaders, or sweep away corrupt practices. You want to eliminate it, remove it entirely.
One more example. Have you ever been mad at someone—I mean, really really mad—but when the person apologizes, you just can’t be angry anymore? When that happens, your anger is swept away. It’s gone, since the person apologized.
That’s all for today’s episode of Plain English. If you have an iPhone and you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, don’t forget to click “subscribe” to get each episode on your phone automatically. If you’re listening on Spotify you can click “follow” to get the new episodes. Like I said before, I’d love to hear from you. Look me up on Facebook or Twitter under the user name “PlainEnglishPod” or send me an e-mail directly to jeff [at] plainenglish.com.
We’ll be back on Monday with a new episode; see you then.
Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
