Easy English Expressions with "OUT OF"

What's the difference between "out of milk" and "out of nowhere"? One is an expression, always with the same meaning; the other is an idiom, with different meanings. In this lesson, you'll learn how "out of" can be part of an expression or part of an idiom. You'll see how "out of" is used in everyday life as an expression and then learn eight common idioms, including "out of character, "out of town", and "out of touch". Idioms upgrade your English fluency in speaking and writing. Watch this lesson and start using these expressions for greater social, academic, and business success.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hi. I'm Rebecca from engVid. In this lesson you will learn how to use some common expressions and idioms, all of which start with the words: "out of". Okay? Now, let's see exactly how this works. First we'll start with some expressions, and then we'll look at idioms. And all of them are going to use the words: "out of", but in different ways. All right?

So, when we use the words "out of" as an expression, there, the meaning is consistent. What does that mean? The meaning is pretty much the same. It means this, when we say: "out of x", it means I have no x left. Okay? For example, when I'm out of something, it means I have no something left. I had something before, and now I don't have any remaining. There's nothing left. For example... Okay? The examples always help you to really understand something. So let's say you go to the fridge and you open it, and you're about to have a nice cup of coffee and you say: "Oh my goodness, I'm out of milk." What does that mean? You had milk before, but now there's no milk left. So then we say: "I'm out of milk", for example. Now, here when we use it as an expression it always means something like that. There is no something left. There is no something remaining. For example, in the office you go to use the printer and you can't print. Why? Because you're "out of paper". All right? Or you get into the car and you have a really big problem because you're "out of gas". Okay? "Gas" here means gasoline, petrol. Okay? All right, so that's a very common way that we use the expression "out of". All right? And here it always means that you don't have something left that you had before.

Let's look at some other examples where it means the same thing, but a little bit more abstract. So, for example, you're at an exam, you have three/four hours, you have a lot of time when you start; but at the end in the last five minutes, you have to hurry up and finish your essay or whatever you're doing because otherwise you will be "out of time". All right? That means you won't have no time left. All right. Or you go to the casino with a lot of money in your pocket, but after a little while the money's gone, you have no money left or you are "out of money". Or we could say: "out of space". For example, let's say you're moving and you're packing everything into a truck, but you've still got a lot of furniture left and there's no space, so you say: "We're out of space. We have to come back one more time with another truck to fill the rest of the furniture." Okay? That's called being out of space.

So do you understand? In all of those examples, and we use that a lot, with anything. Okay? And it always means you had something and now you had nothing left. That's the straightforward way in which we use this expression, but we can also use "out of" as an idiom, and then it doesn't mean that you have nothing left. It means all kinds of things, and each time, each idiom means something different so you kind of have to learn what that idiom means. Okay? So here when it's used as an idiom it can have different meanings. Let's look at eight of these to see what they mean. All right.

So the first one is: "out of touch". You might have heard this, especially if you write to people by email, and what it means to be out of touch means to not be in contact. So, I haven't heard from John for a long time. We've been out of touch. All right? We're not in contact regularly. All right. Another idiom: "out of work". If you say that John is out of work or Mary is out of work, what does it mean? It doesn't mean that they don't have any work left. It means something a little bit different from that. It means they are unemployed, they don't have a job actually. All right? But it's kind of a nicer way to say that somebody's out of work, it means they're unemployed. They don't have a job right now. All right, the next one when you say: -"Oh, have you talked to James?" -"No. I haven't seen him. I think he's out of town." Okay, what does that mean: "out of town"? That means he's not in the place where he usually lives. All right? And that could be a city, it could be a town. It doesn't matter. We use the expression "out of town" even to talk very much about cities. It just means that you're away from the place that you normally reside or live.