250 Important English Vocabulary Words with pictures
Hi, I’m Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.
Are you ready to expand your vocabulary with
pictures?
Let’s do it.
The more words you know, the easier it will
be to express yourself and feel like yourself
in English.
Today I have a special treat for you.
I’ve prepared over 70 pictures in 10 different
categories, so that you can really express
yourself in different areas in life.
It’s really important to be able to look around
you and talk about what you see in English.
I hope that these vocabulary words that you
learn today will help to enrichen the words
that you can say and also the words that you
can understand.
We’re going to be taking a look at these pictures
together.
You’re going to see me small in the corner,
while we talk about emotions, textures, housing,
weather, all these different categories and
I’m going to share some useful expressions
for each category with you.
You’re going to be able to look at the picture
visually and know what I’m talking about.
I hope that it will help you to connect the
word and also what you’re seeing.
Alright, let’s get started with the first
category, which is actually our biggest category.
There are the most words for this one, and
it’s personality.
Let’s get started.
All right, let’s start with the first picture
for the category of personality.
We’re going to be going through all of these
pictures pretty quickly, because there’s a
lot to say.
Feel free to write down in a notebook any
new words that you hear.
When I look at this picture, I see everyone
is not smiling and because their arms are
crossed, because the way that they’re standing,
they seem snobby, stuck up, maybe too cool.
Sometimes we use the full expression too cool
for school.
It’s just a slang expression that means you
think that you are better than the situation.
“I am too cool to smile in this picture.”
These people don’t look like really friendly
folks.
We could use those expressions snobby, stuck
up, too cool.
This is Napoleon Bonaparte.
Of course, it’s not the real Napoleon, but
it’s someone who’s play acting him.
If we are to talk about Napoleon’s personality,
we might say that he was a bold, brash, sensitive
to criticism, and a way that we can say that
in one word is touchy.
If someone corrected him, I imagine that he
might be a little bit upset, maybe a little
bit angry.
We could say that he was touchy, he was sensitive
to criticism.
If you’ve ever seen Star Wars, you know who
these two people are.
This is…
I guess they’re not really people.
This is Chewie or Chewbacca and he is a loyal
friend to Han Solo who is the other guy.
For Chewbacca, we could say that first of
all, he’s loyal but also we can use the expression
a softy, he is a softy.
That means that on the outside he looks scary,
but on the inside, really he’s just a nice
guy.
He’s a softy.
As for Han Solo, if you’ve seen these movies,
you know that he is also like Napoleon, bold
and brash, but also he’s a bit of a scoundrel.
Scoundrel is someone who doesn’t follow the
rules.
Maybe they don’t really care what other people
think.
They just want to be risky or just do something
for money, do something for adventure.
He’s also pretty adventurous.
But even though he’s a scoundrel, he’s the
scoundrel we all want to be.
A final expression we can use to describe
Han Solo is cocky.
Cocky means someone who is certain that they
will succeed, even though they might not succeed.
It’s overly confident.
In this situation, in these movies, Han Solo
is often cocky.
“Of course, I can do it.
Of course, I’m the best guy for this project.”
This is overly confident or cocky.
Here you see the three famous friends from
the Harry Potter book series and movie series.
Hermione, Ron and Harry.
Let’s start with Hermione, who is the girl.
Hermione at least at the beginning of the
series, she is a smarty pants.
This means that she’s smart, but she also
wants everyone to know that she’s smart.
This isn’t really a popular characteristic.
Usually people don’t like other people who
are smarty pants.
If you’re smart, that’s great, but just don’t
be a smarty pants.
At the beginning she is also a know-it-all.
This has a similar meaning that she thinks
she knows it all.
Maybe she does.
She does know a lot.
She knows a lot more than the other people
her age, especially school-related knowledge.
But it’s not a very popular characteristic.
You don’t want someone to say you are a know-it-all.
Negative.
We can also say that she is a goody two shoes.
This is a weird idiom, but it means that she’s
a rule follower and she’s not willing to really
go outside of the rule.
She’s worried about getting in trouble.
She’s a goody two shoes, she always follows
the rules.
Of course, if you have read the books or watch
the movies, you know that her character evolves
and changes throughout the different books.
She’s not like that throughout the whole series.
But this picture is from the beginning of
the series, and that’s how she’s portrayed.
Our second character Ron, the guy in the middle,
we can see from the look on his face, that
he is definitely a worry-wart.
Or we could just say a worrier.
He worries about a lot of things.
He worries that he’s going to get in trouble,
that his friends are going to get hurt, he’s
worried that he’s going to get kicked out
of school.
He’s worried about a lot of things.
Even though he’s not naturally bold, he often
tries to be bold because he’s a loyal friend.
But he is a worrier.
As for Harry, the hero of the story, he is
certainly considered brave.
But also I feel like he has a strong sense
of duty.
When he was a small child, he had his destiny
created for him.
He didn’t really have a choice about what
he was going to do in his life.
I imagine pretty much everyone knows the story
of Harry Potter at this point, but I don’t
want to spoil it too much.
But we could say he has a sense of duty, he
has something he needs to accomplish, and
he’s going to do it.
This is a strong sense of duty.
Next we have a picture of the famous couple
John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
John Lennon is firstly famous because he was
part of the group the Beatles.
He is a charismatic person.
When he speaks and when he does things, others
want to follow him.
He’s charismatic.
Of course, he’s also peace-loving.
He was wanting peace in the world, but at
the same time, we can look at a negative side
of that and say that he needs to be needed.
He really wants other people to need him.
In this way, it’s a cycle.
Because you want other people to follow your
message, but you also need their approval.
In this way he kind of needed to be needed.
As for his partner, Yoko Ono, she was more
of a utopian dreamer.
She had some dreamy ideas, some maybe unrealistic
ideas about peace and the earth and we could
say that she was a utopian dreamer.
This isn’t always a negative thing.
It’s not really grounded in reality, but it’s
just a way to talk about someone’s personality.
Next, we have two characters from the movie
Titanic.
If you have not seen this, then you should
probably watch it to just understand something
important from our culture in the last decade
or two.
But here the female character who is played
by Kate Winslet, she is seen as someone who’s
ahead of her time.
That means that other women, during this time
period, just wanted to marry a rich guy.
They didn’t really have their own dreams and
their own thoughts.
At least they tried to hide those things if
they had them, but for Kate’s character, she
wanted to really be herself.
In this way, we could say that she was ahead
of her time.
Ironically, she still ends up with a guy,
maybe not some rich guy who all of her friends
were also going for, but it’s still goes back
to that stereotypical idea.
We might also say that she was adventurous.
She didn’t care what other people thought.
She was willing to just live on the edge.
As for Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Jack,
he is seen as more someone who is optimistic.
He has nothing to lose.
He is a dreamer.
He really doesn’t think much about the future.
He just went on the Titanic and, “Okay, I’m
going to a new country.
I don’t know what’s going to happen.
Let’s see.”
He has no plan.
But he’s still hopeful that good things will
happen which is the characteristic of someone
who’s optimistic.
Next we have Martin Luther King Jr or MLK.
He was a famous leader during the Civil Rights
Movement in the US.
Because he was the face of the movement, many
people knew his face.
They knew his speeches.
He was we could say, willing to put himself
out there.
This means that he was willing to take a risk
he was willing to get outside his comfort
zone.
In the end, he paid the ultimate price because
he was assassinated, but in this situation,
he wanted his message to be heard.
Like Napoleon, like John Lennon, he was courageous,
brave and charismatic.
He was determined that his message would get
heard.
But he was also willing to put himself out
there.
Our final picture for the category of personality
is Forrest Gump.
If you haven’t seen this movie featuring Tom
Hanks, stop everything.
Watch it right now.
It is amazing.
But this character of Forrest Gump can be
described as simple, straightforward.
He says what he says.
He means what he says.
There’s no confusing language about what he
says.
If he likes something, he says it, if he doesn’t
like it, he says he doesn’t like it.
He’s very straightforward in this way.
We can also say he is naive.
Naive is usually a character trait that we
associate with children.
This means that they’re innocent, but also
maybe they are in a difficult or risky situation
and they think, “Everything’s going to be
fine.
Nothing bad will happen.”
In this movie, a lot of possibly bad things
can happen to Forrest Gump and he doesn’t
really feel fear.
He feels like, “Okay, I’m just going to do
this.
I’m just going to give it a try and hopefully
it will be okay.”
This is naive sense.
But everything good happens to him pretty
much in the movie.
He’s a very lucky guy.
Our second category is emotions.
You’re going to hear a lot of words that are
synonyms.
That means that they mean the exact same thing.
There are different ways to describe the same
feeling.
In this picture, people are excited, overjoyed,
ecstatic.
Someone is getting married, I imagine it’s
probably the guy in the middle with his fist
in the air.
Everyone here is having a great time.
We could use those three synonyms, excited,
overjoyed, ecstatic to describe this picture.
In this picture, we see two ladies kindly
listening to whatever this guy has to say.
We could say that they are interested in what
he has to say.
They’re curious about what he has to say.
They’re thoughtful.
This means that they are thoughtfully listening.
It’s kind to listen when other people are
speaking.
They are thoughtful people.
On the other hand, we have these two people
who look concerned, irritated, annoyed.
All three of these things mean the same thing.
Look at their face.
Neither of them are smiling.
Their brow is furrowed.
They’re not talking together.
Yes, their arms are touching but they look
like there’s been some problem.
They’re concerned, annoyed, irritated.
In my opinion, these two kids seem carefree,
relaxed, joyful.
Make sure that when you’re describing the
emotions of kids, you don’t say careless.
Careless and carefree seem like they should
have the same meaning, but children are carefree.
They are free of any kind of worry, they’re
free of any kind of cares.
Hopefully that would be the ideal childhood.
But when you say careless, that means that
you often forget something.
“Oh, she’s so careless.
She always leaves her notebook at home.
She’s careless.”
These have quite different meanings, but in
this situation, these kids seem carefree.
Does this guy look happy to you?
Not really.
He seems either worried, bored, or maybe he’s
just somewhere else.
When we say he is somewhere else, that means
that his body is here, but his mind is thinking
about something else.
If someone says, “Wait, did you hear what
I said?”
You say, “Oh, I’m sorry, I was somewhere else.”
This probably means that you were thinking
about another problem or what you’re going
to do later.
Your mind wasn’t here, it was somewhere else.
This guy also looks like he’s got some problems.
We could say he looks upset.
He looks defeated.
Maybe he thought something good was going
to happen and then it didn’t.
He feels defeated, or he might simply be frustrated.
“Oh, I can’t believe this is happening.
I feel frustrated.”
He might be any of those three things.
Our final picture in this category emotions,
these two guys look lost, confused, or baffled.
Baffled means they have no idea what’s going
on.
They’re lost.
All of these things have similar meanings.
Maybe they’re trying to walk around a new
city, and they thought the bus was going to
come and then it didn’t come or maybe it just
drove right by.
“Huh, what?
Why did this happen?
I feel baffled.
I feel confused.
Why did this happen?”
Our third category is textures.
Or we could talk about the general feeling
of something that might not be the physical
feeling but I use the word texture to cover
this whole category.
Here you can see a clothing shop or a fabric
shop.
There are a lot of different textures here.
We might say, “This looks soft.”
Or, “It looks flowy.”
Flowy means if the wind blows, then it will
go up with the wind.
We often use this to describe curtains.
The curtains are flowy.
The things you put in the window.
Or maybe, “Her dress is flowy.
The bottom of it moves with the wind.”
Or we could say that something here is this
thick texture.
Here this blanket or maybe this wool blanket,
they are thick.
The texture is thick, it feels like it’s something
that would be useful in the wintertime.
In this room, we get the feeling that there
are a lot of smooth textures.
This couch doesn’t have dog hair on it, it’s
not been ripped up.
It’s all one yellow color.
It’s smooth.
We can also talk about the feeling of the
room.
We could say, “It feels airy,” because there’s
a lot of natural sunlight that’s coming in
and there’s not a lot of heavy bookshelves
or heavy furniture in the room, we could say,
“It feels airy.”
You could simply use the word clean to say,
“This is an extremely clean room.”
Or, “There’s clean lines.
This bookshelf is pretty unique.
There are some clean lines.
The couch has some clean lines.”
It’s the texture.
When I look at this picture, I get the opposite
feeling as the previous picture.
It’s not smooth and airy.
Instead, it looks scrappy, rough, abrasive,
these different textures, especially here
in his vest, that might be a scratchy rule.
It might be abrasive.
It might be rough.
All of these different kinds of feelings and
textures we’re getting in this picture are
the opposite of the previous one.
It’s not smooth and airy and light.
No, instead it’s a little bit rough and abrasive.
In this picture, you see an art project there’s
a pumpkin with some colored paint on it.
We could say that it’s bumpy.
If you touched that paint, it would be bumpy.
Or we could say, “The pumpkin has ridges has
ridges.”
I want you to know the difference between
something that is rigid, and something that
has ridges.
The pumpkin has ridges, but if something is
rigid, R-I-G-I-D, that means that it’s stiff.
It doesn’t move.
“When the deer saw the car, the deer became
rigid, it didn’t move.”
Also in this picture because this is a paint
or glue, as the paint is drying, you might
say it’s sticky.
The texture is sticky.
Here’s another craft project.
We could say, “It is metallic.
The texture of these chains is metallic.”
Also, it’s flat.
The texture is flat because these buttons
don’t really have ridges, like the pumpkin.
Instead, it’s pretty flat and it seems durable.
These pieces don’t seem breakable.
If this chain is taken off of this art project
or these buttons are taken off, you can’t
easily break them.
They’re durable.
That’s the texture.
Here we see a snail.
Some people love snails, some people don’t.
I think they’re pretty cool.
I don’t really want to hold them because they
are sticky, slimy, gooey, or if we want to
be a little more casual, you could say goopy.
You can use this for talking about food.
You can use this for talking about snails.
But it’s that idea that it’s sticky, slimy,
gooey or goopy.
For the first picture talking about colors,
let’s take a look at this picture.
We can see that the water is a beautiful aqua
color.
Aqua, or we could talk about the sand and
say it is pure white.
Yes, there’s some variation here.
Maybe it’s a little tan.
Maybe it’s a little bit speckled with some
shells, but overall it is a pure white.
As for the sky, this is a funny expression,
but we often just say it’s sky blue.
To describe a blue you could say, “It is a
clear blue sky.”
Yes, of course.
Or, “It’s pure blue sky.”
But the color of the sky can be described
as, “Its sky blue.”
You could say, “Her shirt is sky blue.”
It’s that light, beautiful pure blue color.
We can describe this bird by saying, “It’s
made of primary colors.”
Do you know what the three primary colors
are?
Red, yellow, and blue.
With these three colors, we can make all other
colors.
They’re called primary colors.
This bird is made of primary colors.
These kids have wonderful colors on.
This boy’s pants are Maroon.
This boy’s shirt can be called…
Do you remember?
Sky blue, or his pants can be called light
blue.
You might say his shirt is light blue too,
but if we wouldn’t be a little bit more specific,
we can say sky blue and light blue.
For her shirt, you could say bright pink,
or depending on how you feel, you might even
just say light pink.
You can see here we often use bright and light
or dark to describe other colors.
You can use those adjectives with color and
it will help you to expand your vocabulary.
In this picture, their skirts are salmon pink,
the color of the fish salmon, we often used
to describe color.
Salmon pink, or we could say light blue for
their shirts.
What about these shirts that are darker blue.
We often call this royal blue.
It’s a really bright, vibrant color.
It’s beautiful.
It’s a royal blue.
For the yellow, we could say it’s gold or
you could just simply say it’s yellow.
Here’s a lovely table spread with different
types of food.
We can describe the color of this lobster
by saying he is burnt red.
This is when you burn food.
Usually it becomes black, right?
But we often use burnt red to talk about this
kind of dark, rich red color.
Burned red, or we could say rust red, because
it’s the color of rust.
What about this food, these muscles, I would
just call them cream.
It’s a cream-colored muscle.
Funnily enough, these olives can be described
as olive green.
If you have a shirt or if you have a wall
or something else, that’s this color, you
could say, “It’s an olive green shirt.”
Or, “I forgot my coat.
Can you grab it?
It’s olive green.”
So that someone knows which coat to get.
It’s olive green.
For the different types of brown, we often
just say, light brown and dark brown.
These walnuts are light brown and these Brazil
nuts are dark brown.
We’ve got some different options here, but
we can just use light and dark to describe
them.
In this famous painting, we can describe the
red using a familiar word you just learned,
burnt red.
It’s that dark rich burnt color.
Or in this situation, it almost looks like
orange.
We could say orangey red, or orangish red.
When you’re trying to combine two colors like
orange and red, we can either put a Y at the
end of it, or I-S-H.
You could say bluish green, or bluey green.
Usually we say blueish.
That’s more common.
Bluish green, we could say orangish green
or orangish red I guess for two similar colors
when you’re trying to talk about something
that’s in the middle.
For the green, I would call this, especially
this darker green, forest green.
The forest, the woods is this beautiful dark
green color.
But if you want to be a little more descriptive
than just dark green, you could say forest
green.
As for the yellow, I would say this is a pleasant
shade of yellow.
Pleasant is obviously a personal preference
word.
Maybe you don’t think it’s pleasant.
Maybe someone else thinks it is pleasant.
But you can use this to describe any color.
“It’s just a pleasant shade of red.
It’s just a pleasant shade of yellow.”
Just means in general, this is a pleasing
color.
Next, let’s go on to our category of weather.
In this picture, there’s a lot of waves, but
people are still enjoying the weather.
I would say it is sunny, warm and windy.
Simple words, but you know what, sometimes
we stick with those when we’re describing
things.
Sunny, warm and windy.
The opposite of the previous picture, here,
there is a downpour.
We might even say, “It’s a nasty day.”
This means it’s not a day where you’re going
to go out for a walk.
You’re probably not even going to get an umbrella
and a raincoat because it’s not going to be
an enjoyable experience, it’s raining too
much.
It’s a nasty day.
Or if you look out the window, and you see
this, you might say, “It’s really coming down.
It’s really coming down.”
What is it?
The rain.
When you say, “Oh, it’s really coming down
out there.
I think I’m going to need to drive to work
instead of riding my bike.”
That means it’s raining a lot.
Another type of weather that you wouldn’t
really want to take a walk in, I would say
this is gloomy weather.
It could be the middle of the day.
I don’t know.
It looks so dark though, that it feels gloomy
because there’s dark clouds.
We might also say simply that there’s a thunderstorm.
There’s also lightning, but we often just
say thunderstorm.
We don’t really say, “There’s a lightning
storm.”
Because usually thunder goes with lightning,
so we just say it’s a thunderstorm.
Or if you don’t see the lightning yet, you
only see the dark clouds, you can say, “It
looks threatening.”
Threatening.
Who is threatening you in this situation?
It’s really just the sky looks like it is
probably going to have terrible weather.
If you’re hiking and some big dark clouds
come in, you might say, “It looks threatening.
We need to go home.
We can’t go up this mountain because it looks
too threatening.”
This looks like a lovely fall day to me.
It is cool, crisp, and partially cloudy.
There’s a lot of blue sky but it’s also cloudy
too.
When we say that a day is crisp, if you live
somewhere that has four seasons, winter, spring,
summer and fall, then you have experienced
this crisp, usually dry, beautiful feeling
of fall.
If you live somewhere that doesn’t have four
seasons, then that might be a new sensation
to you, the having a cool, crisp fall day.
This picture is not partially cloudy.
Instead, because we’re looking at a city,
I would say, “It’s smoggy.”
You might say, “It’s foggy.”
Foggy is from natural occurrences, because
the air is cooler or warmer.
But really if this is created because of pollution,
then you can say, “It’s smoggy.”
Or you might use not just one word, but you
could use the phrase, “The air is thick.”
That means when you go outside, it’s not really
that the air is tangible that you can touch
it and it’s thick, but instead it just feels
like that.
“Ah, the air, there’s so much in the air that
it feels like it’s thick.”
Unfortunately this winter, this did not happen
to my city.
We had a really warm winter but if this happened
to you, or if you visited somewhere that had
a really big snowstorm like this, you could
say, “It’s bitterly cold.”
If it’s more than cold, and you’re wrapped
up and you’re really hurrying to your next
destination, it is not a pleasant type of
cold.
You could say, “It’s bitterly cold.”
I imagine that this picture is also in the
dead of winter.
You might say, “It’s the dead of winter.”
That means the middle of winter.
You’ve passed half of winter, but you still
have half of winter to go.
It’s the dead of winter.
Let’s go to our sixth category, which is nature.
Here we have a really beautiful scene, I would
love to visit this spot.
We can call it a rocky outcrop.
That means that rocks are coming out of the
water and it’s an island you could say, “It’s
a peninsula connected to the mainland.”
It looks like maybe it’s connected at the
bottom a little bit.
It’s a peninsula.
Or you could just say, “It’s a rocky outcrop.”
That means it’s small, it’s mostly made of
rocks, and it’s in the water.
Also around this rocky outcrop, as usual for
most rocky outcrops, there are cliffs.
Straight down, not safe, stay away from them.
There are cliffs all around this rocky outcrop.
In this picture we can see snow-peaked mountains
in the distance.
Down at the bottom, there’s not snow, but
at the top, at the peak, there is snow.
We can say, “There are snow-peaked mountains.”
In the foreground, in the front of this picture,
we can say, “There’s an evergreen forest.”
It’s something that is green throughout the
year.
During the winter it’s green, during the summer
it’s green.
It’s a beautiful evergreen forest.
I would love to go here looks like some people
are riding their horses.
Seems like paradise, right?
This is a treeless rocky mountain ridge.
The Ridge is the top part and it’s treeless.
There are no trees maybe because of the elevation,
maybe because of some other things that happened.
But it’s a treeless rocky mountain ridge.
We can also say, “There are mountains as far
as you can see.”
You look into the distance and all you see
are mountains.
As far as you can see, there are mountains.
Another wonderful destination, you can see
another rocky outcrop, or just some rocks
or a rocky formation coming out of the water.
We can say, “There is a chair on the beach.”
This is the beach.
I know there’s a lot of different words to
describe the beach, the shore, the coast,
but they all have slightly different meanings.
Here, the chair is on the beach.
If we said, “The chair is on the shore,” we
don’t really use this that much in American
English.
The shore is often the place where the water
comes up.
Directly where there’s water, that’s the shore.
Here, the beach is the sandy area.
We use this to describe the place in general,
“I’m going to the beach.”
Maybe you’re just going to the general area
where there is the ocean and the sand.
Maybe you’re not really going to sit on the
sand.
Maybe you’re just going to go shopping.
But you might call that whole area, the beach.
“I’m going to the beach.”
Here is a lush jungle.
Lush means thick.
It’s hard to see through, you don’t know what’s
there.
It is a lush jungle.
This house also seems to be isolated.
You might live somewhere that’s isolated,
you might go somewhere that’s isolated.
You could even feel isolated away from other
people.
But we can say here that this is an isolated
location in the jungle.
If you’ve ever been in the jungle, you know
that they’re usually humid.
This is not a dry place.
Because it’s lush.
We imagine there’s lots of moisture in the
air, which is called humidity.
You could say, “I had a great vacation.
It was so humid though.
We went to an isolated cabin in the lush jungle,
but it was so humid that I had a hard time
going outside of the air conditioning for
a long time.
I’m not used to this type of weather.
It was humid.”
On the other hand, we have an arid landscape.
This is extremely dry.
We could say it’s in need of water.
You might simply say, “I’m in need of water.
I’m really thirsty.
I’m in need of water.”
This tree looks like it’s in need of water.
The land is in need of water, because it’s
an arid landscape.
All of these plants I hope, are probably local
plants.
They’re used to living in this extremely dry
desert type of climate, but occasionally they
do need water.
When I see this picture, my first feeling
is, “Wow.
This is powerful Mother Nature.”
This volcano and no one can stop.
Hopefully you can predict a little bit, but
Mother Nature, which is what we use to describe
nature in general sometimes is powerful.
It is an unstoppable force.
We can also see some lights at the bottom
and that tells me that there are humans living
here.
We might say, “The volcano, it is a looming
volcano.”
Or, “It is looming over the village.”
This has a dangerous sense.
It’s threatening the villagers, it’s threatening
the people, we don’t know when it’s going
to explode.
It is looming over the village.
You could use this to describe people too
like, “Ah, the teacher is always looming over
us.”
We don’t use it for people as much, but we
can use it in that same dangerous, ominous,
threatening sense.
For our seventh category, we’re going to be
talking about cities and how to describe different
aspects of a city.
This is the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
where I was born.
I spent just a couple years at the beginning
of my life here.
But I have a lot of family who still lives
there.
We could say, “We’re looking at the skyline.”
This means the overall view of the city from
up on a hill usually, or maybe on a tower,
you can see the skyline.
This city is also built on a river.
In fact, this city is built on three rivers,
but most big cities are built on a river.
It’s just practical, especially a long time
ago, they needed rivers for industry for survival.
A lot of cities are built on a river or built
on several rivers.
Because there are rivers, we need bridges
to cross the rivers.
We can say, “There are a lot of bridges that
span the river.”
They go across the river or we can use one
word and simply say, “The bridges span the
river.”
This is a lovely outdoor cafe on the corner.
It seems like a busy area.
There’s a lot of people walking around.
Because it’s a busy area, it’s a good place
to people watch.
Have you ever been people watching before?
It’s like bird watching, but you just watch
people walk by.
If you’ve never done this, it’s pretty fun.
It’s not rude or intrusive, especially if
you’re somewhere like this that’s really public.
You just sitting back, enjoying a cup of coffee,
a cup of tea, and you’re just watching people
walk by enjoying being part of the city.
You are people watching.
It’s not pretty, but there are parts like
this in every city.
We can call this an alley, or we could say
it’s an alleyway.
It’s like a small street, between houses or
between buildings.
Usually you probably don’t want to walk there
at night because we can say, “It’s sketchy.”
Or, “It’s a little risky.”
Because there’s a lot of trash here, I imagine
that this is just no place where all of the
trash bins are, but we could also say, “It’s
grungy.”
Or if we’re to describe the whole area of
town, maybe that whole area is a little bit
full of trash, it’s not very well taken care
of.
We could say, “It’s a grungy side of town.”
That’s a polite way to say it’s a dirty, dangerous
area.
But you could just say grungy.
This is a typical view in the suburb of the
US.
We could say, “It’s a suburban setting.”
These houses don’t have much land, they’re
side by side.
Sometimes when you’re trying to buy a house,
or when you’re talking about housing, you
might say, “The houses are built on a postage
stamp.”
A postage stamp is what you put on the letter
when you send it in the mail.
That’s really small, right?
It has to be this big and it goes on your
envelope.
But when you say a house is built on a postage
stamp, it means that the land is extremely
small and they’re close together.
Usually it’s seen as a negative thing when
you use that expression, but it could just
be a way to describe the area of town.
Yeah, that area is really close to town, land
is expensive, all of the houses are built
on a postage stamp.
Also, you can see some cars parked on the
street.
There aren’t…
I don’t really see maybe there’s one garages,
or driveways where people can park.
We call this just street parking.
“There is street parking where I live.
I always have to look for a spot.”
Or maybe if you’re trying to go to a local
restaurant and there’s no parking lot nearby,
you might tell your friends, “Hey, there’s
only street parking, so try to arrive early
because you’re going to have to look around
for parking.
It’s a little tough to find a spot because
there’s only street parking.”
Here you can see a lovely night skyline I
believe this is Tokyo.
A night skyline.
This is an urban setting.
The previous picture was suburban.
That means somewhere where people live, it’s
mainly residential.
But here we have an urban setting that is
a bustling metropolis.
We often use the adjective bustling, which
means extremely busy.
There’s lots of movement to describe city’s,
busy cities.
It’s a bustling metropolis.
Metropolis is a huge city.
I would not at all, describe the city where
I live as a metropolis.
It is just a city, maybe even a town.
But Tokyo is certainly a metropolis.
It’s huge.
It’s bustling.
There’s a lot going on.
For our eighth category food, there are really
endless words we can use to describe food.
This is just a limited view of a couple of
those.
But here we have a wonderful scene.
I want the scene to be in front of me every
day, but maybe that would be a little dangerous
for my health.
Well, we can say, “Here are some sweets.
Here are some breads.
Here are some pastries, probably in a bakery.”
There’s a lot of different words we can use
to describe sweet bread foods.
Sweets, breads, pastries from a bakery.
Before those pastries are finished, this has
to happen.
Here are some bakers and they are letting
the dough which is the uncooked bread, they’re
letting the dough rise, important thing, they
are kneading the dough which means pounding
it and smashing it, kneading the dough.
Because this is not just for their house for
their family, this is for a bakery, for a
shop, they are making it in bulk.
In bulk means a large quantity.
There are a lot of different loaves of bread
that are being made.
They’re making it in bulk.
We often use this expression when you go to
the grocery store, and instead of buying rice
in a bag, you can go to the bulk section and
there’s some big containers and you bring
your own bag or they have some paper bags
available, and you pull a little handle and
you can get as much rice as you want.
There’s some alternatives, pre-bagged or in
bulk, and that’s what they’re doing.
They’re baking bread in bulk.
Have you ever eaten bugs before?
I have one time but I’ve never eaten crickets.
These could be described as crunchy, possibly
spicy, unusual, but we can also say that it’s
an adventurous food.
You might say, “I’m an adventurous eater,”
talking about your own self, your own type
of taste.
“I’m an adventurous eater.
Sure, I like to try adventurous foods.”
These are foods that don’t seem normal to
a lot of people.
You’re going to get out of your comfort zone
and try them.
This meat I imagine some kind of steak is
sizzling, it is grilled.
Sizzling is the sound that you hear.
Grilled is what’s happening.
It is being grilled on this type of grill.
Because there is red inside of it, it’s not
bleeding, but it’s pretty red.
Still, we can say it’s medium rare.
We’ve got a lot of different categories for
meat, we could say, “It’s rare,” which is
very, very, very red, basically raw, maybe
the outside is seared, a little bit briefly
cooked.
Then there’s medium rare, medium, medium well
and also well done.
There’s different ways that you can have food
cooked.
If you go to a restaurant, what I usually
do when I’m ordering some meat I ask the server,
“What’s recommended?
If they ask, “How would you like your steak
cooked?”
Well, if it’s lamb or some unusual meat that
you haven’t had before, or you haven’t had
often, you could ask them, “What do you recommend?
What does the chef recommend?”
Usually I say, “Okay,” to whatever they say
for it because I don’t want the meat to be
too cooked or undercooked.
There’s important ways that we can have the
meat and enjoy it at the same time.
This stew looks spicy, it looks hardy and
filling.
Those two words mean the same thing.
Hardy and filling.
We do not say, “A salad is hardy.”
A salad is usually light.
It is not hardy.
Hardy means lots of meat, probably lots of
carbs like potatoes or rice or bread.
It is hardy and filling.
That means your stomach feels full when you’re
done.
It is hardy and filling.
This also looks pretty spicy for a stew.
What a lovely scene.
A towering pile of fruit.
Or we could say, “They look sweet.”
Some of these are sour, and it’s probably
local fruit.
In the US, we don’t really have scenes like
this with a lot of variety all together in
a market.
I imagine this is probably somewhere where
all of these fruits are grown locally.
We could say it’s local fruit, or we could
just use that for food in general.
“This is local food.
It comes from a destination or a farm that’s
close by the city where I live.”
It’s local.
These guys are doing food prep.
The word prep is short for preparation, but
we often just say prep when we’re talking
about food.
You might say, “I need to prep the meat before
I cook it.”
Maybe you’re going to season it, maybe you’re
going to marinate it for a while.
“I need to prep the meat.”
You could say, “I need to prepare the meat,”
but that sounds a little more serious.
Usually for cooking we just say, “I’m going
to prep the ingredients in the morning.
That way when I come home from work, all I
have to do is throw it in the bowl and I can
cook it.
I need to prep the food.”
They are doing food prep.
This is also, I think this looks like a soup
kitchen to me.
A soup kitchen is, they don’t always serve
soup, but a soup kitchen is a place that gives
food to people who don’t have food, maybe
homeless people, maybe people who are poor,
people who need food.
A soup kitchen provides food to people in
need.
If you want to volunteer when… if you live
in the US and you want to volunteer somewhere,
you might look for a local soup kitchen where
you can volunteer.
Or if you need food, you can look for a local
soup kitchen and you can go there and you
can eat the food, usually completely for free
because this is a charity type of work.
We can also see this guy, he’s cutting these
onions into very small pieces.
This is called dicing.
There’s a lot of words to talk about different
cuts.
But when you cut something really small, you
are dicing it.
Also in the this bowl, they are seasoning
the meat.
They are seasoning, they’re dicing, they’re
pouring the oil and they’re probably going
to saute it.
I could talk for 10 hours about the different
types of specific cooking expressions like
this.
Maybe I’ll make that in another video.
Let me know if you’d like a video about that.
But that’s what’s happening in this video
or in this picture.
For a knife category housing, we see a picture
here of some apartments or some buildings
that are close together.
We can also say they are within shouting distance.
That means that if you shout, “Hey neighbor,”
that neighbor can hear you because your window
to the next window, it’s not a very big space.
You can even use that expression within shouting
distance for someone who’s close to you in
the grocery store.
Or maybe if they’re on the other side of the
grocery store.
You might say, “Yeah, I saw you in the grocery
store last week, but you weren’t within shouting
distance, so I didn’t say hi.
I didn’t want to yell, ‘Hey,’ because you
weren’t within shouting distance.”
That’s not a specific measurement, of course,
but it’s just that idea.
We can also see a close line.
Notice the pronunciation for this word is
very similar to just close the door, a close
line.
In fact, there are many close lines between
the houses here.
I would call this a side street.
I know we already talked a little bit about
cities and alleys and alleyways, but here
it’s a side street.
This is not the main street.
But you could say, “Oh yeah, I live on a side
street within shouting distance to all my
neighbors.
There’s not much privacy.”
This is a fun bird’s eye view of the suburbs.
A lot of these houses look the same.
They look like they were probably built within
the last 50 years, maybe less.
We could say, “It’s a bird’s eye view.”
You’re looking down like a bird, bird’s eye
view of the suburbs.
This is outside the city.
Or we can say it’s far from town.
This isn’t really a rural housing community.
There’s too many houses for this to be rural.
But instead it’s just the suburbs.
It’s not in the middle of New York City.
It’s outside the city.
Because a lot of these houses look the same,
we often use the adjective cookie cutter.
Have you ever used a cookie cutter before?
When you make, for example 50 cookies in the
shape of a star, you will use a metal or plastic
cookie cutter.
Pup.
Pup.
Pup.
Every single cookie will have the exact same
shape.
Because you use a cookie cutter.
We use this as a negative term to describe
houses.
The houses are all cookie cutter.
They don’t have any unique qualities.
Every house looks almost the same.
They are cookie cutter houses or you could
say, “It’s just a cookie cutter neighborhood.
I don’t want to live there.
I want to live somewhere that has more character
or more history.”
Or maybe you like cookie cutter neighborhoods
because it’s predictable.
This is a word that’s often used to describe
houses.
Here is a brick apartment building on a corner
with some iron fire escapes.
Those stairs on the outside are just in case
there’s a fire and you can’t go inside the
building to get out.
You need to go outside you can use the fire
escape.
But these ones are probably iron or metal
on the outside and iron fire escape on the
corner in this old brick apartment building.
Houses like this are common in the south of
the US, especially in historic areas of each
city, because these are colonial style houses.
If you go on a road trip to the east, especially
the east of the US, that’s the oldest settled
area by Europeans, you’re going to see some
colonial style houses, we can call them estates.
Sometimes they are plantations, a plantation
means that slaves used to work there in the
past, so there’s probably a lot of land like
a farm.
We could call them a mansion in the US.
Some other countries some of the languages
have different definitions of the word mansion.
But in English, a mansion is a big amazing,
beautiful house.
This is a mansion.
This house is a typical American suburban
house.
It’s got a big front lawn, lots of grass,
it’s got a nice front porch.
This is a pretty nice house.
It’s got a flag, it looks a little bit sterile.
Sterile is not cookie cutter.
The houses in this neighborhood probably all
look a little bit different.
But sterile means there’s not many personal
touches, so there’s not a vegetable garden.
There’s not toys out front for the kids to
play with.
It just has a few plants, a couple trees and
lots of grass.
In this way, it’s a typical American suburban
home.
For our final category, our 10th category,
actions.
In this picture, we see people who are not
paying attention instead, what’s the opposite
of paying attention, they are zoning out.
This might be just a look on your face where
you are not focusing or it could be that you’re
looking at your phone, you’re looking at a
book, you’re just closing your eyes or listening
to music.
You are trying to block out everything around
you.
You are zoning out.
Maybe you are distracted.
They’re not paying attention to what’s going
on.
But when you’re on the subway, it’s not a
very big deal.
You can just zone out.
This picture makes me smile.
This guy is taking… we could even use the
Spanish word siesta, taking a siesta.
Or in more casual terms, we could say, “He’s
taking a cat nap.”
This is a short nap.
He’s taking a break.
He’s taking a cat nap.
We can also say, “He is precariously resting
on his motorcycle.”
Precarious means it’s dangerous.
He could fall off.
He’s not steady.
That’s a wonderful adjective to use.
When something’s not steady, it’s precarious.
“Don’t put your water glass at the edge of
the counter.
It’s too precarious.
It could fall off.
Instead, put your water glass in the middle
of the counter somewhere far from the edges.”
What a busy scene.
There’s a lot of action happening here so
we can say, “There is a lot of hustle and
bustle.”
For popular public destinations like a train
station or the middle of the city, we could
say, “There’s so much hustle and bustle, it
just makes me feel overwhelmed.”
Or, “I love the feeling of the hustle and
bustle of the city.”
That’s the action that’s happening.
We can also say, “A lot of people are coming
and going.”
That means they are arriving and leaving.
A lot of people are coming and going because
there’s so much to do here.
There’s a lot of hustle and bustle.
In this picture, these guys are working out.
You can say they are working out, they are
exercising, but this trainer looks like she’s
pretty serious.
We could say, “They are getting their butts
kicked.”
That means that she is making them work so
hard that at the end of the workout, at the
end of the exercise, they’re probably going
to lay on the ground and go, “Oh, that was
so hard.
This was an intense exercise.”
They could also say, “She is kicking our butts.”
That means she’s making us work really hard.
Or you could just say, “Wow, they are getting
their butts kicked.”
They are having to do a lot of exercises because
this trainer is really serious.
On the other hand, these three people are
taking a leisurely walk in the park.
Leisurely means they don’t have a destination.
They don’t need to be somewhere at a specific
time they are taking a leisurely walk in the
park.
We can also substitute the word walk and say
stroll.
They’re taking a leisurely stroll in the park.
Or you could just say, “They are strolling
in the park.”
Just having a nice time walking around chatting,
no agenda, nowhere to be, just enjoying the
day.
This is a similar picture, just a different
setting.
These people are going for a walk, and they
are also walking their dog.
Because this dog is not equal with the humans,
you can say, “I’m walking the dog.”
You would never say, “I’m walking my child.”
You could say, “I’m walking my child to school.”
That’s fine.
You have a destination.
But if you just say, “I’m walking my child,”
feels like they’re on a leash, like a dog.
But you can definitely say this for dogs,
“I’m walking my dog.”
They’re going for a walk.
They’re walking their dog.
What a sweet scene.
They are cuddling, snuggling and bonding.
Bonding means they are creating an important
deep relationship.
When you cuddle or snuggle with someone, you
are bonding with them.
This guy looks like he might be studying,
he might be focusing, or he might simply be
watching a YouTube video.
We don’t know.
But in this situation we could use any of
these actions, studying, focusing, or just
watching a YouTube video.
This girl is not impressed with the food.
We could even say, “She is grossed out.”
This is a really casual way to say she thinks
the food is disgusting.
She is grossed out.
What is she physically doing here?
We could say, “She is spitting out the food.”
“Bla.
Bla.”
She’s spitting it out, “Pooh, I don’t like
this.
I’m going to spit it out.”
Finally to finish this actions category and
this extremely long vocabulary lesson, these
guys are taking it easy.
They are basking in the sun.
Basking in the sun is not necessarily sunbathing,
but they are basking in the sun.
They’re enjoying the warmth of the sun.
They are swinging on a hammock.
I hope you have a chance to swing in a hammock
sometime because it is extremely relaxing.
It’s a wonderful thing to do at the beach,
at your house, anywhere that you are just
to swing on a hammock.
How did you like this vocabulary expanding
lesson with pictures?
I hope you enjoyed it and I hope that a lot
of these words were new for you.
I recommend writing down the new words in
a notebook trying to make a sentence with
them and integrating them into your daily
conversations.
Now I have a question for you.
Write a comment in the comments below and
answer, can you describe the colors and the
textures around you in your room?
Wherever you are, try to describe some of
the colors, some of the textures that you
see.
I’m looking forward to reading your comments
and also make sure that you read each other’s
comments, to just review the things that we’ve
learned.
Thanks so much for learning English with me
and I’ll see you again next Friday for a new
lesson here on my YouTube channel.
Bye.
The next step is to download my free e-book:
“5 Steps To Becoming A Confident English Speaker”.
You’ll learn what you need to do to speak
confidently and fluently.
Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel
for more free lessons.
Thanks so much.
Bye