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| Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Top Words. My name is Alisha. Today, we're going to talk about 10 Phrasal Verbs for the Office. These are 10 phrasal verbs that I hope you can use at work and in your conversations about business. Let's go. |
| "Kick off." |
| The first word is "kick off." Kick off. To kick off means to start something. It usually has the nuance of something big, like a big project, like, "We're going to kick off a new project next year," or, "Let's kick off this new policy in January," or, "What time should we kick off the party?" as well. We can use it for parties too. For business, it means to start a project, to start something new, and it sounds like the beginning to something big. Kick off. To kick off something means to start something. |
| "Set out." |
| The next phrasal verb is "set out." "Set out" means decide or determine, or choose something. We usually use set out to mean to decide something within a project. For example, "We need to set out some guidelines for this project," or, "We need to set out some rules for dress code in the company," or, "What do you think about setting out some new guidelines for company parties?," for example. Set out means to decide something and determine something, usually a policy, rule, and guideline. |
| "Check in." |
| The next phrasal verb is "check in." "Check in" means update or give a status report, to share new information, check in about something. We usually say, "To check in about blah, blah, blah." For example, "What time should we check in about the project?" or, "Do you have time to check in about this later?" or, "When can I check in with you?" We can also use it to refer to a person. "Can I check in with you about this later?" Or, "Will you check in with me later?" We usually say, "check in with." Please be careful. This is different from "check in to a hotel." Totally different meaning. Here at work, check in with someone or check in about something. Check in with someone means to give someone an update, to share new information with them. Check in about means to share new information, probably, with someone, like in a meeting about a specific project. You can use check in with or check in about something. |
| "Go through/go over." |
| The next one is "go through" or "go over." We can use "go through" or "go over." These both mean to review something. Like, "I want to go through your essay with you," or, "I want to go over the latest draft with you." "I want to go through our new policies with everyone in the company." "I want to go over some changes that are going to happen." It means review, usually review plus, maybe, explain. It means to do this in detail, usually, too. Introduce some new ideas, review some old ideas, perhaps, and have a chance to discuss things. To go through or to go over is to examine, to review, to look at some information with somebody. We can also say, "I want to go over this with you later," or, "Can we go through this together later?" It means to look in detail, to examine something. |
| "Clock in/clock out." |
| The next pair of expressions really is "clock in" and "clock out." Clock in is to check in at your office. To clock in means to begin your workday officially, to register the time you begin work. And, to clock out is the opposite, to register the time when you leave work, when you finish work for the day. Maybe, depending on your office, you have to clock in. In other words, register or record the time you begin work or arrive at your office. And clock out, record the time you leave your office. In a sentence, we could say, "I always forget to clock in to work," or, "What time did I clock out yesterday? I totally forgot," or, "It's important to clock in and clock out at the same time every day." |
| "Start up." |
| Okay. The next phrasal verb is "start up." Start up means begin, to begin something. Please be cautious. Start up something, like start up a new policy or start up a new project, means to begin a new project. However, you may see the noun expression, no space between "start" and "up," startup. Maybe, you can hear the slight difference in pronunciation. When I say the phrasal verb, "start up," there's a disconnect between the words. Like, "We need to start up a new project," for example. However, "startup" is a little bit different. "Startup" as a noun means a usually small new company. It's big in the news these days, startups. Startup companies are very small companies. They are just beginning. That's the nuance of a startup company. That's the noun phrase, a startup. However, to start up something sounds a little bit different. Like, "We should start up some new projects this year." It's more used for policies, projects, maybe, a new product launch. "We should start up some new things," for example. It means to begin, to begin something. |
| "Call back." |
| The next phrasal verb is "call back." Call back. "Call back" means to return a phone call. To return a phone call is call back. Some common examples are just, "I'll call you back later," or, "Please call me back when you have time." You can separate "call" and "back." Like I just said, "Please call me back when you have time." You can separate the person receiving the call. You can separate "call" and "back," and put the person receiving the call between "call" and "back." "Please call me back when you have time," or "I'll call you back." This person between "call" and "back" is the person receiving the call. "You should call her back later," or, "Why don't you call your mother back tonight?" for example. You can separate these two. That's fine. One more example sentence would be, "I need to call my clients back this afternoon." |
| "Send over." |
| The next expression is "send over." "Send over" means to email or to physically mail something, to send over. It means to send to someone else's office or to send to someone else's computer. Send it over there is the idea, sending it away from you over to a different building or to a different department. "Please send this over when you have a chance." Again, just as with "call back," we can use the expression "send over" separately. We can separate these two words. "Please send this over," "Please send the files over," "Please send the documents over," or, "Please send over the documents." Both are fine. We can use both of them here. Send over just means mail or send something. In another example sentence, "Hey, can you send over the updated files?" |
| "Clean up/clean out." |
| The next phrasal verb is really a pair. It's "clean up" or "clean out." We can use clean up and clean out. These are a little bit different, but I put them together because they both use the word "clean." To clean up something means to tidy or to make it nice again, to clean up something. Like, "You need to clean up your house." We can also use this at home meaning to wash windows or to wash dishes or to make something tidy and clean, to get rid of germs, to keep germs away. "To clean up your house," "to clean up your office," "to clean up your desk." There's a similar phrasal verb, however, "clean out." To clean out means to remove everything from some location. If I say," I'm cleaning out my desk," it has the nuance if I'm removing everything from my desk. Maybe, I'm leaving my job, for example. Maybe, I've quit, or, maybe, my desk just has a lot of things I don't need. "Clean out" has the nuance of removing a lot of things. We can also use this phrasal verb at home, like, "Clean out your closet. I'm cleaning out my closet." "I'm cleaning out my closet," in that case, it means removing everything from your closet. The same nuance applies to your desk. To clean out your desk at work means to remove everything. You can also use this for the refrigerator. Like, "I need to clean out the refrigerator. It smells really bad," meaning take everything out, clean it, and maybe put some things back. "Clean up" is just to tidy, "clean out" is a deep clean of something. |
| "Make up for." |
| The next phrasal verb is "make up." Make up. Usually, "make up for." Please be careful, not "makeup" as in things that we put on our face to change our appearance, makeup, but make up for something. To make up for means to compensate. If there's been a problem in a project, for example, a delay or a schedule change, or some unexpected thing happens and you need to compensate for that, you need to make some changes to fix that problem, you can use the phrasal verb, "make up for." For example, "Our project was delayed because our president got sick," for example, "We need to make up for lost time." We follow "make up for" with the item that is the problem. In my example sentence, "We need to make up for lost time," "lost time" is the problem. We lost time. It should be a noun phrase. We lost time on the project, we need to compensate for it. "We need to make up for lost time," or, "We need to make up for the mistake that we made last week," or, "We need to make up for lost sales last quarter," for example. |
| All right. Those are 10 phrasal verbs that you can use in the office. I hope that those are useful for you. Like I said, some of them you can use at home, as well. If you have any questions or any comments, please be sure to let us know in the comment section below this video. Thanks very much for watching this episode of Top Words and I will see you again soon. Bye! |
| I always forget. |
| Yeah. She always forgets to clock in and clock out. |
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