Name: Brazil floods: BBC News Review
Uploaded: 2024-03-14T04:40:09.000Z
Duration: 7 min 25 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Worst flooding in 80 years hit southern Brazil.

This is News Review from BBC Learning English, where we help you understand news headlines in English. I'm Beth.

Make sure you watch to the end to learn the vocabulary you need to talk about this story.

And don't forget to subscribe to our channel to learn more English from the headlines.

Heavy rains in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul have left hundreds of towns underwater.

Over 90 people have died in the floods and about 155,000 have had to leave their homes.

More heavy rain is expected in the region this week.

What's the vocabulary that people need to understand this news story in English?

We have 'torrential,' 'displaced' and 'wreak havoc.'

This is News Review from BBC Learning English.

Weather tracker: torrential rainstorms cause death and destruction in Brazil.

So this headline says that heavy rain is causing floods in Brazil.

We are looking at the adjective torrential.

So imagine a stream, a fast stream, a river or a waterfall has torrents of water.

So when we describe rain as torrential, the adjective, we mean very strong, heavy rainfall.

So imagine torrents of water falling from the sky.

As you can imagine, torrential rain often causes floods and destruction.

Now we almost always use torrential to describe fast-flowing water, but specifically rain.

Now we really use it to emphasise just how much rain there is.

That's right. We do also use it to exaggerate as well.

So even if the rain doesn't cause floods and destruction like it has in Brazil, we might still use it to sound dramatic.

So this weekend, for example, in the UK, we had a lot of heavy rain.

I might say that it was torrential rain. I had to cancel all my plans.

Yes. And that is a good example of exaggeration.

Now, instead of torrential, we can also say it's pouring, which again means a lot of rain.

And in the UK, we often say it's chucking it down, which means, again, it's raining really heavily.

Death toll from Brazil rains climbs to 83, thousands displaced.

Now, this headline says that the death toll in Brazil is climbing.

A death toll means the number of people who have died and climb means increase.

But we are looking at the word displaced.

It has the word place in it, which is a noun.

You know that word. We are in a studio. That is a place.

Well, if you place something somewhere, it means that you put it somewhere.

So, Beth, can I place something in your hand?

OK, I placed the water bottle in your hand. I put it there.

And when we add the prefix dis-, it actually means the opposite.

And displaced is very often used for serious things.

Yes, it means to move someone or something from their original position.

And in the headline, we have thousands displaced.

And here we're talking about thousands of people being displaced.

That means the floods caused them to leave their homes because it's become too dangerous.

And we do hear the word displaced very often in the context of war and natural disasters, like in the headline here, when something is just too dangerous and people are forced to move away.

Yep. And don't confuse displaced with misplaced.

They sound similar, but they have different prefixes, which gives them different meanings.

So misplace means that you put something in the wrong place or lose it.

So this morning, for example, I misplaced my keys and that means I couldn't find them.

Floods wreak havoc on southern Brazilian state with 83 confirmed deaths.

Now, again, this headline is talking about the floods in Brazil, but we are looking at wreak havoc.

Now, this is very often seen together as a combination, but can you break it down for us?

Havoc is a noun which means chaos or destruction, and wreak has a similar meaning to cause.

So together, the meaning is similar to cause chaos.

So as you said, wreak havoc is common as a combination.

Wreak on its own is not common, and you shouldn't use it just any time you want to say the word cause.

Right, so we could say pollution causes climate change, and we definitely wouldn't say pollution wreaks climate change.

Now, wreak is almost always followed by havoc in modern English, but the word havoc is a little bit more flexible.

So apart from wreak havoc, we could say cause havoc or unleash havoc.

Yes, so actually this morning, we had a lot of train cancellations, which wreaked havoc on people trying to get to work on time.

And as we know, the pandemic wreaked havoc on the economy.

We've had torrential -- describes heavy rain.

Displaced -- moved from the original place.

Now, if you're interested in learning more language from the news headlines, click here.

And don't forget to click here to subscribe to our channel so you never miss another episode.