Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Adverb Phrase 17. The adverb phrase today is at play. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If someone, especially children are at play, they are involved in actively playing. So here it's pretty simple 'at play' really just means that they've been playing for a while having fun , at play,. All right. Now the second meaning. If something is at play, it is active or existing. So you're letting somebody know that something exists. Existing as something that needs to be, that needs to be or should be considered or should be thought about. Yeah. There's something else at play. There's something else that's existing. That's happening. Maybe something you don't know about. So we often say something is at play or I think there must be something else at play here. This is the way we use it. So let's cover it. We got four examples to cover these two meanings. Example number one you know, of course going to the first meaning. Right now it is lunchtime and the children are at play in the playground until the bell rings again for lunch. Yeah, especially in lower grades especially in elementary school probably in the middle of the day they often let the children out. They probably get a lot of energy out. You know, probably right around lunchtime. You know if they eat lunch quick. They have some time where they can play and run around or exercise and then, then of course the bell rings. They got to go back to classes again. So during that time you know they are usually at play in the playground. Okay. Let's look at number two here. This present you know, a gift. This present was a big hit you know, very popular. The children have been at play enjoying it for hours. So they again, they were actively playing for several hours because this was a fun game or a fun toy or whatever this gift was. Okay. Let's look at number three now. Three and four cover the second meaning here. It means something is existing or something else is active that you should consider or think about. All right. So let's look at number three here. There are many other things at play which are happening behind the scenes and are not reported in the media. So you're talking about a situation and you're letting people know well you know, just what they're telling us right here, this is not really the whole story. There's something else at play behind the scenes and maybe you're purposely not being told right now. For one reason or another there's something else at play. There's something else existing that's happening right now. It's at play. Okay good. Number four. A similar idea. I think there is more at play than meets the eye. Yeah well this is another phrase we say. We say there's more to something than meets the eye. Again it means that we there's some information missing that we don't know about. So you can kind of combine them here. In the same sense. So you can say there's more at play. There's more existing than meets the eye. So we're not, we're not seeing everything. There's something missing we're not getting the whole story. Okay. Anyway I hope you got it. I hope it was informative. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.
A2 US play existing adverb phrase playground lunchtime English Tutor Nick P Adverb Phrase (17) At Play 16 0 anitawu12 posted on 2019/07/27 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary