Reference · module 26
Verbs in two words
Everything this module explains, on one page.
get up, turn on, look after
Understand a verb whose meaning is not in either word.
- A phrasal verb is a verb plus a small word, and the pair means something the two words do not: give up, look after, put off, take off.
- give up has nothing to do with giving, and look after has nothing to do with looking. Guessing from the parts is unreliable and often wrong.
- The particles repeat, and their directions help a little: up often means completely, off often means away, on often means continue.
The mistake you are about to make
I gave up to smoke.
I gave up smoking.
A phrasal verb looks like an ordinary one, so to follows it in. Give up takes -ing, like every phrasal verb whose second word behaves as a preposition.
Where the object goes
Put the object in the right place.
- Some phrasal verbs split: turn the light on, or turn on the light. Both are correct and neither sounds unusual.
- But a pronoun MUST go in the middle: turn it on, never turn on it. That rule has no exceptions and is instantly audible.
- Others never split: look after the children, look after them. If the verb takes a preposition rather than a particle, nothing goes between.
The mistake you are about to make
turn on it
turn it on
Turn on the light keeps the pair together, so a pronoun tries to go last too. A pronoun always goes in the middle, with no exceptions.
The ones you need first
Learn the twenty phrasal verbs that carry a day.
- get up, wake up, put on, take off, turn on, turn off, get in, get out, come back, go out. Ten, and a whole day is covered.
- Most have a one-word formal twin: put off is postpone, find out is discover, look after is care for. The single word is what you write.
- In speech the phrasal verb almost always wins. Using postpone at a dinner table sounds like reading from a form.
The mistake you are about to make
Could you postpone the meeting? (over lunch)
Could you put the meeting off?
The one-word verb feels safer because it looks more correct. In speech the phrasal wins: postpone at lunch sounds read off a form.
Reading around them
Keep reading when a phrasal verb stops you.
- The context usually gives you enough. She turned down the offer sits beside a job and a salary, and turn down cannot mean much else there.
- The particles lean in directions. up towards completion, down towards refusal or reduction, out towards discovery, back towards return.
- Look one up when the sentence stops making sense without it. Otherwise carry on: a phrasal verb you meet three times will teach itself.
The mistake you are about to make
She turned down the street. (meaning: refused)
She turned down the offer.
One phrasal verb often carries several meanings, and the word beside it picks which. Turning down a street is not turning down an offer.