Unit 1 — How Phrasal Verbs Work
A phrasal verb is not a verb plus a preposition. It is a single lexical item spelled with a space in it. Look it up as one word, learn it as one word.
1.1 What counts as a phrasal verb
Compare these two sentences:
| Sentence | Analysis |
|---|---|
| She ran up the hill. | run + preposition up. Literal. Means what it looks like. |
| She ran up a huge bill. | Phrasal verb run up. Means accumulate (a debt). |
Three diagnostics separate the two:
- Meaning. If the whole means more than the sum of its parts, it is a phrasal verb.
- Stress. In a phrasal verb, the particle carries the stress: she ran up a BILL. With an ordinary preposition, the noun does: she ran up the HILL.
- Movability. A particle can often move past the object; a preposition never can. She ran the bill up is fine. She ran the hill up is not.
1.2 The four structural types
This is the single most useful table in the course. Everything else builds on it.
| Type | Pattern | Object position | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Intransitive | verb + particle, no object | — | break down, take off, give in, show up, set off, come round |
| 2. Transitive separable | verb + particle + object or verb + object + particle | either side; pronoun must go in the middle | turn sth on, pick sth up, throw sth away, put sth off, work sth out |
| 3. Transitive inseparable | verb + particle + object only | always after the particle | look after sb, come across sth, get over sth, take after sb, run into sb |
| 4. Three-part | verb + particle + preposition + object | always at the end; never split | put up with sb, come up with sth, get away with sth, look forward to sth, run out of sth |
Type 2 in detail: the pronoun rule
With a noun object, both orders are correct:
- Turn on the radio. / Turn the radio on.
- I picked up the keys. / I picked the keys up.
With a pronoun object, only the middle position is correct:
- ✅ Turn it on. ❌ Turn on it.
- ✅ I picked them up. ❌ I picked up them.
- ✅ They let us down. ❌ They let down us.
There is one nuance worth knowing: when the noun object is long, speakers strongly prefer to keep the particle next to the verb.
- ✅ She turned down the offer that the company had made her in April.
- 🔸 She turned the offer that the company had made her in April down. — grammatical but nobody says it.
Type 3: do not split, ever
- ✅ Who looks after the children? ❌ Who looks the children after?
- ✅ I got over the flu. ❌ I got the flu over.
- ✅ She takes after her mother. ❌ She takes her mother after.
Note that get over sth (recover) is inseparable, but the related three-part get sth over with (finish an unpleasant task) puts the object in the middle: Let's get the exam over with. Different item, different rule.
Type 4: all three words travel together
- ✅ I can't put up with my neighbours. ❌ I can't put up my neighbours with.
- ✅ We came up with a plan. ❌ We came a plan up with.
- ✅ He got away with it. ❌ He got it away with.
Three-part verbs are followed by a noun or an -ing form, never a bare infinitive:
- ✅ I look forward to hearing from you. ❌ I look forward to hear from you.
- ✅ She owned up to breaking the window. ❌ She owned up to break the window.
1.3 How to tell which type a verb is
You cannot deduce it. You have to notice it. Two habits make this cheap:
- Whenever you meet a new phrasal verb, immediately test it with a pronoun in your head. Call off the wedding → call it off → separable. Look after the baby → look after her → inseparable.
- Write the item in your notes with its object slot marked:
put sth off,look after sb,put up with sb/sth. The slot is part of the word.
Standard abbreviations, used throughout this course:
| Abbreviation | Meaning |
|---|---|
| sb | somebody |
| sth | something |
| sw | somewhere |
1.4 The particle is not noise
Learners often treat the particle as a meaningless attachment. It is not. Each particle has a small set of recurring senses, and once you know them you can guess.
| Particle | Recurring senses | Quick examples |
|---|---|---|
| up | completion, increase, upward, creation | eat up, speed up, stand up, make up |
| down | reduction, recording, downward, defeat | cut down, write down, sit down, put down |
| out | exiting, exhausting, distributing, revealing | walk out, run out, hand out, find out |
| in | entering, submitting, including | come in, hand in, join in |
| on | continuing, contact, activating | carry on, put on, switch on |
| off | separating, departing, cancelling | cut off, set off, call off |
| over | crossing, repeating, transferring, examining | go over, do over, hand over, look over |
| through | end to end, enduring, connecting | read through, get through, put sb through |
Units 11–17 work through these systematically. For now, just register that the particle is doing real work.
1.5 Register: when not to use them
It is a myth that phrasal verbs are always casual. Compare:
| Phrasal verb | Register | Latinate equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| point out | neutral — fine in academic writing | indicate |
| carry out | neutral — standard in research writing | conduct, perform |
| find out | neutral to informal | discover, ascertain |
| put up with | informal | tolerate |
| do sb in | slang | kill, exhaust |
| do sb out of sth | slang | defraud |
A reliable heuristic: if the phrasal verb has a one-word Latinate synonym that you would use in a report (tolerate, postpone, investigate), the phrasal verb is the informal member of the pair. If it does not (point out, carry out, set up), it is register-neutral.
1.6 Listening: why phrasal verbs disappear in speech
Native speech reduces and links the particle, which is why you can know a verb and still fail to hear it:
- pick it up → /pɪkɪˈdʌp/
- give it up → /gɪvɪˈdʌp/
- put it off → /pʊdɪˈdɒf/
The stressed syllable is the particle. Train yourself to listen for a stressed up / out / off / on and reconstruct the verb backwards from it.
1.7 Common first-language interference
Speakers of languages that build the same meanings with prefixes (Russian, German, Polish) tend to:
- reach for a single Latinate verb where English prefers a phrasal one — I will postpone the meeting where a colleague would say I'll put the meeting off;
- calque the particle from their own prefix system — producing put on the light for turn on the light, or make out a plan for draw up a plan;
- avoid phrasal verbs entirely in speech, which reads as stiff or bookish.
None of these are grammar errors. They are naturalness errors, and the fix is exposure plus deliberate substitution drills.
1.8 Checklist before moving on
- I can state the four structural types and give an example of each.
- I can place a pronoun correctly with a separable verb.
- I know that three-part verbs are never split and take -ing, not the infinitive.
- I can name at least four recurring senses of up and out.
- I can say why put up with is a poor choice in a formal report.