12 Easy English Expressions with “AT”

Master 12 common English expressions, all starting with “at”! Learn to understand and use: at first, at last, at best, at worst, at least, at most, at dawn, at dusk, at birth, at fault, at present, and at random. Using natural expressions like these will help your score on exams like IELTS, PTE, TOEFL, and CELPIP. The preposition “at” doesn’t exist in all languages, so many English learners avoid using it, but it’s actually very easy to learn. I’ll show you how! Upgrade your English with my course, Correct Your English Errors in 10 Minutes a Day: Next, learn 9 “ON“ expressions: And 8 “OUT OF“ expressions: In this lesson: 0:00 12 Easy English Expressions with “AT“ 0:55 at first 3:18 at last 5:44 at best & at worst 7:20 at least & at most 8:55 at dawn & at dusk 10:27 at birth 11:00 at fault 11:55 at present 12:47 at random TRANSCRIPT: Hi. I’m Rebecca from engVid. Welcome back. Today, you’re going to learn 10 common expressions that all have only two words, and they all start with the word “at“. Now, you’re saying to yourself, “10 expressions, oh my gosh. Can I really learn 10 expressions in one lesson?“ Yes, you can, because I’m going to make it so easy for you, okay? What are we going to do? I’m going to tell you exactly what they are, I’m going to show you how to pronounce them as expressions, and also in a sentence, alright? I’m going to tell you what they mean, and we’re going to use them... You’re going to learn how to use them not only while you’re speaking, but also in writing, in the correct way. And I’m going to give you lots and lots of examples, okay? So that you really understand what they mean, and you can start using some of them right away. Okay? Are you ready? Let’s get started. So, here first, on our first board, we have four of them. They are, you can repeat after me, “at first“, “at last“, “at best“, and “at worst“. Okay? Now, as we go through the sentences, I’ll show you exactly how we kind of tend to use them, okay? In an actual sentence. So, let’s look at the examples first and understand what they mean. So, the expression “at first“, what does it mean? It means in the beginning, initially. Okay? Right at the start. Something that you felt, or something that you thought, or something that happened in the beginning. Okay? So, for example, “At first, she enjoyed living in the city.“ Now, in this kind of sentence, and even from the way that I was saying it, you can tell that probably something’s different is going to happen afterward. It could be that something was positive first, and it became negative afterwards. It could be that something was negative first, and it became positive afterwards. Okay? There’s usually some kind of contrast that we’re going to suggest when we use this expression “at first“. It tells you that at first, da-da-da, but then later, da-da-da. Okay? So, “At first, she enjoyed living in the city.“ Now, we expect to hear that, but later, she decided that she enjoyed living in a small town much more. Okay? We expect to hear something like that. We don’t have to hear it, but we expect to hear something like that at some point. Or another example, “At first, I thought the exam was difficult, but once I got through it, I realized it wasn’t that bad after all.“ Okay? You see what I mean? So, here you have an example of something where someone thought that something was negative first, but actually it turned out to be much more positive. And in the first one, somebody thought something was positive first, and then it turned out to be negative. So, it doesn’t matter which way you use it. All we’re saying when we use “at first“ is that in the beginning, you thought a certain way, you felt a certain way, something happened in a certain way. Okay? All right. So, that’s “at first“. Let’s look at the next example, “at last“. Now, first of all, this expression is interesting, and it’s a little bit different from the other ones because you can actually use this expression by itself. As in, “at last“, it means finally. Okay? But usually, we say this expression... We use this expression, “at last“, when we’ve been waiting for something to happen for a long time, and then finally it happens. So, imagine a situation where you’re waiting to hear from somebody that you really love, and you haven’t heard from them for too long, and you’re a little bit worried and tense, and then they call, and they finally call, and you’re so relieved, and you’re like, “Oh, thank heavens“, and you say, “at last“. So, sometimes we just say that, “Oh, at last“, it means finally. Okay? […]