Take off
Today’s phrasal verb is “take off.” When a plane takes off, it leaves the ground and goes up into the air. The way you heard it before is this way: Just a few minutes after the plane took off, the US military sent fighter jets to pursue the plane. Just after the plane went up in the air, the military was pursuing the plane.
This phrasal verb is good to know, but not hard to understand at all—in that context. But take off is often adapted from this original, literal meaning. When something accelerates very fast, you can say it takes off. Because it imitates what a plane does when it leaves the ground.
If you’re a basketball fan, you may have heard that LeBron James, who is the best NBA basketball player in the game today, or maybe of all time—LeBron James recently signed a contract with the Los Angeles Lakers. Sales of Lakers tickets took off after the announcement. Now everyone wants to go to Lakers games again; ticket sales took off because there were a lot of sales after the big announcement.
Do you remember the story about electric scooters? Oh by the way, they’re here. They are in Chicago, where I live. I started seeing them about two weeks ago. They seem to be working fine now, but let’s see how they work when it starts snowing in a few months. Anyway, if you remember episode 47, use of electric scooters took off in San Francisco. That means that people started using them a lot—it got really, really popular in a short period of time. It took off, because it went up at a fast speed, like an airplane taking off from the runway.
You can also say “take off” if you mean to leave quickly. If you went out to dinner with friends and one person just takes off, he or she leaves without saying goodbye. What happened? I don’t know—he just took off. He just left quickly. One more example. If you’re going to leave on a long trip, you can say you have to take off. I think the best example is if you’re visiting friends in another city for a weekend. You had a great time Friday night, Saturday, and now it’s Sunday morning. Your bags are packed, you had breakfast. You have to get back home to work on Monday. You can say to your hosts, “Thanks for everything. I think I have to take off now.” That means you have to get going on your long trip home.
That’s all for today. The next episode will come out on Monday, when we’ll talk about the people who are truly merging man and machine. That’s because some brave early-adopters have implanted themselves with microchips, which they’re using to buy things and unlock doors. And the phrasal verb we’re going to talk about next time is “show off.” That’s all coming up on Monday—don’t miss it! Click subscribe on Apple Podcasts or follow in Spotify and you’ll get the episode automatically on your phone. It’s time for me to take off, but we’ll be back together in just a couple of days. See you then.
Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
