معانی مختلف Get

The many meanings of “Get”

Cheers, mate! Oh mate, I’ve gotta tell you about last night. It was a crazy night! Right, so I’m at my house. I’m getting ready, I get dressed, get my shoes on. Get out of the house and get myself a taxi, to get to the club. I got to the club about 10 - 10:30. I got free tickets to this cub from a guy I’m getting to know at work. He’s a nice guy, he’s new but last time I spoke to him, he was like “Mate, you’re getting fat!”. And I’m like “Mate! I’m getting pretty offended by what you’re saying here!” Do you get me? Anyway, once we get into the club, I get to the bar, get myself a drink. I’m getting my money out, right? And I get kissed by this girl next to me. And she is gorgeous. She kinda looks like Amy Winehouse. But anyway as she’s putting her hand in my pocket, I’m like “This is getting a bit crazy here!”. “Get your hand out of my pocket! This is getting a bit crazy!”. But at the same time I’m thinking, you don’t get this opportunity very often, do ya? It’s not often you get kissed by a beautiful girl who looks like Amy Winehouse. Do you get me?

Anyway then I remembered “Oh I’ve gotta go! I’ve got a meeting in the morning!”. So I tell the girl, “I’ve gotta go, I’ll see you later!” I got her number anyway. I get a taxi, get back to my hotel. I’m at my hotel room. I get out my keycard but it’s not there! It’s missing. Do you know what I think happened? I think it got stolen by that Amy Winehouse girl. Sometimes I just don’t get it.

So we all know that “Get” basically can mean receive or obtained, for example you could buy something. Yeah, I can’t draw cats. You could say, so of course, this is the most common way of understanding “Get”, it means receive, maybe you bought the cat. Don’t buy cats! Always adopt! So “get” can mean, “buy”. But not just “Buy”, maybe someone gave you the cat as a present. Maybe it’s your birthday. That’ll be an amazing birthday present. For my birthday, please get me a cat. But, that’s just one meaning of get. And there are many, many meetings of get.

If you add a preposition with get, you have a phrasal verb and get appears many times in phrasal verbs. In fact, it’s so complex, we need a new video to explain them. Here are just five and we explain those five in this video, on my belly. If you’ve already seen this video, let’s continue.

Another meaning of get is catch. And we say you catch the bus. So in this case, you could say, I got the bus, in the past or I get the bus every day, in the present tense for example. And not just for a bus, you could get a taxi, get the train, get a plane, get a boat, any public transport. The boat’s public… I guess boat, boats are public transport, aren’t they? He’s sick, he has a cold so we can say he caught a cold, in past. But remember, we can use get to replace catch. So, as a sentence, I got a cold. That’s a few meanings of get. Here are some more. So you got the bus. You are on the bus. You’re going to meet your friend and your friend wants to know what time will you arrive. And you say this. He could say, I’ll arrive in 10 minutes but in natural speech, that’s not how we say it. We use get. But you can’t just say, I’ll get in 10 minutes. That doesn’t sound good. You must have a destination, after get. So, I’ll get to the office. I’ll get to your house. I’ll get to the pub. Or just, I’ll get there. I’ll get there in 10 minutes. To clarify, I’ll get in 10 minutes? No. That’s another meaning of get.

See, now I’m teaching it, I understand why you hate it so much. And then finally you get there. You meet your friend and your friend says, wow, you got fat. That’s not nice. But what does he mean? You got fat. What word could we replace this with? Became, you became that or the opposite, you became skinny, you got skinny. If you win the lottery, you get rich. If you lose all that money in a casino, you get poor again.

So, there’s another meaning of get, become. In a more complex sentence, you can use get like this. Let’s imagine you’re walking with your friend and you’re talking about Game of Thrones or Walking Dead. And you’re annoying friend, who always tells you what happens in the episode, you haven’t seen yet, they say, oh my god… got killed last night, in the episode of Walking Dead. So now, you hate your friend but also, got killed. Why did he say it like that? Well, in this case, get replaces the verb be, in a passive sentence. Now if you’ve seen our lesson on the passive, you know that to make a passive sentence, we need the verb be and the verb three or past participle, however you want to call it. Those make a passive sentence. For example, I was born in London. That’s a passive sentence. The verb be, I was, born bear, bore, born, that’s our verb three. So the verb get, replaces the verb be. So really he could say… was killed him in Walking Dead.

Now, you should know that this is a more informal way of using the passive voice. And in some cases, you can’t use get, in a passive voice to replace be. Let me give you an example. I was born in London. I can’t say, I got born in London. That’s, no, just no. But if you say for example, my car was stolen. I can say, my car got stolen. That’s okay. It sounds a bit more informal but it’s okay.

Also, you can’t use it with stative verbs. It won’t make sense. For example, a sentence like, everyone knows Tom is stupid. That’s an active sentence. Let’s change it to passive. It is known that Tom is stupid. That’s passive. Now, let’s change the verb be for get. It gets known that Tom is stupid? Now, that doesn’t make sense. So, stative verbs, no. But a movement and action verb, like I got arrested, that’s fine. But just remember it sounds less formal. That’s it. Weird, right? And in some common expressions, it means to start being something; very similar to become but we use it in such expressions like, get married, get divorced, get fired, get engaged, get lost. These gets mean you start being that thing. So when you get married, it means you start being married. And now hopefully, you won’t get lost because we’ve explained the many uses of get.

Another way to use get is with possessions. For example, I can say, I have blah blah blah. I have a cat. That’s a possession and that’s fine but it’s not very common to say, I have a cat. It sounds a bit too formal. Today, it’s much more common to say, I have got a cat or contracted to I’ve got a cat. That’s positive, what this in negative? The negative goes with this verb, I haven’t got a cat. A common mistake I see with this, is when people say, I have a cat. They think the negative is, I haven’t a cat. It is the negative but, it’s, that sounds really old-fashioned. It’s much more common to say, I don’t have a cat or I haven’t got a cat. If you’re talking about possessions, in the negative. So when you say have got, it’s about a possession. I have got, that’s a possession. Don’t confuse it with, I have got to do something. That means something different. What does it mean? Let’s have a look.

When you must go, you have to go. There’s some obligation; you can replace that obligation word, must, have to, for have got to. Again, the contraction is better. I’ve got to. So again you could say, I have to go, I must go. Sure that’s fine but again, I’ve got to go is more common. So that is for an obligation and you notice that that is a positive sentence. But be careful, because if we change this to a negative; I haven’t got to go, it doesn’t mean the same as I mustn’t. This removes the obligation. So in other words, the option is there, I could go, I could stay but I haven’t got to. There’s no obligation for me to go. I have got to go, I must go. I haven’t got to go, I have a choice. In a sentence, can you stay or have you got to go? No, I haven’t got to go, I can stay. It’s a choice. I’ve got a meeting so I’ve got to go. We have another video explaining more about the pronunciation of got to. Click on my belly to see that. So do you get it now? Oh, what’s that? Another meaning of get? If I ask do you get it? Or if I say, oh, I get it, what do I mean? So you want to say, oh I understand now. Then you’d say, oh, I get it. But be careful, you can’t use it for everything. That would be too easy. For example, you can say, I understand five languages. I don’t understand five languages, that’s, no. But you can’t say, I get five languages, no. It means you understand now. You finally, oh. So it’s more like, you understand now. Oh, I get it.

So now I think you get how to use get in many situations. Now get out there and practice. Thank you for watching our lesson.