get away with: meaning and explanation
to get away with something = to do something bad or wrong, but avoid punishment.
You might do something bad and get away with it because you didn't get caught. e.g. Apparently he has been stealing from his boss for years and has somehow got away with it.
It could also be that you get away with it because someone decided not to punish you (e.g. because they forgive you or because they don't care). e.g. He got away with breaking his sister's toy because his mum was too tired to punish him.
Have a go at these micro-dictation exercises to hear this expression being used in context – how much can you understand?
Listening exercises
Dictation #1
Accent: Scotland
About the sentence
...my boss hadn't noticed...
The past perfect (my boss hadn't noticed) is used here because the action (not noticing) happens before the main action in the sentence (getting away with it). We need the past perfect to show that this action happens in the earlier past.
Dictation #2
Accent: Northern England
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Dictation #3
Accent: North America
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About the sentence
Notice that this question is a second conditional, which is used for hypothetical present/future situations.
The structure of a second conditional is: If + past, would + verb. e.g. If you won the lottery, would you retire?
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I remember when I was a 12 or 13 year old kid, my mom used to send me to get the groceries for making lunch. On my way to the store there was a small arcade where I used to spend some coins from my school allowance and I used to get away with it even though my mom had told me not no go into those places. But some day it took me too long to end the game and my mom were looking for me… And she found me. I couldn’t get away with it that day. There was also hell to pay. Hahaha
Hi Ivan, brilliant example 🙂
– Only a couple of small corrections: When you say “but some day” I think you mean “but one day” because you are talking about a specific event/time. We actually use ‘some day’ when we are talking about the future (in a hopeful kind of way), e.g. “Some day I’d like to walk the entire South West Coastal Path in one go”.
– Instead of “my mum were looking for me” I would say “my mum came looking for me”.
Well done!
My friend’s son broke her flower vase, but he got away with it because she hadn´t notice.
Hi Yadda! Great example, and almost perfect. There is a tiny mistake near the end, can you identify it?
The misspelling in the verb form. 🙁 The correct form is: she hadn`t noticed. 🙂
Spot on, well done!