Let's Learn English! Topic: Eating & Drinking! 🥕🥤🥗
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Well hello and welcome to this English lesson about eating and drinking.

you are probably not surprised that I decided to do a lesson on eating and drinking after having celebrated the Christmas holidays here in Canada. Christmas and New Year's generally are a time where we eat a lot. Uh and then also I thought it would be a good idea because I like to focus today on the verbs we use when talking about eating and drinking. I have done lessons in the past about eating and drinking. I

excuse me, about eating and drinking but this one will focus primarily on the verbs that we use. So, welcome to this English lesson about eating and drinking.

To eat, to drink. Obviously, if I'm going to do a lesson on eating and drinking, I should talk about the basic verbs. Those are of course the two most common verbs that we use. It's enjoyable to eat yummy food. It's enjoyable to drink things that taste really good.

many people will eat three times a day, maybe four times a day. People will probably drink more often throughout the day. I drink water throughout the day and uh that's really the only thing I drink by the way. I drink water, sometimes tea, sometimes decaf coffee. If you wanna talk about favorites, I like to eat pizza,

I like to drink water. So, your two basic verbs. Let's get into some other maybe less common verbs for you but definitely very common in the English language. To slurp. When you slurp. I'm gonna slurp here. You can slurp from a cup. It's not the nicest sound. When you eat soup with a spoon, you can also slurp. It's the sound of

must be like the liquid and the air are mixing together. So you heard the little sound of to slurp. It's actually considered a little bit rude in my part of the world to slurp. Sometimes when people slurp their soup someone might say stop slurping. But I think in some parts of the world it's normal. It's normal to slurp when you eat things like soup or drink your water or other drinks. So

sip. So you saw me just do that as well a little while ago. A sip is a tiny amount of a drink. So I needed a sip of water. It's a noun as well. So I decided to sip a little bit of water. So when you sip it sometimes is something you do when the drink is hot. If you buy a hot cup of tea or a hot cup of coffee coffee sometimes you sip a

because you're not sure how hot it is. So, you just take a little bit so that you don't burn your tongue. To gulp. So, to gulp means to I'm not going to show you a gulp but a gulp would be like in one swallow, you drink a whole bunch. So, let me see if I can do a gulp. So, that was a pretty good gulp. Um so, it's

Almost the opposite of a sip. Like a sip is a little bit and a gulp is a lot. You might gulp down water after you run. Maybe you exercise for a while. And when you're done, you're very very thirsty. So, you might gulp down some water. Um take huge huge amounts and swallow it. Too much. This is something that

We use this verb in a unique way because we might say, oh, I need to find something to munch on. I'm a little bit hungry. I need a snack. I need something to munch on and so usually for me, it refers to something crunchy. You can see how crunch and munch rhyme. Um

Uh but it doesn't have to. You can find something to munch on. If you're watching a hockey game or a football game, you might get some chips. You might sit down because you want to munch on something. So, again, usually used for snacks. I wouldn't use this to talk about a meal but uh yeah, every once in a while, you're a bit hungry and you need something to munch on. To chew.

So, the best picture I could find is chewing gum but I will do the action after you put food in your mouth.

need to chew the food before you swallow the food before the food goes down into your stomach. You need to chew the food and you need to chew it well. You shouldn't just chew twice and swallow. It's important for your digestion to chew the food properly. You can also chew gum. So you'll sometimes see people

the train or on the subway and they're chewing for a long time. They're probably chewing gum. So to chew means to use your teeth to break food up into smaller pieces before you swallow it. To gobble up. So you can gobble up or gobble down. It both works. It means to eat something really really quickly. Teenagers will often gobble up all the food that you put out.

If in my classroom, I brought snacks and put them on a table. When my students arrived, if I said, you can have as much as you want, they would just gobble up all the food. They would go to the table and they would just eat everything. So, to gobble up, usually used to talk about people who are

eat a lot of food very quickly. Um and so I always think of teenagers. I think because I'm a high school teacher. Um I have a club at school where students can come after school and sometimes we have food and if we have food they gobble up all the food. They eat it very quickly. To wolf down.

Similar to gobble up, wolf down means to eat a lot of food. The best example I can think of this is when I was in university, I

the summer I had a part-time job building houses with my uncle. I worked in the construction industry. That made me very very hungry. At lunchtime I would wolf down my food. When I got home from work I would make supper and I would wolf down my supper. When you wolf down food it means you eat it very very quickly. You probably don't chew it properly. You probably put food in your mouth all

Chew it three times and swallow it. So, you wolf down food when you are very very hungry. You just eat very very quickly. To guzzle. So, to guzzle is similar to to gulp. When you're done exercising, you will guzzle down a lot of water. Um during my lessons, I don't guzzle down the water. I sip

But if you saw someone drink an entire bottle in one go, if they open the lid and they were like just drinking away, you would say that they decided to guzzle down some water because they are very, very thirsty. Very common if you watch any kind of sports. You'll see the players go to the sideline and guzzle down

water or guzzle Gatorade because they are so so thirsty. To force down. So this is an interesting verb because to force down food means to eat food when you don't want to eat food. The best example would be if you're sick and

then when you start to get better like let's say you're sick and it's stomach flu like maybe you you're you have a stomach ache or you're or you're throwing up something is not right. At some point you need to start eating again but you might not want to so you might have to force down some food. I was sick two weeks ago.

then the the next day I thought I should have some toast. So I was able to force down a piece of toast. So it means to eat when you don't feel like eating. Okay? Um and sometimes you have to. Um people who have surgery in the hospital a day or two after surgery they might need to force down some food. They don't want to eat. They don't feel like eating. They

Um they're not hungry but it's important to eat. So they might force down some food in order to get better.

nibble. This was the best picture I could find for this. Um mice sometimes nibble on cheese. I was actually going to say nibble is like the eating equivalent of to sip. So when you sip you have a little bit of your drink. When you nibble you have a a tiny bit of what you are eating. So sometimes people will nibble at some of their food. Instead of taking a big bite with a fork.

might just take a little tiny piece of the food. They will nibble at the food. So to nibble means to take a small bite. To binge. So to binge means to eat a lot of food in one sitting. Okay. Um it means to eat more than you need to eat. Uh we also use this verb to talk about watching a TV show and

one episode after another. If you sit down and watch five episodes of a single TV show, we say you are binge watching. When we use the verb to talk about eating, we use it to mean eating more than you need to eat. So, the best example for this would be if let's say you didn't eat for two days, you decided you were going to fast. When you fast, it means you're not eating.

the end you might have three eggs and four pieces of toast and um you might binge on food. You might eat more food than you normally would in one sitting. To dig in. So this is a verb we use to talk about when you start eating. In fact we also we sometimes say this for fun at the beginning of a meal. You might say okay the food's already digging. Um you could say I

Um what time is supper? Oh we're going to dig in around five. Um but usually you hear this as a humorous way to start a meal. Someone might say um okay let's sit down at the table. Everyone sits down and then someone maybe the person who prepared the food might say okay dig in uh enjoy the salad or whatever it is you are eating. But to dig in means to start eating.

to devour. So, I think you might be familiar with this verb. To devour means to eat a lot of food very quickly. It's like to wolf down. Like you can wolf down a pizza. You can devour a pizza. Again, I usually use this verb to talk about teenagers. Have you ever noticed that teenagers can eat a lot of food? If I brought four pizzas to my classroom, the students would devour them.

kind of makes them sound like animals, right? Like a lion will devour its prey or I think that's a good example. Um and so when you use the verb to devour, it means basically to it's like you're so hungry, you don't think about eating. You just eat very quickly until the food is gone. To devour.

snack on. Sometimes it's nice to have some food to snack on. Um we add the word on because it means like you

trying to think like if I go to a party and I see this I might say oh it's nice that there's some things to snack on. You can also say snacks like there's some snacks to snack on. Um but if you have a party and there's nothing to eat people might be disappointed and say well there's nothing to snack on. I'm very hungry and there's nothing to snack on. So again this does not refer to a meal.

you wouldn't use this verb to talk about breakfast, lunch, or dinner, or supper. You would use it to talk about this kind of food like chips and nuts and little crackers and cookies and I think that looks like cereal in the bottom bowl. Um but these people wherever this picture is from have decided that people might like to have something to snack on. Um so they have put out some snacks.

take a bite. So this is interesting because you can bite your food but we don't often say that. We usually say take a bite. So let's say you have a sandwich.

could say he is going to bite the sandwich and then chew on it. But it sounds kind of weird. We usually say he's going to take a bite and then chew on it. When we offer food to people, we sometimes say, here, take a bite. See if you like it. Um so when you take a bite, it means uh you basically put the food in your mouth and

your mouth and take the food away. She is just about to take a bite of this piece of it looks like bread with jam on it. She's going to take a bite. I'm sure it will taste really really yummy. Um when you're eating food with someone they might say is it good? And you might say I haven't even taken a bite yet.

Like I don't know. I haven't even taken a bite. So, when you take a bite, it means you bite the food and you start to eat it, to take a bite, to swallow. So, I mentioned this one earlier. When you put food or water in your mouth, at a certain point,

You need to swallow. When you swallow, the food or drink goes from your mouth down to your stomach, okay? Sometimes, people have trouble swallowing. Um that's not a fun experience. Maybe you're you have a sore throat.

So, you're you talk like this because you have a sore throat. Maybe you're sick and have a cold and you would say, oh, I'm having trouble swallowing. Um it's a very common um side effect or symptom of having a sore throat. You are unable to swallow because your throat is sore but usually you take a bite and

then you chew the food and then you swallow it. So, to use three of the verbs we just learned, if I had a banana, I would take a bite of the banana, I would chew the banana and then I would swallow the banana. To pick at. So, this is again kind of the opposite of to wolf down or to gobble up. When you pick at your food and

someone gives you some food and you don't really like it. So you kinda pick at it. If someone gave me a bowl with chocolate chips and different nuts in it. I might pick at it cuz I don't like nuts that much. So I might I might eat some of the chocolate chips. And I I might eat some of the nuts I don't like. Um but I'm not like putting handfuls of food in my mouth. To pick out sorry to pick at the

definitely gives the impression that you don't totally like the food you're eating and you're just kinda doing what she's doing. She has a tray of food and she is it looks like she's going to pick out the food. She's going to eat the one thing and maybe some of the other things she's not going to eat. Maybe she just doesn't like them.

We also use the verb to demolish. This is similar to to wolf down or to gobble up or to devour. Um it's kind of like a cool way of saying that you ate all the food. Like we got three large pizzas and we demolished them. That's the past tense. Um or if I said um if my son had some

friends over and I brought home pizza for them. They would demolish the pizzas. So again demolish actually means to destroy something. You can use that verb as well by the way. Um but when you demolish something it means you eat all of it very very quickly. These guys look like they are hungry. They're going to demolish that pizza and then it will be all gone.

salivate. When you smell really yummy food, your mouth starts to water. Your mouth starts to produce saliva. You start to salivate. If you ever see this happen with dogs, they even start to drool a little bit sometimes. When a dog is really really hungry. So, to salivate is a physical response.

body responds to the sight of food or smell of food by making your mouth water. Um if I'm really hungry and I smell someone making cookies my mouth will start to water. My body is getting ready to eat. Um it's producing saliva. But we do use it to talk about wanting food. So sometimes you'll be like oh I

made my mouth water. That's probably a more common way to say it. When I smelled the cinnamon rolls it made my mouth water. Um we don't usually say it made me salivate but that is the technical verb that you would use.

to pig out. So, this means to eat a lot of food in one sitting. At Christmas, in my part of the world, people usually pig out. They eat more food than they should be eating. Uh it's not a good idea. I do it. I go to a party and I pig out. I eat way too much food. Never a good idea. You shouldn't pig out but uh

Well, when the food is yummy, it's easy to pig out, isn't it? It's easy to sit down uh like this guy and uh I think he's gonna eat everything on the table there. The turkey, the pie, looks like a tray of potatoes maybe. Brussels sprouts. I'm not sure what is all there but he is going to uh eat it.

lick. When you have something like ice cream. You will lick the ice cream cone. So it means to stick out your tongue in order to yeah I think you only lick ice cream. It's the only thing I can think of right now that you would lick where it's common to eat it in that way. So when you lick you use your tongue to

Um with ice cream you use your tongue to get a little bit of ice cream on your tongue. Your tongue goes back in your mouth and you savor the flavor of the ice cream. Um to lick.

To burp. Sometimes after you eat a lot of yummy food, you have some air or gas in your stomach and you will burp. That was a fake burp by the way. I'm not going to burp for real. I don't have to burp right now but when you eat a meal, sometimes when you're done, you will burp.

you drink something that's carbonated. Carbonated water, soda, pop. Sometimes the you have to burp after you drink some of it. So basically you have gas or air in your stomach and you need to release it and it makes a sound. If you burp with your mouth open it makes a loud sound which

be considered rude and in some places maybe not rude. So to imbibe. So this is a very formal sounding verb. Um it's not used very much in English but it means to drink and it usually refers to alcoholic beverages. Like last night I decided to imbibe two beers.

Um again, not super common. Sometimes people use it just to be funny but it's an older verb that means to drink uh and usually it means an alcoholic beverages like you would imbibe wine or uh beer or or whiskey. You would imbibe. To take a swig. Sometimes you're really thirsty and sometimes during my live lessons, people say, hey, Bob, take a sip. They could also say, hey, take a swig.

sometimes I take a swig of water uh after I work outside and I'm really hot. I might come in and take a swig of water before I start working on something else again. So, it simply means to take, you know, a little, to drink a little bit of water, to take a swig. Um it's like the amount of water, enough water to swallow that amount of water. I hope that made sense.

you drink just enough to swallow it. And quite common when you're working. Like, I'm working on something, I take a swig of water. I don't drink a lot. I just take a swig and then I get back to work. Hi, Bob the Canadian here. Thank you for listening to this English podcast lesson. If you would like to support me in the work that I do as an online English teacher, please visit patreon.com slash bobthecanadian.