whereabouts: como usar essa palavra?

I don't know if you've ever heard of the word whereabouts, but you surely have heard of the words where and about separately. Just by knowing those words, I guess you can already guess the meaning of the term. If I'm not right about that, just keep reading and you'll learn a bit more today.

Just imagine you have a teenage son who's not at home when he's supposed to be in his bed sleeping. You wonder where he would go, but you're afraid you're going to have to call some people to have the slightest clue of his whereabouts. When you want to know someone or something's whereabouts, you want to know their approximate location. So you call one of your son's friends and he tells you he might know his whereabouts. He heard of a party on that same day and he might be there. So now you know the whereabouts of your son. You go to that party and bring him back home leaving him grounded for as long as he can imagine. So here we have a way of using the word whereabouts as a noun. But there's also a way of using it as an adverb. Bear with me!

Imagine you run into a friend from your childhood in your city and you want to know where he's living. So you ask: Whereabouts do you live? By that question, you mean: at what approximate location or place does your friend live. Another way of asking the same thing would be "about where do you live?". Your friend won't need to give you detail on his address, but you'll have the general location of where his home is. That's it for today guys. Take care!