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USING THE WORD GET-1

05 / 11 / 2003

USING THE WORD GET-1: meaning and examples

Hello.

Today's Daily Vitamin is the first in a series of five lessons that will concentrate on one of the most commonly used words in English: GET

One of its most frequent uses is to combine with adjectives, nouns or other verbs to mean 'become' or 'begin to be'. Its equivalent in Spanish and Catalan is often represented by the pronoun 'se'.

For example, in English we say to get wet / cold / tired / sick, etc. which means to become wet / cold / tired / sick. In Spanish the equivalent would be mojarse, enfriarse, cansarse, etc.

A few more very common examples with GET to mean 'become' or 'begin to be' are:
1. Get dirty
2. Get home
(the more common way of saying 'to arrive home')
3. Get drunk
4. Get to sleep
5. Get angry


Here is a contextualised example for each of the above expressions:

Example 1: My three-year old son always gets very dirty at school.

Example 2: I usually get home very late at night, after 11:00 p.m.

Example 3: When he was at University he used to get drunk every weekend.

Example 4: I have been suffering from insomnia and can't get to sleep until 3:00 a.m.

Example 5: My husband gets angry when I get home late from work.

Have a good day!