[0:01]Hi, I'm Stephanie. Welcome to Oxford Online English. To see more free English lessons, visit our website, Oxfordonlineenglish.com. You can also book English classes with our fully qualified teachers who can help you with your English speaking, writing, IELTS preparation, or whatever else you need. One more thing before we start. Do you want to watch this lesson with subtitles? You can. Don't forget to turn them on now. Click on the CC button in the bottom right of your video player.
[0:36]He's well-built, with broad shoulders. He's very muscular. Well-built means big, but big because of muscle, not fat. The opposite of well-built is skinny. You can say he's very muscular or he's very muscly. They have the same meaning. There are other ways to say the same thing, for example, he looks strong. She's in good shape. She has an athletic physique. She's in good shape has the same meaning as she's fit. Fit describes someone who exercises regularly and is very strong. Conversationally, in British English, fit means attractive. It can be used for men and women. The word physique means the shape and condition of your body. Physique is most often used with positive adjectives to describe someone who is strong or has an attractive body. For example, the collocations muscular physique and strong physique are common. He's skinny. He has a slight build. What's the opposite of fat? Actually, there are several words. Thin is the basic word. Slim is similar. It means thin and attractive. Skinny is a more negative word. It suggests that someone is too thin. If you say that someone is skinny, it means you think they should eat more. Your build is the shape of your body, whether you're broad or thin, whether you're muscular or not, and so on. You can use many different adjectives with build. Common ones are medium build, slim build, proportionate build, and stocky build. Stocky means big or wide, usually with muscle rather than fat. He's overweight. He has a gut. Overweight is a more indirect word than fat, although neither is polite if you're talking directly to someone. A gut means a big stomach. You might use it to describe someone who has a lot of extra weight on their stomach. You could also say he has a big belly, which has the same meaning.
[3:14]He has chiselled features, with high cheekbones. He has very well-defined facial features. This is a chisel. It's a tool which is used to carve stone, for example, to make a sculpture or a statue. Chiselled features means that someone's facial features are very attractive and clearly defined, like a statue. It's generally used for men's faces. Well-defined is similar but can be used for men or women. If your facial features are well-defined, then your cheekbones, jaw, chin, and so on, have a clear shape. This has a positive meaning, although it doesn't necessarily mean attractive. He has crow's feet. He has faint wrinkles in his forehead. As you get older, you'll get lines or wrinkles in your face. Crow's feet are the patterns of wrinkles you get in the corner of your eyes. Wrinkles can be faint, light and difficult to see, or deep. She has dimples when she smiles. She has freckles on her nose and cheeks. Dimples here means small holes in your cheeks, which appear when you smile. Not everyone has them. Although it's not common, you can use the word dimple to refer to similar holes in other places. For example, some people have a dimple on their chin. Freckles are common among people with very light skin. Going out into the sun can make your skin more freckled. She has a round face, with a high forehead. She has a double chin. You can use many adjectives to describe the shape of someone's face, such as round, thin, symmetrical, long, or square. If someone is overweight, they might have a double chin.
[5:34]He has a goatee. He's going grey. Goatee is a common word. It's a beard which covers your chin and upper lip only. You can also have a full beard, which covers your whole face and neck. There are many words for different styles of beard, but most of them are not commonly used, except by beard experts. If you say he's going gray, going means becoming. You can use go in this way for changes in someone's hair, for example, go gray or go bald. You can also use it if someone's face changes color. For example, she went bright red or he went pale when he heard the news. He has curly black hair. She has thick shoulder-length curly hair. Curly describes hair with tight curls. What's the opposite? The opposite is straight hair. In the middle, you can have wavy hair. For length, you can say hair is long, short, medium length, or shoulder length. For very long hair, you might say something like, her hair reached down to her waist. He's bald, with a thick beard. She has long blonde hair. Bald only refers to people who have lost their hair, usually because of aging. If someone shaves their hair off, you can say he has a shaved head. Hair can be thick or thin. You can use these adjectives for hair on your head or for your facial hair, beards and mustaches. When talking about hair, be careful with adjective order. Adjectives like long, short, thick or thin go before the color. So you can have long brown hair, thick dark hair, short fair hair, and so on.
[7:56]Fair hair is similar to blonde hair, but has a wider meaning. Fair just means light, so it could include light brown hair or dark blonde hair. Sweep generally means to clean your floor with a broom. However, you can also use it for hair, especially when you push your hair in one direction. You can sweep your hair to one side, sweep your hair into a ponytail, or sweep your hair back. That's all for this lesson. Thanks for watching. See you next time.
