Shopping and Money
Learn 20 easy A1 English words for shopping - trolley, queue, checkout, receipt, offer - plus borrow vs lend, a story and a quiz.
You already know the price words from the Numbers and Prices lesson. This one is about the experience: the trolley, the queue, the checkout and the receipt your mother keeps for three months. It also settles the pair that trips up almost every learner in the world – borrow and lend. Learn the 20 words, then come to the supermarket on a Saturday morning with a list that has never once been followed.
20 words to learn
The 20 words
/ˈʃɒpɪŋ/
Buying things in shops. Uncountable: do the shopping, go shopping.
I do the shopping on Saturday morning.
/ˈsuːpəmɑːkɪt/
A big shop that sells food and everything else.
There is a new supermarket near the school.
/ˈʃɒpɪŋ sentə(r)/
A big building with many shops inside. Americans say mall.
We spent three hours in the shopping centre.
/ˈkʌstəmə(r)/
A person who buys something from a shop.
The customer in front of me had forty items.
/baɪ/
To get something by paying for it. Past tense: bought.
I bought these shoes last year.
/sel/
To give something for money. Past tense: sold.
That shop sells everything.
/ˈbɑːskɪt/
The small container you carry round a shop.
Take a basket – we only need three things.
/ˈtrɒli/
The big one on wheels. Americans say cart.
One wheel of the trolley never works.
/kjuː/
A line of people waiting. Say KYOO. Americans say line.
There was a long queue at the bank.
/ˈtʃekɐʊt/
Where you pay in a shop. In Britain also the till.
Please pay at the checkout.
/rɪˈsiːt/
The paper that proves you paid. The p is silent: ri-SEET.
Keep the receipt in case you return it.
/kɑːd/
The plastic card you pay with.
Can I pay by card?
/lɪst/
The paper with the things you need written on it.
Do not go shopping without a list.
/ˈɒfə(r)/
A lower price for a short time.
The rice is on offer this week.
/rɪˈtɜːn/
To take something back to the shop.
I had to return the shirt – it was too small.
/spend/
To use money to buy things. Past tense: spent.
We spend too much on food.
/seɪv/
To keep money instead of spending it.
I am trying to save for a laptop.
/ˈbɒrəʊ/
To take something from somebody and give it back later.
Can I borrow your pen?
/lend/
To give something to somebody for a short time. Past tense: lent.
She lent me fifty dinars.
/ˈwɒlɪt/
The small flat thing you keep money and cards in.
My wallet is in my back pocket.
Now read the story
Story · all 20 words
Next Week, Only the List
My mother writes a list before she goes shopping, and in my entire life I have never seen her follow it.
We go to the same supermarket every Saturday morning. She always takes a trolley, even when we need four things, because a basket, she explains, makes you think small.
The list says: bread, eggs, rice, oil. What we buy is bread, eggs, rice, oil and eleven other things that happened to be on offer. My mother physically cannot walk past a yellow sign. Two kilos of something nobody in this family eats, because it was half price. This is how we spend more money by trying very hard to save it.
At the checkout there is always a queue, and my mother always chooses the slowest one with complete confidence. She pays by card, puts it back in her wallet, and takes the receipt – and she keeps every single receipt in a drawer for three months, for reasons that no member of this family has ever established. Roughly twice a year one of them turns out to be useful, and we hear about it for a week.
Once a month we also go to the big shopping centre on the other side of town, which I do not enjoy at all. Last time my brother had bought shoes that did not fit and had to return them, and the customer ahead of him in the queue was trying to sell the shop a long story about a jacket that had obviously been worn to a wedding.
On the way home my mother says the same sentence she has said for twenty years: “Next week, only the list.” Then she remembers that she promised to lend my aunt some money. My aunt will borrow it on Tuesday and pay it back in September, and neither of them will mention it once in between.
Borrow or lend? They describe the same action from two different sides, and almost every learner mixes them up at least once.
borrow = take (it comes to you). You borrow from somebody.
lend = give (it goes from you). You lend to somebody.
✓ Can I borrow your pen? ✗ Can you borrow me your pen?
✓ She lent me fifty dinars. ✗ She borrowed me fifty dinars.
A simple test: if you are the one receiving, use borrow.
Two words with silent letters:
- receipt – the p is silent: ri-SEET.
- queue – only the first letter is really pronounced: KYOO. Four silent letters in a five-letter word.
Spend and save take different prepositions: you spend money on something, and you save for something.
British and American: trolley / cart · queue / line · shopping centre / mall · till / register.
Where: shopping, supermarket, shopping centre, checkout.
What you push or carry: basket, trolley, list, wallet, card, receipt.
What happens: buy, sell, queue, offer, return, customer.
Money verbs: spend, save, borrow, lend.
Practise this out loud at the checkout in your head: Can I pay by card? Could I have a receipt, please? I would like to return this – here is the receipt.
Now practise with the questions below.
Check your understanding
Answer the questions below. You will see instantly if you are right.
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