Description
Build your English vocabulary base by learning these 15 preposition collocations. Learning prepositions is hard enough when they’re alone, but they can be even more difficult when they are in combinations with other words. These word pairs must be learned like vocabulary rather than by rules about time or place. In this class, I will teach you how to use preposition collocations such as all in, in charge, in the dark, in light of, in all likelihood, on and off, on board, on behalf of, and more. https://www.engvid.com/english-preposition-collocations-at-on-in/
Learn more essential English on my writing channel: @WritetotheTop
Watch my new advanced grammar lesson about constructions like "I was to be in charge": https://youtu.be/1E3xcx8cUAw
Watch my video about PREPOSITION COLLOCATIONS: https://youtu.be/aRXVMJQImSo
In this lesson:
0:00 AT, ON, IN: Collocations with Prepositions
1:19 all in
1:58 in charge
2:28 in the dark
2:52 in light of
3:27 in all likelihood
3:54 on-and-off
4:24 on board
5:03 on behalf of
5:33 on condition
6:04 on impulse
6:31 at large
7:14 at stake
7:52 at liberty
8:25 at peace
9:03 at home
Transcript:
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. In today's video, I want to give you some collocations with the prepositions "in", "on", and "at". Now, again, just to review, what is a collocation? This is a commonly joined grouping of words, sometimes two words, sometimes three, that have very specific functions or meanings. And in the case of the examples I'll show you here, most of... Almost all of them have an idiomatic function, meaning that the two words together mean something different than the two words separated. And you'll understand as I get into them.
Now, the main thing I want to get across here is that "in", "on", "at" is not limited to talking about time or dates, because in most English classes, when they teach you these prepositions, that's what they focus on. But you're going to see that they have a lot of different uses, and I also made a previous video explaining how to learn prepositions in collocations. You have to study them like vocabulary, and you can see that video, there's a link up there for that.
So, let's get started with the collocations with the preposition "in". "All in", "in charge", "in the dark", "in light of", and "in all likelihood". So, what does it mean to be "all in"? So, if any of you play poker, you know, the card game where you're betting, if you think you have a very, very good hand, you're going to take all of your money and put it into the pot. You're "all in". So, we also use this expression to mean fully committed to something. So, if you have a project at work or if you have... Your friend wants to do something, like, exciting, like an adventure, and they say, "Are you into it?" "Yeah, I'm all in. I'm 100% committed to doing this thing", or "I'm going to put 100% of my efforts into that".
"In charge". "In charge" means having control, being the authority. So, in most countries, the president or the prime minister or whoever is in charge makes the major decisions, right? In a company, the CEO is in charge. In a classroom, in theory, the teacher is in charge of the classroom. In some places, the students are in charge, but we won't talk about that today. So, to be in charge, to be in control, authority.
In the dark. In the dark, if you imagine being in a dark place, you don't really know what's going on, right? Because you can't see anything. So, that's what this expression means. To be in the dark means to not know, or somebody's keeping a secret from you, or any situation like that, where you're not aware of what's going on, what people are doing, what people are thinking, etc.
And then you have "in light of", which is not related or not opposite to "in the dark". "In light of" means knowing what we know now, and then whatever the result or the next action will be. So, you'll hear this a lot, like, for example, in legal cases. "In light of the evidence, we believe that this person committed murder." "In light of" - because we can't see it, right? So, it's not like a secret, here, but it's based on information that you have, in light of this information.
"In all likelihood" basically means probably, right? That's all it means. In all likelihood, something will happen, means there's a very good chance it will happen, it will probably happen. So, there you go. So, all of these collocations with "in" have nothing to do with time, or date, or place, so make sure you understand them as individual vocabulary units. That's the easiest way to think about this.
A few with "on" and "off"... With "on", sorry. We're going to start with "on" and "off". And you notice I have the hyphens, because these are all working together. So, some... Like, my friend comes to visit me on and off whenever he's in town. […]