Describe Winter and Summer in English: Beyond Hot and Cold

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1. 0:00You know how cold isn't just cold, sometimes cold feels crisp and refreshing. It's, it's kind of like, actually, I know you can't see my desk,
2. 0:11but I've got this can of really cold sparkling water, which is perfect on a hot day, and then sometimes cold feels really bitter, even painful,
3. 0:22and the same is true for hot. It isn't just hot.
4. 0:24Sometimes summer feels golden and breezy, and then other times it feels muggy, heavy and impossible to escape.
5. 0:33This is exactly why I want to do this video today.
6. 0:36It's not that I want to replace words like hot and cold. Those are useful words. We use them every day.
7. 0:44I use them every day, but I want to add more nuance.
8. 0:49I want to make it easier for you to describe what winter and summer actually feel like when they're at their best and when they're at their worst.
9. 0:59Because when you're in the middle of winter or in the height of summer, I want you to have all the words you need to fully express yourself. Now,
10. 1:08before we jump in, there are two useful collocations I want you to know, and I just use both of them.
11. 1:14The first is in the dead of winter and the other is in the height of summer.
12. 1:20We use in the dead of winter to talk about the deepest coldest part of winter.
13. 1:26And then we use in the height of summer to talk about the warmest, brightest, most active, most intense part of the summer season.
14. 1:34So today we're going to move between these two worlds. First, we'll look at winter and summer when they're at their best.
15. 1:42We'll talk about what they look like to us and what they feel like, and then we'll also talk about them when they're at their worst.
16. 1:50So I want you to try this, close your eyes for a moment and imagine winter at its most beautiful. Actually,
17. 1:59if you are listening to this as a podcast right now and you're driving your car, please do not close your eyes. That would be a terrible idea.
18. 2:06But if you're just in your office or taking a moment in the kitchen, well, listening to this or watching while you're cooking, stop what you're doing and just close your eyes and imagine winter at its most
19. 2:18beautiful. Maybe the trees are bare. That means they have no leaves, they're not dead. They're simply stripped down for the season.
20. 2:27In that moment when you're describing what you see, you might say the trees are bare now, but they look really beautiful against the winter sky.
21. 2:36And then maybe during the dead of winter, your neighborhood is blanketed in snow.
22. 2:44I want you to imagine that a blanket of snow covering your street, this is precisely what blanketed means to be completely covered,
23. 2:53like someone placed a soft white blanket over everything.
24. 2:57It's peaceful and it's beautiful.
25. 2:59When you're describing that moment, you might say to someone, the whole neighborhood was blanketed in snow. In fact, if you wake up one morning and everything's blanketed in snow,
26. 3:10you may also notice that your windows, the grass, and the branches of trees are frosty.
27. 3:17Frosty means that they're covered with this really thin sparkling layer of ice.
28. 3:24You could use this when saying the trees looked frosty in the early morning light. So with just those three words, bare, blanketed and frosty,
29. 3:35you can describe a winter scene with much more detail.
30. 3:39Not just that it's cold, but the trees are bare, the ground is blanketed by snow, and everything looks frosty in the morning.
31. 3:48And now let's flip to summer again.
32. 3:51Imagine the perfect summer day at its best summer can look lush, sun drenched and radiant.
33. 4:00If something is lush, it's full green and healthy.
34. 4:04I just used this word yesterday when texting a friend.
35. 4:08He had shared pictures of his garden, and I said, oh my gosh, your garden is so vibrant and lush.
36. 4:15It's a great word to use when talking about trees, gardens, hills, or parks, especially after the perfect amount of rain and sunshine.
37. 4:24And then there's sun drenched. If a place is sun drenched, it's full of that warm, bright sunlight.
38. 4:33I know I definitely love spending slow, long summer afternoons on a sun drenched patio with something cold to drink,
39. 4:42and then that word radiant, which means bright and glowing.
40. 4:46It's a really strong, beautiful word, and we use it when the sun or the sky or the light feels like it's alive.
41. 4:56So an example might be the morning light was absolutely radiant.
42. 5:02So let's say that you are traveling somewhere beautiful in the summer and someone asks what it's like where you are.
43. 5:08You could say everything is lush and green.
44. 5:12The afternoons are completely sun drenched and radiant. Now, those words represent what winter and summer can look like at their best.
45. 5:21But weather isn't only something we see. It's also something we feel.
46. 5:24So let's talk about how winter and summer feel when they're actually enjoyable at its best. Winter can feel crisp, bracing and invigorating.
47. 5:36Crisp is a great word for cold air that feels fresh or clean and dry. For example, on a beautiful winter morning,
48. 5:46you might walk outside and say, oh, the air is so crisp.
49. 5:50It's the perfect morning for a winter walk. And then there's bracing, which is a little stronger. Bracing air.
50. 5:57Is is cold in a way that really wakes you up. It can feel sharp, but not necessarily unpleasant. You might actually enjoy that feeling.
51. 6:07For example, when you walk outside, you might say, Ooh, the bracing wind really woke me up this morning.
52. 6:13And then invigorating means that it gives you energy.
53. 6:17It's the kind of cold air that makes you feel alive. If, for example, you've been inside all day at work and you take a moment to take a little walk,
54. 6:27you might say that after sitting inside all day long, the cold air felt invigorating.
55. 6:34So instead of just describing a winter morning as feeling cold, you could say that the winter air felt crisp and bracing even
56. 6:44invigorating. Now, of course, summer at its best has a completely different feeling.
57. 6:51It can feel balmy, breezy, and refreshing.
58. 6:55Balmy means pleasantly warm, a soft warmth, a comfortable warmth.
59. 7:00And we often use this in the evenings when the intensity of the afternoon heat has started to cool down. In fact,
60. 7:09just recently I enjoyed a beautiful balmy summer evening with some of my friends on a backyard patio.
61. 7:17And then breezy means that there's this very light, comfortable wind.
62. 7:22It's like just enough to keep you cool, but not cold.
63. 7:26So even though the temperature on a summer day might be quite warm, you could say that there's a really nice breeze,
64. 7:34so it still feels great to be outside. And then we had that word refreshing, which means that it makes you feel cool, comfortable, and energized.
65. 7:44For example, the breeze feels refreshing after all the afternoon heat.
66. 7:50So let's say that you've just come back home from an outdoor walk when it's the winter season, you might say the air was so crisp and just a little bracing.
67. 8:00It was what I needed to wake me up. And then in the summer, you might say it was warm, but really nice and breezy.
68. 8:08It was much better than the intense heat of yesterday.
69. 8:12The key to these sentences isn't that we're just using more words to sound advanced.
70. 8:18What we're really doing is using more specific words because crisp does not feel the same as bitter, and balmy does not feel the same as muggy.
71. 8:30We're gonna talk about those two words, bitter and muggy in a moment when we think about the other side of these two seasons. Now, super quick,
72. 8:39some of the words that we're talking about today might sound familiar.
73. 8:43Maybe you've learned words like crisp, lush, and balmy in the past.
74. 8:48But then in a real conversation when someone asks, how's the weather where you are? Those words totally disappear.
75. 8:55And later when you're thinking about it, you might think, why didn't I use that word? I know this other word, and there's a reason for that.
76. 9:04Understanding a word and then using it naturally in a conversation.
77. 9:09These are two different skills, and that's one reason why I created the Confident Women Community.
78. 9:15It's a women only speaking practice community where you can practice real English vocabulary in real conversations and get support along the way
79. 9:25so that the words that you know don't stay locked in your head. Instead, they become easier to use when you're actually speaking.
80. 9:34If that is something you've been looking for, I'll leave a link in the notes below for you to get more details.
81. 9:40And now let's look at winter and summer at their worst, because of course, no season stays the same or at its best forever. Yes, winter can be beautiful,
82. 9:51but it can also feel long gray and exhausting.
83. 9:55Where I lived as a kid, I remember the month of February always felt like that. And then yes, summer can be golden and breezy, but it can also become heavy,
84. 10:07sticky, and impossible to escape. So again, let's start with what we see in those moments, in those seasons when they're at their worst, and then we'll also talk about how they feel.
85. 10:18So winter at its worst can look bleak, dreary, and overcast. If something looks bleak, it looks cold, empty,
86. 10:30and without a lot of color or life. For example, in talking about where I lived as a kid, I would say that February can feel bleak when everything is gray.
87. 10:42And then that word dreary means dull, dark, and depressing. For me, it's the kind of weather that makes you want to stay inside. I might say,
88. 10:53for example, it's such a dreary day.
89. 10:55It's the kind of day where I just want to curl up on the sofa with a blanket and a great book.
90. 11:01And then overcast means that the sky is completely covered with clouds. You cannot see the sun at all. So when you're looking outside,
91. 11:10you might say, Ugh, it's totally overcast today, and now let's move over to summer. At its absolute worst. As you know,
92. 11:19sometimes the sun is not warm and beautiful.
93. 11:24Sometimes it's way too much. The air might look hazy, the sun might be blinding, and the landscape is totally washed out.
94. 11:33Now, if the air is hazy, it means that it looks thick or unclear.
95. 11:39You can't really see far into the distance.
96. 11:43Sometimes this happens because of heat and humidity.
97. 11:46It can happen due to dust or smoke.
98. 11:49So on those days when you can't really see, you might might say, it's really hazy today. I can barely see the hills and the distance.
99. 11:58And then if the sun is blinding, it's so bright that it hurts your eyes. When that happens, you might be thinking The sun is blinding today.
100. 12:08I really wish I had remembered my sunglasses.
101. 12:11And then because of the intensity of that bright light, the colors and the landscape around you may be washed out.
102. 12:19What that means is that everything looks really pale or faded, not vibrant.
103. 12:25In other words, in the extreme summer, heat, the grass, the hills, even the buildings around you, they can lose their rich color.
104. 12:33They can look dry, pale, or tired. Of course, just like we talked about earlier, it's not only about how difficult it might be to see in the blinding summer light,
105. 12:45it's also how winter and summer feel when they're at their absolute worst. In winter, we can say that the cold might be bitter biting and raw
106. 12:57bitter means extremely cold in a painful or unpleasant way.
107. 13:02And similarly biting is used for cold wind or air, particularly when the cold feels sharp, almost like it's cutting or stinging your skin.
108. 13:14So in describing a particularly brutal winter day, you might say, the wind is biting today. My ears are completely numb.
109. 13:23And then we had that word raw, which is a very specific kind of cold.
110. 13:28This is cold that is damp and uncomfortable.
111. 13:33It gets into your body, into your bones, like you can never warm up in that kind of cold.
112. 13:39I often say things like this cold is so raw, it's getting into my bones, and then crossing back to summer,
113. 13:48summer at its worst, feels sweltering, muggy, and stifling.
114. 13:54Sweltering means extremely hot and uncomfortable.
115. 13:58Usually it's the kind of heat that makes you sweat almost immediately when you go outside. Actually, just recently I saw a short video from the actor mini driver.
116. 14:08She was filming in Paris during an extreme heat wave and describing how unbelievably hot it was, so hot that she had run out of words to describe it,
117. 14:21and sweltering is exactly the word to use in that situation.
118. 14:25Next is the word muggy, which means warm, damp, and sticky.
119. 14:31It's not just hot, but the air feels heavy because of the humidity.
120. 14:36It's awful to try sleeping in muggy weather and everything sticks to you.
121. 14:43So in the moments or on the days when it's particularly muggy, might say, oh, it's so muggy today. My clothes feel sticky already.
122. 14:51And it's only 6:00 AM And then we had stifling, which means hot, heavy, and hard to breathe, like when there's no air moving. On those days,
123. 15:03you might complain to someone and say, there's no breeze at all.
124. 15:07The heat is stifling. In fact, something like that is perfect for those moments when you want to share the experience in small talk,
125. 15:16just like a recent lesson I did on why you should talk about the weather in English. Now, with this in mind, when the heat is unbelievable where you are,
126. 15:26instead of saying it's really hot, you could say it's sweltering and muggy. The air feels so heavy.
127. 15:34Now, what I want you to really remember today is that the words hot and cold are a hundred percent useful. There's nothing wrong with them, but sometimes they're not enough.
128. 15:45Words like sweltering on a summer day give us a very different feeling than a word like balmy and raw gives us a very different feeling than the word crisp.
129. 15:57So I want you to think about the season that you're in right now and try using two or three words from today's lesson to describe the
130. 16:07weather that you're having in this season.
131. 16:10Or maybe you experienced some extreme weather recently.
132. 16:14How would you describe it? If you want, you can share your sentence with me in the comments.
133. 16:19I would love to see how you might describe the weather where you are.
134. 16:24And as always, if you found this lesson helpful, don't forget to subscribe or follow wherever you're watching or listening from today. Thank you so much for joining me, and I look forward to next time.