You're talking to a
classmate about your professor's lectures. Your classmate says that his
lectures are boring and hard to pay attention to. You agree, so you say this.
Yeah, I start to zone out after about five minutes.
(someone) zones out
"Zoning out" means to
let your mind drift and to stop paying attention to things. Your eyes look off
into the distance and you think about unrelated things. This can also be called
"daydreaming".
Another example of a situation in
which people "zone out" is when watching some TV shows:
At the end of a long,
stressful day, all I want to do is go home and zone out in front of the
television.
The word "zone" means
"place". So you can think of "zoning out" as you mind going
to another place. There's also an English phrase "to be in the zone",
which means to be really focused and concentrated on something like when you're
playing sports at a really high level:
I love when I'm
running on a nice day with my headphones on and I just get in the zone. I feel
like I can keep running forever.
Yeah
"Yeah" is a more casual way of saying "yes".
Say this to agree with something that
a person said:
You can also say "yeah" when you're going
to disagree but you want to make your disagreement sound a little softer.
"Yeah" sounds less formal than
"yes."