Do you Confuse Take Care, Be Careful and Watch Out?

Aww yeah, RealLifers, what’s going on?

This is Ethan, with another video for you. So, today I’m going to talk to you about something I have noticed a lot of my students confuse. These three phrases sound similar, but have quite different meanings.

Take Care, Be Careful & Watch Out

So watch this video and read the transcript for full understanding, and hopefully you’ll never mix up these phrases again, aww yeah!

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Transcript

Take Care

Alright guys, so, let’s start out with take care. People a lot of times confuse especially take care and be careful.

So, take care, usually, you just use to say goodbye to someone. It means take care of yourself.

So, you know, I hope that you’re leaving now but that you’ll take care of yourself.

So, you can use this actually saying it to people, you can use it in emails, it’s a very friendly way to say goodbye to someone. Take care, or take care of yourself.

Be Careful

But this is very different from be careful.

So, be careful is a warning. So, for example, if someone is going to hike a very tall mountain, like here in Cataluña, for example, we have Pedraforca.

If someone is going to go hike Pedraforca, you might say to them “Be careful, it’s a dangerous hike.”

Watch Out

And then we have watch out, which is very similar to be careful, you’re warning someone, but it’s much more in the instant.

So, say that you’re with a friend, walking down the street, and you come to a crosswalk, and your friend is about to step into the street and there’s a car coming. You say “Watch out! Don’t step into the street.”

So, that’s how you use that. It’s much more in the instant, whereas be careful is maybe a warning about someone doing something, or going to do something in the near future, or warning someone about a situation in general.

Summarizing

So, just remember that, watch out is for an immediate warning, and be careful is more general. Take care is a way to say goodbye.

Conclusion

Alright guys, so I hope you won’t confuse these anymore, be sure to put them to use, and pay attention to them in your favorite TV shows, movies and podcasts.

Alright guys, have a good one. Later!