Say More Than “Nice”: Vocabulary for Price, Quality, and Fashion

Learn easy, useful words you can use to talk about style, value, quality, and more. Imagine someone shows you something they bought: what vocabulary could you use to respond? Learn expressions such as “good value for money,” “a steal”, and words like durable, reliable, well-made, timeless, chic, upmarket, and more. I give short definitions and simple examples so you can use these words naturally. You’ll also learn how to comment politely on someone’s style. Use these phrases to make your English sound more natural when giving compliments or describing products. Try the quiz on engvid.com to practise, and subscribe for more vocabulary lessons. https://www.engvid.com/more-than-nice...

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In this lesson:
0:00 Introduction
2:26 Price
2:30 value for money
2:50 good/great value
3:00 bargain
3:20 What a deal!
3:55 Quality
4:30 durable
4:54 reliable
5:25 strong
5:31 well-made
5:51 built to last
6:26 craftsmanship
8:02 Style
8:19 fashionable
8:57 upmarket
9:14 timeless
9:51 cool
10:28 chic
10:59 sophisticated
11:47 fun
12:14 classic
12:46 stylish
13:03 in vogue
13:18 very in

Transcript:
Hey, guys. Welcome back to engVid with me, Benjamin. Today's lesson is a conversational English one in which you're going to learn lots of words for talking about things that maybe your friend or family member has just bought. It fits in quite closely with a lesson I made on giving and receiving compliments because that is essentially what we're doing here. Someone has bought something and we are making a comment on it, and we're more likely to say that it's great than it's rubbish. Because if we say it's rubbish, then unless they're a really good friend, then it might not go down very well. And in this lesson, as I said, it's about expanding your vocab. So, I know some English people don't have amazing vocabs, but what we're trying to do is give you a fantastic vocab so that if you do something like the IELTS speaking test, that you get awarded a top mark for vocab. And also, it will make general life a bit more interesting rather than just saying, "Ah, new coat. Nice." Yeah? We've got all these words to talk about the new coat. I've divided it into comments on the price about the product, price of the product, the quality, how well it has been made, and the general sort of style, and whether it's fashionable, and those kind of considerations.

Here's my new red hoodie. One of the joys about doing a whole load of filming at the moment is that I get to go shopping here, a new place, new types of shops, and I'm looking at the price. There's some fantastic vintage clothing stores here in Toronto, and also a really good big shop that takes recycled clothing and sells them at good prices. So, let's talk about price. If some... So, this is all... If the price is low and we're happy with the price being low, you could say that it's really good value for money. "Oh, that's good value for money." It means for the money you pay, you get a lot from it. Yeah? Great value for money. Or you can just say, "Oh, that's good value. That's great value." So, "good" is a bit, "great" is more. "That's great value."

A bargain. A bargain is if the normal price for, I don't know, five bananas is a pound, and you get the bananas for 30p. It's like, wow, bargain. Like, it's a surprise. It's unusual. Yeah? Quite rare to get such a good deal. Or we could say, "What a deal!" Yeah? What a deal. What a good price you got for that new jumper. I've put a quote in here from a British film made in the 1990s by Guy Ritchie. Do you know which film it is? This is a quote from one of the characters in the film. It's a deal. It's a steal. It's the... I won't read the rest of that quote, but I have censored it somewhat. That's right. Lock, stock, and two smoking barrels. Well done.

Okay, moving on to the quality of the product. Now, sometimes if you get a really good price, it's... Its quality can be poor. So, there are some really big suppliers that focus on this at the expense of quality. So, what we're looking for is both. I've got some adjectives here that describe good quality. So, durable. Yeah? "Dur" kind of means, like, hard. It's going to last. There's a battery company called Duracell. Yeah? Built to last. Durable. So, the suffix "able" means "can". It can last.

Reliable. Reliable. If you can rely on something, then it works again, and again, and again. So, you probably wouldn't use this to describe a piece of clothing, but you might use it to describe a sat-nav, any piece of IT, or a car you could describe as being reliable, if it is reliable. Okay. Reliable. Strong. You know what strong is? […]