MicroEnglish.

Get away with
Phrasal Verbs | B2

Listening exercises with “Get away with”

to get away with something = to do something bad or wrong, but avoid punishment.

You might do something bad and get away with it because you didn’t get caught. e.g. Apparently he has been stealing from his boss for years and has somehow got away with it.

It could also be that you get away with it because someone decided not to punish you (e.g. because they forgive you or because they don’t care). e.g. He got away with breaking his sister’s toy because his mum was too tired to punish him.

Have a go at these micro-dictation exercises to hear this expression being used in context – how much can you understand?

Accent: Scotland

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, .
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hour late , but I it boss .
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Accent: Northern England

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.
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let him speaking to you then he'll just .
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Accent: North America

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?
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choose pay any tax you could it?
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In

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16 responses

  1. WalterD Avatar
    WalterD

    when I was a child, I used to take the mangos of my neighboor and I got along with it because my neighboor had not noticed.
    my cousin did the same, but he has not the same look.

    Reply
    1. Chris Bargery Avatar
      Chris Bargery

      Hi Walter! Thanks for your example 🙂
      Careful – the phrase is ‘to get away with sth’, not ‘along’ – so you should say “…I got away with it because he hadn’t noticed”.
      Near the end, I guess you mean ‘luck’, not ‘look’? A good structure here would be: “…but he is not as lucky as I am”.

      Reply
  2. Lena Avatar
    Lena

    Hi Chris :)!
    As far as I remember my lovely parents always try to clarify what me ought to do when l was wrong.Hence i can’t say neither i was punished no i got away with it

    Reply
    1. Chris Bargery Avatar
      Chris Bargery

      Hi Lena 🙂

      It sounds like you had a very good upbringing – I think it’s always best to try and talk/explain to children rather than just punish them or tell them off. I guess that isn’t always easy though!

      A couple of corrections:
      – “My lovely parents always tried to clarify what I ought to do…”
      – You shouldn’t use neither in your last sentence because you already used a negative (can’t). Either/neither is quite a tricky area – here is a good page to read about it. I would change your sentence to something like: “I can’t say that I was punished for it nor that I got away with it”, but there are several different ways you could say it.

      Well done!

      Reply
  3. AlineS Avatar
    AlineS

    I can’t remember if I have already got away with something.
    I don’t know anyone who never gets punished when they do things wrong. I could mention politicians in my country, but this is not the moment. Anyway, now I know what means the name of the series How to Get Away With Murder

    Reply
    1. Chris Bargery Avatar
      Chris Bargery

      Hi Aline 🙂 I’m glad I’ve helped you understand the name of that TV program!

      One little correction: the structure you need in your last sentence is “to know what something means” eg “I don’t know what this word means”. So your sentence should be: “Now I know what the title of the series ‘How to Get Away With Murder’ means”.

      The problem with this is that the subject is very long, so a better alternative might be: “Now I understand the title of the series (etc)”.

      Reply
  4. jeferson Avatar
    jeferson

    I was with my cousin in the room and I painted the wall. I got away with it because my parents believed that my cousin had been

    Reply
    1. Chris Bargery Avatar
      Chris Bargery

      Hi Jeferson 🙂

      Nice example! Does your cousin know that he got the blame? Did your parents ever find out the truth?

      One correction at the end: “…my parents believed that my cousin had done it“.

      Reply
  5. Marisela Avatar
    Marisela

    Of course I can remember when I went to a park after school instead of going home. My mom rang me to know where I was because she found it very strange that I hadn’t got home yet. I told her that I was still at school. It seemed that she suspected that I was lying, so she went out to look for me and finally found me playing in the park. I couldn’t get away with it and when we got home she told me off and punished me for three days.

    Most of my classmates often cheated on the exams. I remember when my brother was cheating on a final Biology exam but he got caught by the teacher. He didn’t get away with that but the teacher let him sit the exam again but without any cheat sheet. Obviously, he didn’t pass the exam anyway.

    In my country, many people get away with paying for the fare bus by jumping over the barriers. I think that brings terrible consequences for the transport in the city.

    By the way, I looked up this phrasal verb in the dictionary and I found it also means to do something successfully although it is not the best way of doing it. For instance:

    Do you think we could get away with just one coat of paint on that wall?

    This phrasal verb is interesting and a nice expression to use, isn’t it?

    Reply

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