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(upbeat music)
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- Hello, everyone, and welcome back to English With Lucy.
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Today I'm going to talk to you about how to describe
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the weather in English.
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We're going to start off quite basic
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and move up to more advanced vocabulary.
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I'm going to guide you through seasonal weather,
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hot weather, cold weather, wet weather, windy weather,
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and I'm going to give you verbs, nouns, adjectives,
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and idiomatic expressions.
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Idioms.
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We're also going to do a little bit of basic grammar
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at the beginning.
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But very, very easy.
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Don't worry.
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Before we get started,
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I would just like to make a recommendation.
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This video is going to improve your vocabulary
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and your speaking skills,
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and it will also improve your listening skills.
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I know a lot of you do want to improve your listening skills
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so this recommendation is really for you.
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In my experience teaching students,
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listening to audiobooks is one of the best ways
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to improve your accent, your understanding,
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and your speaking.
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Audible are offering a 30-day free trail,
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that's one free audiobook,
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when you click on the link in the description box.
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If you can listen to a book and read it at the same time,
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you can hear how the words are pronounced
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and see how the spelling correlates with the pronunciation.
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I've made some recommendations for audiobooks down
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in the description box as well.
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So do consider signing up and claiming your free audiobook.
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Right.
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Let's get on with the lesson.
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You may know that British people are famous
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for always talking about the weather,
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and this is because we are lucky enough
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to have four strong seasons.
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Winter, which is really cold.
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Spring, which is sunny and wet at the same time.
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Summer, which is normally hot and sunny.
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And autumn, which is colder and with lots of wind,
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and when all the trees lose their leaves.
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I'm going to talk to you today
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about different weather vocabulary that you can find
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in each of the four seasons.
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But first, let's discuss how to talk about the weather
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from a grammar point of view.
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This grammar is fairly basic.
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So if you're looking for advanced vocabulary,
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click to the time shown onscreen.
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If you want to use an adjective, for example, warm,
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you could say, "The weather is warm."
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The weather is adjective.
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You could also say, "It is warm."
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It is adjective.
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But it only really makes sense if the adjective
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is related to the weather.
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If you say, "It is good," I might wonder, well, what's good?
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But if you say, "It is warm,"
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I know that you're talking about the weather.
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You can also say, "It's a warm day."
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It's a adjective day.
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But what if you want to use a verb, for example, rain,
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the verb, to rain?
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You would say, "It is raining."
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It is verb plus I-N-G.
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That's if you want to talk about the weather right now.
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If you want to talk about yesterday or the past,
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you would say, "Yesterday, it rained."
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Yesterday, it verb plus E-D.
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Apart from the irregular verbs,
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which have their own conjugation.
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If you want to talk about tomorrow or the future,
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you can say, "It will rain tomorrow."
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It will verb tomorrow.
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Or, "It's going to rain tomorrow."
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It's going to verb tomorrow.
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If you want to talk about a noun, you would say,
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"there is," "there was," or "there will be."
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That's present, past, future, plus the noun.
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There is a storm.
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There was a storm.
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There will be a storm.
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Right.
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So now that's out of the way, first let's talk about winter,
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the month that I am in now in England.
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I'm going to start out with adjectives,
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and I warn you, there are a lot of adjectives
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associated with winter.
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You can say "cold."
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Cold.
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Bitter, bitter.
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That's very, very cold.
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It's just a step further than cold.
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You could even put them together
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and say, "It's bitterly cold."
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It's bitterly cold.
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You can say "It's chilly," which is slightly cold,
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or chilling.
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That's a little bit more.
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Crisp.
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Crisp normally means it's cold and dry,
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or maybe it's icy.
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Icy.
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You can say, "It's freezing," or "It's frosty."
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You can also say, "It is severe," or "It is wintry."
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That means it's a very wintry day.
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It feels like winter and it is winter.
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If it's winter and the weather conditions are very bad,
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the skies are grey, you can say, "It's gloomy,"
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or "It's bleak."
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Or if there's a lot of very aggressive weather,
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you can say, "It's harsh."
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We often talk about a harsh winter.
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Now let's talk about some verbs.
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You can say "to snow,"
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which is obviously white, fluffy stuff falling from the sky.
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To sleet.
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Sleet is partly frozen rain.
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So it's like very wet snow or very, very cold,
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almost frozen rain.
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It's normally very unpleasant.
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If it's sleeting, I go inside.
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You can also say "to hail."
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If it's hailing, it means that little hailstones,
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little, tiny balls of ice, well, normally tiny,
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but there are big ones, are falling from the sky.
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It's completely frozen rain.
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You can also say "to freeze," or "to freeze over."
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And to freeze over means covered with a layer of ice.
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So I might say, "My pond has frozen over."
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My pond is covered with ice.
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Now some nouns you might use to describe winter.
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So we've got sleet, hail, snow, frost,
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as I've mentioned before.
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You also have blizzard, which is a windy snowstorm.
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And for some idioms, you can have a cold snap,
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which is a short period of cold weather,
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or you can be frozen to death, or frozen to the bone,
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which means you are completely frozen through.
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Right.
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Let's talk about spring.
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Spring is known for being sunny and rainy.
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It's warm and it's wet,
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and it's when all of the plants start to grow.
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Adjectives you can use are cool.
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It means it's not cold.
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It's not unpleasant.
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Nor is it warm.
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Mild is the same thing.
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Mild.
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Fresh, as well.
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It's a very fresh day.
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You can say, "It's bright."
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The sun is out.
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You can say "breezy," which means a light wind.
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It's normally very pleasant and welcomed.
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When you're talking about clouds, you can say "cloudy,"
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or slightly more advanced, is overcast,
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where there is some sunlight,
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but there are also some clouds,
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meaning that you don't have a completely sunny day.
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It's overcast.
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You hear the meteorologists on weather stations
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talking about an overcast day quite a lot.
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One that's not so positive is muggy.
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And this is if the air is very, very humid.
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It's can be cold or hot,
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and you can have a muggy summer's day as well,
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but it means there's high humidity in the air.
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Another word you can say is simply "wet."
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It's a wet day.
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It's been raining a lot.
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Time for some verbs.
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Well, talking about rain, you can say "to drizzle."
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It's drizzling.
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This means it's a constant but gentle flow of rain.
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To shower, pretty much the same.
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That means it's more sporadic or occasional.
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Meteorologists normally say you can expect showers
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throughout the day, which means occasional patches of rain.
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You can say "to pour," which is where it rains
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really, really heavily.
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Moving on to the nouns, you've got rain,
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which is uncountable.
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You've got a shower, which is a light patch of rain.
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You can also have a downpour,
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which is a really heavy patch of rain, or even a flood,
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where the ground becomes inundated
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and can't absorb any more water.
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Idioms.
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You can say "to chuck it down,"
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which means a heavy downpour.
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You can say, "It's raining cats and dogs,"
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although in reality we don't actually use that idiom
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that much, but it seems to be the first idiom
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that anyone ever learns.
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You can also say "to bucket down."
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If it's bucketing down with rain,
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it's raining really hard.
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And you can also be soaked through.
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This is where it's rained on you
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and you are really, really wet.
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Oh my God.
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I'm soaked through.
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Right.
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Let's talk about summer and adjectives that could be used
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to describe summer weather.
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Firstly, of course, we have hot.
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Other words that could be described hot weather
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are scorching, sweltering, boiling, sunny.
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You could also say "dry," if there's not been any rain
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and there's no humidity.
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You can say, "It's a clear day,"
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if there are no clouds in the sky.
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Or you could say, "It's very humid,"
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if the air is very wet.
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You can also say, "It's blistering."
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A blistering sun.
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Verbs.
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You can say "to shine."
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The sun is shining.
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You can also say, "The sun is burning,"
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if it's especially hot.
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And you can also say "to scorch,"
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just like the adjective.
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Nouns.
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The only extras really to add are sunshine,
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which we like to say a lot and to talk about the heat.
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Now there are a couple of idioms
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relating to our reactions to the sun.
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You can say "to catch some rays,"
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which means to absorb some of the sunshine
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and maybe get a tan.
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You can also say "to go brown,"
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which again refers to tanning.
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You can also soak up the sun,
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which means the same thing again.
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And when talking about sweating,
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you can sweat like a pig.
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Oh my God, I'm sweating like a pig,
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which means I'm sweating a lot.
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Finally, let's talk about autumn,
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or as they say in America, fall.
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In British English, we say "autumn,"
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but we do understand what fall means
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because we see it on the TV and the movies.
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But in America, they say "fall."
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Some adjectives relating to autumn.
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My favourite and the most descriptive is autumnal.
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Autumnal.
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It's a very autumnal day.
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It tends to be windier in autumn.
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So you can say "windy."
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Another lovely one is blustery.
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It's a blustery day.