Hi everyone, I'm Shereen and welcome to my channel where I help you advance in English. Today we are going to talk about the phrase pretty much and what it means and when you can use it. Before we jump into it I just want to give a quick shout out to one of my lovely Instagram followers, Alisha. Thank you for requesting this lesson. If any of you have any lesson requests please leave it in the comments and maybe it'll be the next lesson. You never know. Before we talk about it I just want to emphasize that pretty much is an informal phrase and you really shouldn't use it in any scenario where you're trying to sound professional. So I would limit this to casual conversation and text messages. I wouldn't write it in an email to my boss or anything like that. First let's talk about the meaning of pretty on its own. Pretty can mean attractive of course but pretty can also mean somewhat or fairly and we use this as an intensifier. So if I say it's pretty cold outside that means it's somewhat cold outside. It's kind of cold outside. It's fairly cold outside. It's a little less than very. So it's not very cold outside. It's pretty cold outside. Just to give you another example I could say the food at that restaurant is pretty good. We should go there again. So I'm not saying that it's amazing but it is good. It's pretty good. The thing about pretty is that just like the word very it's a weak word but regardless of it being a weak word native speakers use it all the time. So if you do use it you don't have to but if you do use it it will definitely make you sound more like a native speaker. But because it's a weak word I really don't recommend that you use it in your writing. Unless you're sending a text message to your friend it's just not it's not the best word that you could use. Pretty much is an expression that means approximately or almost and we use it when we're not certain. It kind of has the same meaning as more or less which I talked about in a previous video and I will link that for you. So in an example for you we ate pretty much all the popcorn before the movie started. So that means we ate almost all the popcorn before the movie started. I looked up flights on multiple websites to see if I could find a cheaper ticket but they were all pretty much the same. That means they were all approximately the same. Another reason why we use pretty much so often is because sometimes when you're telling a story and you don't want to tell someone every single detail pretty much is a great word that gets you out of that situation. You also might use it because you want to let the person know that you're not telling them every single detail that you've just told them the important details. So if someone asked me what I did on the weekend and I just kind of wanted to not tell them every detail and keep it pretty general I would probably say oh you know I hung out around the house I visited my parents that's pretty much it. That's my way of telling them what I did while leaving out minor details that I either don't think are important or I just don't want to tell them. That sentence is incredibly useful so if there's one thing that you remember from this video it's that's pretty much it. We say that all the time at the end of a story or after explaining something that's pretty much it. A couple more examples for you. I could ask you if you finished packing for your trip and you could say yeah pretty much that would be a very typical response to that question if you're not finished but you really are almost finished. Yeah pretty much and just to share with you some super colloquial usage of pretty much. If somebody says yeah pretty much that could mean yeah basically I agree with you. So if somebody said to me oh man it sounds like you had the worst day ever I could say yeah pretty much that means yeah basically I agree with you. You're right it was the worst day ever. Just to recap if you walk away from this lesson with just two things I want you to remember yeah pretty much means yeah basically yeah I agree with you and that's pretty much it means that's all I have to say I've told you the most important parts. These are two super common expressions used by Americans you'll hear them all the time. Let me know in the comments if you've learned anything new today and if you have any lesson requests I would love to hear your ideas. If you're not following me on Instagram already I post lots of useful tips over there. My handle is at an English nerd. I'll see you next time. Bye!