Examples

Turn off the light!

I need to look that word up.

Many young people are afraid to come out.

You don’t have to put up with bullying.

🧾Definition

Phrasal verbs are one of the most difficult features of English, although they look very easy! A phrasal verb has two parts: a verb and a particle (a small word like up, with, to, ahead). The challenge with phrasal verbs is that their meaning is often only loosely connected to the meaning of the constituent words. For example, when you look up a word in the dictionary, you are obviously looking at something, but why up? The dictionary isn’t usually above your head! There is no reason for these phrasal verbs: they are idiomatic. So the meaning of a phrasal verb is not the sum of its parts.

The vast majority of phrasal verbs can be replaced by a one-word verb. Notice in these examples that the phrasal verb comprises smaller, higher frequency words, while the one-word alternative is less frequent, longer, more complex, and often has Greek/Latin roots:

• look into > investigate
• go up > increase

🔬Discovery

✅Form

There are four types of phrasal verbs:

1. Separable phrasal verbs
2. Inseparable (transitive) phrasal verbs
3. Intransitive phrasal verbs
4. Phrasal prepositional verbs

There is no way to look at a phrasal verb and guess which type it is, so MLLs should be taught to check in a dictionary. However, some phrasal verbs are very high frequency and may be acquired from exposure.

Separable and inseparable phrasal verbs behave differently with pronouns than other noun groups (* means an ungrammatical sentence):