MISS or LOSE or MISSING?

MISS or LOSE or MISSING?

Hello everyone and welcome back to English With Lucy. Today, I’ve got another grammar, slash, vocabulary lesson for you. It’s all about the difference between to miss and to lose and also, to be missing, which can be very confusing.

Now, on your language, you might have separate words for to miss and to lose. However, in lots of languages across the globe, to miss and to lose are the same word, which makes it incredibly confusing for those who are trying to learn english. There are so many words in the english language that are like this, there are make and do, miss and lose, earn and win. So many words where we have two or three or four words for this but in other languages, there’s just one word.

But I’m going to clarify exactly when you should use miss, when you should use lose and when you can use to be missing as well. So, I’m going to start by going through all of the situations in which you should use miss, and then I’m going to give you some extra little collocations and miscellaneous phrases as well. And then I’ll go through all of the situations in which you would use to lose, and of course, some extra collocations and phrases using lose. Finally, we’ll go through to be missing and compare it to lose, because sometimes, it can be used in a really, really similar way.

So, yes, this lesson should be very clear, it should help you. If you do have any questions, put it down in the comments below and I would love to hear about what you use for miss and lose in your languages as well. So please put that in the comments section. Do you have just one word or do you have separate words? Let’s get started with the lesson. So there are three situations in which you would use miss. The first one is to miss an event or an opportunity. This means you might arrive too late to attend an event or opportunity or you might just not attend the event or opportunity. So, it can mean to arrive too late or to just totally not attend.

So, you could miss a class or a lesson. You could miss a deadline. You could miss an appointment or a meeting. You could miss a party or you could miss a sports match or a show or concert. You could arrive too late to watch that sports match or you could just totally not attend the sports match. So, if someone asks me, “Did you watch “the football last night?” I could say, no, I missed it. So, it could mean that I got home too late to watch it on TV or I just didn’t watch it, or I didn’t watch it but I had intended to watch it. Now, bear that sports match one in your mind because we’re going to talk about it a little bit later on. It can also refer to not hearing or not seeing something as well. So, if I miss the game, I didn’t see the game. Or if I missed what you were saying, I didn’t hear what you were saying. The next situation in which we use miss is for transport and this means to arrive too late for transport.

I used to work a lot with Spanish students who were learning english in London and they would arrive late to my lessons and say, “Sorry, I lost the bus.” And it should be miss because miss is used when you arrive too late for transport. So, you could miss a bus, a flight, a plane, you could miss a train, for example. The final situation is to miss somebody or something and this means to feel sad when someone or something isn’t near you anymore, or you don’t do something anymore. So you could miss your friends, you could miss your family, you could miss the way things used to be. You could miss a dress that you don’t have anymore. You could miss going to the cinema with your grandma, for example. Now, a couple more collocations with miss. You could miss the point. If I say to you, you’ve totally missed the point.

It means you haven’t understood the point of this conversation or the reason why we’re doing this. You can miss a target, which means, well literally, a bullseye target. You could either hit the target or you can miss it. If you miss a target or an objective, it means you don’t achieve what you were hoping to achieve. You can miss your chance and this means that you lose out on, you don’t take the opportunity for something and to miss your chance, it relates to what we were saying about opportunities and events. If you miss your chance to enter a competition, for example, you have missed the opportunity to enter that competition. Right, let’s move to lose. One thing I just want to remind you before we get started on lose is spelling.

When I used to mark students exam papers, they would lose out on marks ‘cause they would spell to lose with two o’s. Now, listen to this. Lose, loose. Loose means something is not tight. It’s an adjective. Lose is the verb that we’re going to be talking about today. So, be wary of the pronunciation and be very wary of the spelling. Lose, not loose (laughs). Okay, we’ve got slightly more situations with lose. We’ve got five and the first one is, to lose something, which means to not be able to find something. You could lose your keys, you could lose your credit card, you could lose your wallet. I really hope that doesn’t happen to me.

The next meaning for lose is to have less of something. It doesn’t mean you can’t find it, it just means you have less of it. So, you could lose weight, you are carrying less weight. If I am losing weight, I am reducing the amount of weight that I have. We talked about this in the video I did on appearances. And we spoke about losing your hair and going bald and this means that gradually you have less and less hair. You could also lose interest in something or somebody. There are lots of examples for this one. Now the third situation in which you can use to lose is when you don’t have something that you did have before. Actually, I guess you can lose a person as well. So, when you don’t have something or someone that you did have before.

So, this means to not have something or someone that you did have before. So, you can lose money, you can lose a job, you can lose a partner, you can lose hope. Before you didn’t have these things, you did have them. So you have lost them. Now, the fourth meaning of to lose is to not win. So, you can lose a game, you can lose a sports match, you can lose a competition. It means you haven’t won them. But do you remember I said keep sports match in your head, because it’s very important to use the correct verb. If I say, I missed the game and I lost the game, they mean two very different things. I missed the game means I didn’t arrive on time to see the game or I just completely did not see the game. If I say I lost the game, it means I did not win the game. So, it’s important to distinguish between miss and lose especially in that context. The final situation in which we can use to lose is when a family member or somebody close to you passes away or dies. To lose somebody is a nice and respectful way of saying that somebody near to you has died. So, if i say, Jenny lost her mum last year, it means Jenny’s mum passed away last year. Now, let’s look at a couple more collocations using lose.

You can lose track of time, which means that you don’t realise how much time has passed or is passing. I failed my exam because I lost track of time and I didn’t realise that I didn’t have enough time left to answer the final question. You can also lose consciousness, which means you become unconscious. You can lose your head or lose your temper, which means that you get very, very angry. If you’d like to see more ways on how to say that you are angry or annoyed in english, you can check out the video up here. You can also lose the plot or lose your mind as well, which means that you’ve gone crazy. Have you lost your mind? Are you crazy? Uh, I’ve completely lost the plot. I’m just being so silly. You can lose sleep over something, which means you worry about something.

If I say, don’t lose sleep over it, it means don’t worry about it. You can lose heart, which means you lose enthusiasm and you can lose your voice, which means when you get a cold, and you can’t speak anymore, you speaking like this. You’ve lost your voice. So, we’ve covered to lose and to miss, but what about to be missing because this one can be used in a similar way as to lose. To be missing is all about expectation and what you expect or what is expected. There are three ways in which we can use it. The first one, they’re all very similar. The first one, if something is missing, for example, my keys are missing. It doesn’t mean that I’ve lost my keys, it means that my keys are not where I expected to find them. So, I look in my handbag where I expect to find my keys, they’re missing, they’re not there but there are many possibilities. They might be lost, they might be stolen, somebody might have moved them.

All I know is that they’re not where I expected them to be. So, to be missing is all about expectation. The next situation refers to people. If somebody is missing from a meeting or a dinner party or a get together, or some sort of event. It means that they are not present when they are expected to be present. We expected them to be at the meeting but they’re not there, they are missing. The third meaning, however, is a bit more serious. If somebody is missing, not from an event or meeting, it just missing full stop, their whereabouts, their location is unknown and people are trying to find them. This could also be called to be reported as missing or to go missing as well. So that’s more serious. So on the news, you might see a 12-year-old girl has been missing for four days, for example. Right, who’s been watching English With Lucy since the very beginning? When I started my channel, I used to make videos with little quizzes at the end. And I though it would be really nice to do one today.

So, I set up a quiz. There are 10 questions. You can put your answers in the comments if you like. One, could you repeat that? I, what you said. Could you repeat that? I, what you said. Number two, he got, in Soho, London. He got, in Soho, London. Three, my friend lives in Australia and I, her a lot. My friend lives in Australia and I, her a lot. Four, he, the bus to work. He, the bus to work. Number five, she, all her money on Bitcoin. She, all her money on Bitcoin. Number six, she’s been reported as, in the news. She’s been reported as, in the news. Number seven, I dropped my computer and, all my data. I dropped my computer and, all my data. Eight, my credit card is, from my wallet. My credit card is, from my wallet. Number nine, why were you, from the meeting? Why were you, from the meeting? Number 10, I, my temper when she said she wasn’t coming. I, my temper when she said she wasn’t coming.