What is the difference between “power outages” and “blackouts”?

What do “blackout” and “power outage” mean? Learn the how they’re different here. Check it out!

In this lesson, I’m going to teach you about blackouts and power outages, which are not very fun.

A blackout or power outage is when you temporarily lose electricity.

The main difference is that for blackouts, we generally use this word

when an entire city or an entire region does not have electricity.

That’s why it’s a blackout, because if you go outside and look around,

it’s black because there are no lights on anywhere.

However, a power outage is generally used when maybe a neighborhood or a particular house loses electricity.

So that’s the main difference here between a blackout and a power outage.

Now, I want to give you some examples:

“Some cities in South America experience many blackouts.”

“I’ve never seen a blackout in real life. I’ve only seen them in the movies.”

“Sometimes big cities have blackouts because they are using too much electricity.”

“I bought a generator just in case we have a power outage at my house.”

“In some remote areas, it’s common to have power outages.”

“We couldn’t finish the task on time because we had a power outage.”

Okay, I hope you learned something today and that now you can use the words power outage

or blackout when you’re practicing your English. Thanks for watching.

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One Response

  1. This was a power outage and fortunately only lasted for 15 minutes! Makes me really appreciate electricity!

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