okay go for it have you ever fallen down in public  oh my gosh yeah um not that i can think of but  

i've witnessed a friend of mine fall down and  it was hilarious funny for everyone else so long  

embarrassing for them but funny for  everyone else i did in high school  

it was a halftime show of a basketball  game so like the whole school was there  

and they called a few students down randomly to  participate and maybe win a prize in like a game  

where you're shooting and i was wearing these  boots that had kind of not feel but like a big  

fell down in front of the whole school everyone's  laughing and it was not the end of the world but  

i was thinking about this recently and i'm so glad  social media didn't exist so no one was filming it  

wasn't posted anywhere the only people who saw it  were their present yes i loved it terrible posted  

on social media for everyone to see so wait was  it blurry time yeah a simpler time was it in the  

stands then when you were coming down the stairs  no it was while i like shot the basketball and i  

went to grab it because it was like a competition  during the halftime where some students had to  

play like lightning where you do oh yeah yeah i  know how to get them out bump out some people call  

it yeah and i was playing that and like shot the  basketball ran to grab it and kind of tripped and  

fell so literally you were in the spotlight like  everyone was watching you okay that's good stuff  

worst case scenario it's funny how falling  for adults is so funny and ridiculous but  

for kids it's just what they do they fall  on their skin their knees but for adults  

it's the most ridiculous funny thing i like  and for a teenager so embarrassing right  

yeah toddlers follow that's whatever adults fall  you're like it's fine but a teenager is mortified  

it's something like that happens yeah you are  truly lucky aubrey that there was no social media  

back then right and i also went through that era  of not really having social media in high school  

thank goodness but now we have it so everything is  different right i know and there are so many perks  

my kids love social media i love it i love using  it for all there's english it's so great to have  

these quick tips idioms slaying that we can teach  with a really quick social media video so if you  

guys aren't following us on social media wherever  you find your social media instagram linkedin  

twitter youtube we're everywhere and in china with  billy billy lrb and you can read longer articles  

for some more deep dives into things on our wechat  official account as well so wherever you are in  

the world you can find all there's english on  social media yes there are so many good ways  

to connect with us guys go on there and check it  out because you get stuff that you're not going to  

see here on the podcast right videos commentary  quizzes really fun ways to interact with us and  

to learn so good all right exactly yes and this is  a fun one we often will be able to teach a phrasal  

verb on social media too we'll give a highlight  of one specific phrasal verb and we got a question  

about some phrasal verbs that we want to focus on  today which is why we were talking about falling  

down yes i love it this question of course i'd be  happy this is from alexander here we go he says  

your podcast is getting more and more popular  in our country i start every morning listening  

to your show while commuting to work so i wanted  to thank you guys for doing such a great job well  

thanks alexander aubry that's wonderful to hear  isn't it welcome that feels great so awesome it's  

so good and here's the question maybe you could  help out with two phrasal verbs that i am stuck  

on i'm stuck on i guess you could say just imagine  i was walking down the street and i tripped over  

something and i fell down so in this situation  do i actually say i fell down or i fell over or  

are they both good to go or are they both good  because you can say that go with that suggestion  

because looking at those two you would think  they mean the same thing fall down fall over  

oh that probably means the same thing no right  there are subtle differences in that case you  

would want to say i fell down if we tripped we say  i fell down we wouldn't say i fell over but we're  

gonna dive into why what are the nuance nuances  how do you know which one to choose this is going  

to be interesting yeah and you know just on a  previous episode a few weeks ago i interviewed  

someone who does his whole show all about phrasal  verbs so go over there and look for that episode  

guys it was a few weeks ago really good stuff to  focus it's so tricky right aubry because if we  

change one preposition the meaning changes quite  a bit exactly right with fall we have fall in fall  

off fall out fall over fall away there are so many  different meanings depending on that second word  

that preposition so you guys are aware of this  phrasal verbs are tricky i love that you did that  

interview lindsay so that we can have another  resource for figuring out how to learn phrasal  

verbs yeah guys you can find that by coming back  to our blog and just type in alex bricker or i can  

actually get the name for you the episode number  right now that is episode 1742 guys so check out  

that episode good stuff nice but i thought it  would be interesting to talk a little bit just  

about the verb fall without a preposition because  okay it's actually a tricky verb on its own right  

word because it can be both a noun and a verb  and each of them has multiple meanings so let's  

quickly talk about that first the noun lindsay  what is the first meaning of the word fall  

noun okay all right so to so the noun again  is the act of falling right he had a bad fall  

and i hear this a lot when i hear about  elderly people does that ring a bell to you  

aubrey definitely maybe you get a call from your  mother you say or your grandmother had a bad fall  

something like that right yeah and we're using  that as a noun the fall is a thing that you're  

talking about right yes i love it and a second  meaning is a thing which falls and we usually  

talk about this especially with snow or rain so  for example you'd say yesterday we had the first  

fall of snow and now we're describing we're using  fall as a noun to talk about a thing that falls or  

it falls out of the sky right yeah and i would  say that this one feels to me a little bit more  

formal what do you think aubrey does this feel  a little more formal to you or do you use this  

a lot it is a little more formal i feel like i  hear it in song lyrics and i see it in poetry and  

it's sort of a beautiful way of speaking to say  the first fall of something like oh it's been a  

long time since we had a fall of rain right and so  you can switch that and say rainfall or snowfall  

also a noun yeah we say it both ways and it  is a little more informal but it's also a  

very beautiful way of speaking i think yeah i  mean guys if your personality is such that you  

like to create poetry in your words there  are a lot of people that love to speak  

right they love to be articulate and kind of  wordsmith things and kind of be more of an artist  

we want to give you that option so this would be  a good one to write down if you want to speak in  

this poetic way okay definitely and then there's a  third noun which is the season autumn we also call  

fall would say i love fall it's my favorite season  yeah three meanings for this one noun which most  

people think of as a verb fall i love it is fall  your favorite season aubrey what would you say  

it used to be when i lived in the east when i  lived in new york fall was my favorite season in  

arizona it's my least favorite season because  it's still so hot and miserable and nothing  

really changes arizona is horrible it's just  more longer summer oh yeah but in new england  

new england is the place to be in the fall i  don't know if you ever went up to vermont but  

the leaves up there are just amazing in the fall  yes we drove from new york up to quebec montreal  

and so we saw all of the foliage from in between  and then oh my goodness the leaves were beautiful  

it was right when they were turning red and orange  and yellow and it was breathtaking it's so good  

it's so good so guys we've seen a lot of  different ways to use the noun use this as  

a noun what about as a verb let's get to the the  more common one right the one that we're going to  

then after we're going to tack on the  preposition and make it a phrasal verb  

right exactly so first of all just to move  downward right yeah the snow fell all night now  

you're talking about that snowfall but using it as  a verb the rain falls the snow falls the snow fell  

right i love it and then the second way guys  is just to lose balance and collapse usually  

this is talking about you your body but it could  also be something else like um i have the worst  

cabinets right now in my in my home and every time  i open the cabinets a lot of times something just  

falls down and breaks and everything like  the olive oil spills all over the cabinet  

it's so bad that happens to me with it my kids  will put something in the fridge very precariously  

oh yeah like a booby trap and then you open the  fridge and something falls out and spills all over  

the floor it's normal this is live having children  yeah i can imagine i can't imagine exactly so that  

just means something loses balance it collapses  we could say it's so embarrassing to fall in  

public especially if you're a teenager i love  it and there are actually so many phrasal verbs  

right aubry and we're not going to go into all  of them today we don't need to do them all today  

guys that'll break your brain to do it i don't  want to break your brain that's why you got to  

hit subscribe hit follow on this podcast you get  future episodes we'll go into them later but there  

are ones like fall in fall off fall out fall away  right so many and the two from today's question  

that we're going to focus in on are fall down and  fall over which are very similar i understand why  

the student could confuse these or wasn't sure  which one to use so let's first talk about fall  

down we use this more specifically it means you  tripped it's resulting from tripping or stumbling  

and sometimes it's just over your own feet like  we were talking about how toddlers young children  

fall down when they first learn to walk they  might not be tripping over a rock or something  

they just are tripping over their own feet  yes i love that i love that it's so cute  

i love it so just falling down tripling over your  own feet um i had a friend in college who every  

time she would attempt she wasn't very athletic  so every time she would attempt to go for a jog  

she would fall she would just like always have a  fall during their phone that's such a nice way of  

saying clumsy to just say she's not very athletic  that's a good strategy here you guys if you think  

someone is a little clumsy the kind way to say  that is she's not super athletic yeah guys write  

that one down as a bonus for today so good we  could do another episode on that topic aubry on  

how to be kind be kind i like that right i would  prefer someone call me unathletic as opposed to  

clumsy yes i love both are probably true okay so  the second one we this is the same that you're  

tripping you're falling but we talk about falling  down something falling down the stairs falling  

down a mountain right i fell down the mountain  and that same you're kind of either tripping over  

something or over your own feet and falling down a  thing yes i love it it makes me think of when i go  

skiing there's so much ski lingo skiers have their  own lingo for everything and whenever you know  

you're on a ski lift and people see someone who  essentially they've fallen down on their skis but  

literally everything has released your skis have  released your hat's going you know your helmet  

everything's going off they say yard sale right  they yell yard sale and they make it even worse  

for the poor person oh that's happened to me so  many times one skis off in the powder and once  

he's up the hill aways and then you're like  trudging around trying to collect everything  

yeah there's definitely a culture and skiers are  not always yeah they're joking but they can give  

people a hard time so the moral of the story is  don't ski below the chair right right exactly  

where anyone sees you from the chair lift exactly  i love it so good okay okay so let's go over right  

because in all of those cases you wouldn't say i  fell over if you're tripping stumbling and falling  

right we would not say i fell over this is very  different this is referring to falling from a flat  

surface it's not from a result of tripping  yeah it doesn't even have to be a human right  

you could say the tree fell over or the display  fell over when i bumped it right right whereas  

uh we wouldn't say that a tree or a display fell  down because that's something that it would have  

to be animated it would have to trip yes it fell  over right right right and usually people right  

i mean yeah and people don't really fall over  again like we said it's more of an object  

right yep exactly but here's the trick a person  can fall over but there has to be some kind of  

outside force causing that right you could say  i fell over when she pushed me you wouldn't say  

i fell down because you didn't trip on anything  it's really this is when we use this as it's not  

something i did i fell over either because maybe  i lost my balance someone pushed me something  

like that then would say i fell over yeah this is  actually trickier than i thought when we started  

the episode today this is pretty nuanced for  our listeners right to understand the difference  

right when i think about fall over i think  about something that is just self-contained it's  

sitting there on a flat surface like you said and  then it just tips right and usually as you said a  

result of something maybe the wind right causes  it to fall over yeah yep somebody bumps it but  

it is true we'll use this for humans as well  so there are some expressions where we'll say  

like i laughed so hard i fell over right and it's  just like that expression where something was so