well hello there everyone and welcome to this english lesson where i'm going to teach you how to describe things now i know you already know how to describe lots of things in english you probably know how to describe something that's big or small tall or short in this lesson on describing things i tried to find as many words as possible that are not as popular these are words we do use all the time to describe things in english but i wanted to find words that um maybe aren't the most common or most popular um but they're definitely still used so one of the first words i want to talk about is the word pungent and if you look on this slide here you'll see that i put garlic a fairly universal vegetable or spice vegetable or spice i'm not sure i think it's a vegetable but most places in the world will recognize garlic now you can say that garlic has a very pungent smell it has a very pungent odor when i walk in the house and if jen is cooking something that has garlic in it it is very easy to identify because of its pungent odor okay let me say pungent one more time it is a bit of a challenging word to say but things like onions and garlic where they have a very strong odor that might be another word you would use or a strong smell you can also use the word pungent so garlic i do really like garlic i like garlic bread actually i don't know if you've ever had garlic bread with cheese it's very very very tasty um the next one that i want to talk about is the adjective earthy when something has earthy colors it usually means they have colors that are from the brown part of the color spectrum so when you look at this slide here you will see a painting that uses a lot of earthy tones it uses a lot of earthy colors now you can also describe things as being earthy sometimes when you pick mushrooms you could say they have an earthy taste okay you sometimes can describe people as being very earthy someone who really loves the earth who spends a lot of time outdoors someone who maybe doesn't cut their hair a lot you could describe them as being very earthy someone who likes to camp and spend a lot of time outside but anyways this lesson isn't about describing people i did a whole bunch of lessons about describing people earlier this year so let's stick with describing things so you can describe a color as being earthy different tones of brown you can also describe something as tasting a little bit earthy or even smelling earthy when you plant plants in a pot and you use potting soil you could say that the soil smells very earthy then we have the word rotten this is probably familiar to you when something is rotten it means that it has gone bad you can see this lemon here is rotten you can see that this lemon has been out for too long sitting on the counter in someone's kitchen and it has starting to started to rot so we would say that this lemon is rotten you could also say that something smells rotten so you could say that banana is rotten that banana smells rotten or you could say something smells rotten in the house so you can use it for describing the state of the object to say it is rotten but you can also use it to describe the smell i'm sure you could say something taste rotten although at that point that would be a little bit gross wouldn't it if something tasted rotten and then you can also say people are rotten if someone is a rotten person it means they do bad things i try really hard to be a good person but there are certainly people in the world who are rotten the next one sharp so sharp has a lot of different meanings um you could say that cheese smells sharp you could say that cheese tastes sharp so if you have ever eaten mozzarella cheese it's a very mild cheese mozzarella cheese doesn't have a strong flavor but if you have ever eaten cheddar cheese in particular well-aged cheddar or old cheddar it has a sharp smell and it also has a sharp taste you can also use sharp to describe an object like a knife you can say that a knife is sharp and when your knife isn't sharp it's hard to cut things so you can use sharp to describe a smell you can use sharp to describe a taste you can use sharp to describe something that's actually sharp why am i cutting my hand i shouldn't do that you could describe it to for something that is actually sharp like a knife and you can also use sharp to describe people if you say that someone is sharp it means they're very very smart you can also talk about pencils as being sharp as well when you use a pencil you like to have a sharp pencil so sharp many many uses hopefully i just gave you several examples there let me see where i am here of course the opposite of sharp is dull so a knife can become dull but when you're talking about flavors and you're talking about smells we don't use the word dull you would say that it smells mild or that it has no smell or is odorless but if a knife no longer cuts we would say the knife is dull if a pencil if the end of the pencil starts to get worn down we would say oh this pencil is dull and then you would sharpen the pencil to make it sharp again you could also describe people as being dull it's not a nice thing to say but a dull person is a boring person so you might have a friend who when you invite them to a party they don't talk a lot they just kind of stand in the corner they don't dance they they they're just kind of dull so it's not a nice way to describe a person it's a little bit insulting but if you say that someone is dull it means that they are boring um we have the word fluffy this chick right here is fluffy when chicks hatch out of the egg they are very very fluffy kids often have stuffed animals which are very fluffy when something's fluffy it has a lot of soft really nice hair but definitely a small chicken or a chick as we call it is very fluffy i don't know why i'm laughing at fluffy um i'm not sure but anyways there's a chick and and it's fluffy um we have the word sticky so honey is sticky i tried to pick as many things to describe um as would that would be universally known around the world so honey comes from bees and if you have ever eaten honey you'll know that it's very sticky i get a little annoyed sometimes when there's honey on the counter in the kitchen sometimes my kids will put honey in their tea and they'll spill a little bit and then the counter is very very sticky in the kitchen so honey is sticky there are many other things that are sticky as well i did want to mention you can be in a situation that is sticky so you can be in a sticky situation um what that means is let's say um someone at work brought a really yummy snack in their lunch and you were opening the fridge and you were taking some of their snack without permission so you didn't ask if you could have some and as you grab their snack from the fridge they say what are you doing in that situation we would say you are in a sticky situation because you just got caught stealing something so sticky can be used to describe many many things definitely if you get caught stealing something you would be in a sticky situation so juicy um when you make orange juice from oranges we do that because oranges are juicy there is a lot of juice in an orange when you eat something like a carrot it's not very juicy when you eat something like a watermelon it is very juicy often when you eat something that's juicy it will drip while you're eating it and if it wherever it lands will become sticky so juicy and sticky are definitely related to each other okay so yes oranges are definitely juicy apples can be juicy some apples are really juicy some aren't but oranges and watermelons are definitely juicy for sure um we're going to talk a little bit about adjectives that have to do with temperature and instead of just talking about hot and cold i wanted to talk about some i would call them the second tier adjectives so we used the word freezing a lot we could say it was a freezing cold day it's freezing outside what's it like outside today it's freezing it doesn't actually need to be below zero for you to say it's freezing outside because it's all relative at this time of the year a normal daytime temperature is about 15 degrees celsius if it was four degrees celsius today i could go outside and say oh it's freezing out here even though it's not below zero it's still an accurate way to describe the temperature you can use this literally you can say it's minus one it's freezing outside but if you go into someone's house and they keep the temperature in their house lower than your house you could say oh it's freezing in here it might actually be 19 degrees celsius but when you are cold as a human being you can use the word freezing okay so right now it's actually freezing in here because we don't have our furnace on yet and it's a fairly cold day outside so our house is cold so again even though it's not below zero in here i can still say it's freezing um lukewarm so sometimes you want to have a hot bath and you put hot water in the bathtub but then maybe someone phones you and you talk on the phone for a while which phone should i use this phone or the real phone and then when you go back to get into the tub it's lukewarm so lukewarm means it's not as hot as you wanted it to be we have the same thing happen when you have a cup of tea or coffee sometimes you pour yourself a cup of tea and it's the right temperature but then you get busy and when you come back the t is lukewarm so when something is lukewarm it's not as hot as you wanted it to be um frigid i should make this picture a little bit bigger so you can see what's happening here when something is frigid it is cold um sometimes in the winter uh people do this in canada usually on january 1st this is called a polar bear swim or a polar bear dip on july on january 1st i said january 1st right january 1st many people in canada go to a lake and they smash the ice and they go for a swim and it's usually really cold the water is frigid it's just a crazy thing to do i've never done it i have friends who have done the polar bear swim but when you do it the water is frigid people go in the water they stay in the water for just a few seconds and then they come out again because the water is frigid it is extremely cold we use the word boiling to describe something that is really hot it doesn't have to actually be boiling it can be so when you have water on the stove or in the kettle you can listen until you hear the water boiling so then you have water that has the bubbles of steam coming out but we also use boiling just to describe things that are hot so you could take a bite of soup and say oh this is boiling technically it's not actually boiling the same is true when you visit someone's house if they keep their house really warm in the winter and it's higher than the temperature you're used to you could say oh it's boiling in here you could also use this to describe a hot summer day you could just say wow it's 37 degrees it is boiling out there today so it's boiling hot so doesn't have to just be used to describe water that is actually boiling um i just uh oh that i'm going to keep going sorry toasty um we use the word toasty you know toast like you put bread in the toaster and then it pops up and then it's toasted but we also use toasty to just describe a warm and pleasant place okay so if you're outside in the winter and you come inside and the wood stove is going you could say oh it's nice and toasty in here it's really nice and toasty in here so toasty is a word to describe a warm place that's also a cozy and comfortable place a place that you enjoy um i'm trying to see where i am here in my lesson so yes we're doing well no problem so old-fashioned is another word that we use um people can be old-fashioned too by the way but if something is old-fashioned um it means that it is i put old-fashioned but i meant to put old-fashioned let me just check that for a sec well let's not worry about it let me just say it it's an old-fashioned phone or an old-fashioned phone i have to check bob the canadian doesn't know the answer old-fashioned or old-fashioned i think i say it wrong what's the difference oh yes old-fashioned there we go i did it right i i know i must have checked it this is an old-fashioned phone whenever something is really old eventually we say it's old-fashioned okay and you can also say that people are old-fashioned because uh basically what you're saying is that they wear clothes that are really old maybe they have a really old car maybe their phone looks like this instead of like this and you would say that they are an old-fashioned person let me see here crooked so we're looking at a few uh descriptions of shape now so this nail is crooked normally a nail is straight but it looks like this one got hit a few too many times in the wrong direction and so now it is crooked you could also say that it is bent okay sometimes when you drive down a country lane it's very crooked okay so anytime something is not straight you can say it's crooked you can also use this to describe people if you say that someone is crooked if you say that a person is crooked it means that they are not honest and they are probably someone who doesn't mind committing crimes okay so sometimes what we do in english is we'll say oh don't deal with that business that person is crooked that means that even though they have a business they don't do things properly and they like to cheat people out of money so crooked people are not nice people crooked nails can be fixed it's harder to fix someone who is crooked um yes claudia in the chat is saying does old-fashioned mean like vintage absolutely yes um now let's talk a little bit about uh money a couple slides here about money this car is an affordable car this is just a normal nissan four-door sedan we would say that this is an affordable car it doesn't cost a lot of money you can buy this car quite easily if you have a good job it is affordable the opposite of that would be expensive i believe this is a lamborghini this is an expensive car so again an affordable car isn't necessarily a cheap car so maybe it was wrong to say expensive is the opposite an affordable car is a car that you have enough money to buy and you don't go into a lot of debt in order to buy it an expensive car simply costs a lot of money menial so when we talk about jobs there are certain jobs or tasks that we would say are menial a menial job let me get a little drink here for a sec a menial job is a job that requires you to do physical labor that doesn't require a lot of thinking okay so if your job is to shovel dirt we would say that that is a menial job or a menial task if your job is to um let's see let's say your job is that you are inventing a vaccine for covid that is not a menial job that is a very high-end job but if you have a menial job it usually means you are doing physical work and labor-intensive tasks now we get to colors so you can use the word vibrant to describe colors when colors are vibrant it means that they're very bright they're very um let's see how would i describe this i like not like my shirts my shirts are very plain this picture is very vibrant in the spring when everything starts to turn green the colors outside are very very vibrant vibrant colors are just awesome people don't tend to dress in vibrant colors they usually dress in colors that are a little more moderate but certainly when we talk about color vibrant is one of the words that we use translucent so when something is translucent it means you can sort of see through it but you can't totally see through it okay so when something is translucent it's like this piece of tape this person is holding or this piece of paper um basically you can kind of see their fingers behind it you can't see through it completely but something that is translucent will let some things through okay so if you have translucent glass it means that you can sort of see through it we often have translucent glass on our showers so when you take a shower if someone accidentally walked in the bathroom they can't see through the glass we often have translucent glass on our bathroom windows so that they let in light but they don't allow people to see in cheesy so cheesy is an interesting word obviously if you buy a pizza with a lot of cheese on it you can say that the pizza is cheesy okay but we use this also to describe things that are not in fashion or when someone wears something that's very interesting like this jacket and this tie you could say that this person is wearing a very cheesy tie and a very cheesy jacket basically it means not in fashion usually when someone wears something that's cheesy it might have colors that don't match you can also use cheesy to describe other things you might go to a party and they might it might the party just might be really cheesy like maybe it was an 80s themed party where everyone was supposed to dress up like it was the 80s but people didn't do it well you could describe it as cheesy so basically cheesy means not cool there you go so if something's cheesy it is not cool ish so you've probably heard this added to a lot of words in english we say things like oh i saw a car that i liked the other day it was bluish or it was a smallish uh person or we say it was reddish so we often add ish to adjectives just to kind of make a general statement so we don't know exactly what color brown we would say but we would say the dog had brownish ears or he had a brownish face so it's not completely brown but it's a little bit brown so ish is kind of um you'll hear me say it sometimes at the beginning of the live stream in the chat i'll say we're starting in about five ish minutes so basically ish means that it's not precise so let's say the live stream was starting in six minutes six minutes i could say we're starting at about five ish and it just means close to five minutes so ish is an interesting little thing we add it's very informal um but you could say to someone you want to meet around tennis and it means not exactly at ten o'clock maybe at five to ten or ten after ten but definitely we add ish to colors and time quite regularly and size as well like smallish you know large ish that sounds a little funny but ish is added two words a lot um i don't know why i hope coke doesn't get mad at me by the way this is the canadian spelling of flavor if you are learning american english you would take out the u but if something is flavorless it means that it has no flavor okay so often in the world you will buy things to drink or you will buy something to eat and it will just be a bit flavorless it just doesn't have very good flavor hey i want to say hi to uh thank you to sylvia liang for joining and becoming a member of the channel thank you so much for supporting me that's often that's awesome of you and thanks for doing that uh the opposite of flavorless would be flavorful again pay attention there is a you in flavor in canada but there is no you in america so flavorful if something has a lot of spices in it we would say that it is flavorful i like food that is very flavorful okay i like different kinds of spices in my food i don't like food that is flavorless well i'll eat it if i'm hungry but not always i'm slippery so in the winter in canada the roads are often very slippery the sidewalks are often very slippery because there's lots of ice and it's easy to slip so you could say oh it's um it's very slippery out there today the roads are very slippery it's a slippery sidewalk today be careful out there you can also use slippery to talk about people if a person is slippery it means that they are a little bit dishonest okay so you again could say you know don't buy things at that business because the owner he's a very slippery person that means that they are a dishonest person rod says diet coke tastes like medicine yeah i don't drink diet pop i don't drink a lot of pop or soda anyways but uh i'm that i'm not a big fan of it either sylvia says so happy to be a member and join the live chat thanks for being here sylvia that's awesome um sleek when something is described as sleek it means it's very polished and glossy and it's just designed really well like this motorcycle is very sleek it's a very sleek looking motorcycle you know it just has really cool design features the blue paint looks the light reflects off it in a really cool way it's a very sleek looking vehicle sports cars and high-end motorcycles are often described as being very sleek rough so rough is an interesting word because it has to do with the surface when i work on the farm in the summer my hands become rough from the hard work i do a lot of menial jobs on the farm and my hands become rough the wall that you see in the far side of the slide is made out of stone so it would be very rough i mean the opposite of rough is smooth and it's definitely not smooth we also can use rough to describe things that are difficult so climbing a mountain is a very rough thing to do it's a very rough job you could say it was really rough yesterday climbing the mountain you could use rough to describe a relationship things are really rough right now so rough simply means not smooth either in texture or situation scrumptious so i don't eat a lot of cupcakes but cupcakes are scrumptious when something is incredibly tasty when it is super yummy i'm using a lot of other words here as well you would say that it is scrumptious it's almost always used to describe food i can't think of an example where you would use it to describe a drink you could say you know this cafe mocha latte is delicious but you would probably say this cupcake is scrumptious this cake is scrumptious this food is scrumptious it's just really really tasty and really really yummy sorry the last few here it's kind of random but that's okay um learning a bunch of random adjectives i think is still helpful microscopic so when something is really really small we say that it is microscopic snowflakes are microscopic it's hard to see them with the naked eye okay so i know i use the word naked there when you say that something's hard to see with the naked eye it means that you need to use a telescope like if it was far away in space or a microscope so a microscope is for looking at really small things or binoculars to see so when you when it's hard to see something with the naked eye you need to use something with lenses in it but when something's really small you can say it's microscopic okay so the covid virus is microscopic we can't see it it is extremely small so we would describe it as being microscopic when something's gigantic we say it is mammoth um so this is a mammoth wave okay we don't use the word mammoth a lot it actually comes from the really big woolly elephant type animal that they find sometimes in the snow in siberia so a mammoth is a really large elephant from a past era but we use the word mammoth to describe large things you could say oh spacex fired off this mammoth rocket into space or i was out surfing and there was this mammoth wave that i caught and i surfed on so mammoth is used to describe something that is really really big steep so when something is steep it means that it is hard to climb usually used to describe a mountain or hill you could say oh i was out hiking and the i had to go up a really steep hill i climbed a really steep mountain the other day or something like a cliff the cliff was very steep i think all cliffs are steep but anyways steep is something that is very hard to climb in fact last weekend my family and i went hiking and we had to climb a very steep hill at the end of the day and i was quite tired actually after we climbed that steep hill um water can be shallow um let me just check something here yeah we're good so water can be shallow when water is shallow it only comes up maybe to your knees when you are at the beach when you first walk into the ocean or into a lake it's usually quite shallow when you walk further out it gets deep but it's usually quite shallow you can also describe a person as being shallow a person who is shallow is just kind of um yeah they're not a kind person they're not a caring person they kind of do things to make themselves happy but they aren't good at taking care of other people they're just very very shallow let me just look up a meaning of shallow person for a sec to get a good description for you let's see um a shallow person cares only about their own looks and how much money they have yeah so a shallow person is just someone more interested in themselves than other people narrow so this is a very narrow street when something is narrow it's the opposite of wide okay so i'm getting a little bit wide down here you can describe an alleyway or a street as being very narrow so it just means that it would be hard to drive a car down this street certainly if two cars were coming the street is too narrow it's a narrow street one would have to back out um let's see here yes panthera says shallow is the opposite of deep and if we use it for people then they are not sophisticated definitely in fact i think i'm going to talk about deep next you can also say a person is deep but anyways if you go far out in the ocean or a lake the water might be quite deep we also use this to talk about space something can be out in deep space so deep simply means really far down in the ocean or really far out in space um when you're baking sometimes you want to use a deep pan so you want if you want to make deep dish pizza you need a pan that's really deep in order to bake it you can describe a person as being deep as well if someone is very deep they like to have intellectual smart conversations about things so a deep person is just someone who's very intelligent and likes to uh have great conversations about really cool and interesting things and if they you know they're philosophical you would say they are very deep damp so when we are done eating in the kitchen we often wipe off the table with a damp cloth a damp cloth means that it is a little bit wet when a cloth is put in water and you take it out it's dripping wet and so you ring the cloth so that it doesn't drip water but the cloth is still a little bit damp so in our kitchen after supper we usually get a soap soapy water and a cloth and we wring it out but we still have a damp cloth and then we wipe off the table and we wipe off the counter so that is damp so damp means just a little bit wet sometimes when you go outside um yesterday yesterday in my short video it started raining and i said i said s-h-i-t i don't want to say it out loud because the video gets demonetized but if you want to go to my other channel and watch that video let me see if i can find a link for you i'll put it in the chat um i was shooting a video and it started raining and i said kind of a bad word but then after that my jacket was damp i didn't stay out in the rain and get soaking wet instead my jacket was just damp so when something's damp it's just a little bit wet uh greasy when you cook something that has a lot of oil in it or a lot of grease in it the pan becomes greasy so you could say that this is this is a greasy pan okay so when you do the dishes it's sometimes hard to clean a greasy pan we sometimes describe food as being greasy okay so sometimes when you eat food that has been deep fried when you eat deep fried fish or french fries the food has a lot of grease or oil in it and we would say that it is greasy sometimes we order pizza and the pepperoni makes the pizza really greasy you can see oil on top of the pizza and we would say that it's greasy so when something is greasy it just means it has a lot of oil in it generally when we are done frying things using a frying pan the pan is usually greasy so this is definitely a greasy pan