Questions tagged [phrasal-verbs]

A phrasal verb is a combination of a verb and a preposition, a verb and an adverb, or a verb with both an adverb and a preposition.

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Look forward very much to

One example of Cambridge grammar confuses me. I look forward very much to hearing from you soon. Is the sentence correct? Why does it put "very much" together with verb phrase "look ...
Huang Luca's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
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What does "to line someone out" mean?

I occasionally hear this phrasal verb but never really understood what it means exactly. I fail to find a relevant definition anywhere. Oh yeah I'm familiar with the common usages of "line out&...
desmo's user avatar
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Pull down to something

In a country song by Blake Shelton "Home sweet home", l came across this construction: Pull down to a cane bridge. I looked up most of the dictionaries, but none of them used the phrasal ...
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Let's assume X+into is a phrasal verb meaning A. X is also used with into again but with a different meaning (B) Can we count it as a phrasal verb?

Let's assume that we have 2 words: X and into. In dictionary the phrase X+into is accepted as a phrasal verb when it means A. We can also use X with the word into again, but then it literally means ...
Melis's user avatar
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Is "Put together" a phrasal verb?

She put all the flowers together in one big bunch. Is "put together" a phrasal verb in this sentence? Or is "together" an adverb?
darkhealer's user avatar
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Phrase that is more business-appropriate than "got screwed"? [closed]

What is a more business-appropriate phrase that has the same meaning as "got screwed" (the non-sexual meaning). In all the examples below, the people "getting screwed" were ...
End Anti-Semitic Hate's user avatar
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Which preposition is correct to use in "to conjugate __ 3rd Person Singular"?

Is it at/on/in with the following phrase: to conjugate .... 3rd Person Singular So far I consistently use "at". Am I right? Edit: "have" is conjugated ... the 3rd Person Singular,...
YerOrda's user avatar
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I know it was a liberty—I made it out you were no business man, only a stone-broke painter; that half the time you didn't know anything anyway

(From The Wrecker by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, Chapter XVIII, published 1892) Passage 287 “Jim,” I said, “you must speak right out. I've got all that I can carry.” “Well,” he said—“I ...
philphil's user avatar
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Is this awkward reuse of a verb between subjects correct?

From a Library of Congress article about Freud: ...patients tended to perform for the camera and doctors to record the most photogenic. This sentence seems to reuse the verb tended between the ...
japreiss's user avatar
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Meaning of "bring them away" in Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" (Act2, scene1)?

In act II, scene 1, of Measure for Measure, Elbow says: Elbow. Come, bring them away: if these be good people in a Common-weale, that doe nothing but vse their abuses in common houses, I know no law :...
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Meaning of "get out" in "He gets out when he can" [closed]

In his famous hit Working Class Man, Jimmy Barnes sings: He believes in God and Elvis He gets out when he can He did his time in Vietnam Still mad at Uncle Sam I can't make sense of the second line. ...
Mitsuko's user avatar
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Understanding phrasal verbs [closed]

My background: When I was 14 ,I got a C2 level degree in American English. Now I am 22 and I have forgotten so much vocabulary I can't have a conversation in English anymore. I have restarted studying ...
Cerise's user avatar
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Did English phrasal verbs evolve from the same ancestors as German verbs with separable prefixes?

It seems as if many Germanic aspects of the English language exist in their full-fledged forms in German and in vestigial forms in English. I wonder whether phrasal verbs in English are somewhat like ...
Michael Hardy's user avatar
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Difference between "Walk" and "Walk down" / "Drive" and "Drive down" [closed]

I'm an English learner, and sometimes I cannot understand why some words are used to express a meaning. For example, the word "Down". What's the difference between "I walked on the ...
Medi Az's user avatar
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Verb particle noun or verb noun particle: to leave out [duplicate]

Which sentence is grammatically correct or sounds more native-like? Politicians tend to discuss their sources of income nontransparently, leaving the discussions surrounding them out. Politicians ...
Schneider's user avatar
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"You can cream on me"

I was listening to "Let it Bleed" by The Rolling Stones, and the lyrics say Yeah, we all need someone we can cream on // Yeah and if you want to, well you can cream on me On the Cambridge ...
Bram Vanroy's user avatar
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Why does emphasis of "it" allow phrasal verb syntax that would otherwise not be grammatical?

Edit: the answer cited with the closure doesn't answer the question I posed; it merely reinforces the usual placement of the pronoun. Consider the phrase dash it off. I dashed it off without thinking ...
TimR's user avatar
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What does 'lay'd-on' mean in Camillo's speech (scene 3, act 5 of "The Winter's Tale")?

In act V, scene 3, of The Winter's Tale, Hermione says: Cam. My Lord, your Sorrow was too sore lay'd-on, Which sixteene Winters cannot blow away, So many Summers dry: scarce any Ioy Did euer so long ...
John Smith's user avatar
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When can compound verbs be split? [duplicate]

Is it wrong to say: He took the hat off. when you could keep the compound verb “took off” together? He took off the hat. And is the rule changed at all by more words being placed in the phrase? ...
Lonely Guy's user avatar
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How do you draw the tree in generative grammar for phrasal prepositional verbs such as "put up with? [closed]

I have the structure for transitive phrasals and for prepositional verbs, but I am having some trouble when I have to draw the tree for a phrasal prepositional verb. I know for sure it must contain a ...
Abril's user avatar
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Verb for forcing a situation in which you get more pain in order to avoid being stuck in lesser pain over a longer period of time

Is there a verb for forcing a situation in which you get more pain in order to avoid being stuck in lesser pain over a longer period of time? Examples: When one forces himself/herself to vomit, for ...
Adam's user avatar
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What is the exact meaning of the phrasal verb "hold out" when used in the construction "hold [something] out to be [something]"?

Examples of context: LEGAL AND FINANCIAL DISCLAIMER I am not an attorney, accountant or financial advisor, nor am I holding myself out to be. I am not, nor am I holding myself out to be a doctor/...
Pablo Messina's user avatar
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Which is (more?) correct: "Highly-variable" or "High-variability"

I have a question regarding a caption I'm writing for a photograph. For the sake of this example, the sentence has to communicate this device can read many different types of text. So, which is more ...
J.Bates's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
290 views

What is the difference between 'end up' and 'end in'?

Are there any differences between the meanings of 'end up' and 'end in'? For example: Her marriage ended in divorce. You will end up being fired. Can I swap 'end up' and 'end in' in the above ...
Niyaz's user avatar
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What does "get on" mean in this sentence from Walden?

In the first chapter of Walden, Thoreau writes: I cannot but perceive that this so-called rich and refined life is a thing jumped at, and I do not get on in the enjoyment of the fine arts which adorn ...
John Smith's user avatar
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Can a present-participle (compound) verb which could function as an adjective be further modified with -ly become an adverb?

For example, if the height of an platform is such as to be sickness-inducing, then could the platform be said to be sickness-inducingly high? Or take the example of mind-boggling -> mind-bogglingly....
TylerDurden's user avatar
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What are the digital versions of "clock/punch in" and "clock/punch out"?

I looked up the phrasal verbs clock in, clock out, punch in and punch out in various British advanced learner's dictionaries and they seem to imply that these verbs concern the analog way of recording ...
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How come "screw over" means "to cheat"?

I looked it up in Wiktionary, and I've found out that the term "screw over" means "to cheat someone, or ruin their chances in a game or other situation." I want to know how that ...
Latifa's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
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What does "be drawn before someone" mean?

In Oxford learner's dictionary, the word "drag", in one sense, means: a strong-smelling lure drawn before hounds as a substitute for a fox or other hunted animal. My understand is that &...
Khanh Tran's user avatar
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2 answers
163 views

Count with vs count on?

I was reading Rudyard Kipling's "If", and there's this line- If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; It seems to me that here "...
M87's user avatar
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Talk vs open up

Look at these two newspaper article titles(I know you must be thinking that the first one no journalist would write this way): 1: "Klopp talks about what went wrong with his team". 2: "...
Southman's user avatar
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"Used to play" or "was used to playing"? [closed]

In the answer he says 'used to play' means I played something in the past but not anymore, yet 'was used to playing' means a habitual activity but had changed some way. For me, as a non-native English ...
stackedbook's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
270 views

Should I use "I'm noting down ..." or "I'm taking ... to note."?

In this example, I am writing down in my notebook some high-level terms that were used in other people's conversation. I want to tell my friend that I am doing so. In the following two sentences, ...
U13-Forward's user avatar
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What does "to put it up to the favourite" mean?

The sentence is "Ground permitting, he is going to put it up to the favourite." I looked this up and found that it is mostly used in horse racing contexts. Does it mean to challenge the most ...
Valess's user avatar
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1 vote
6 answers
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How to describe actions towards realizing a goal

I am struggling to find the right verb to describe taking actions to realize a goal. Specifically, here is a sentence I am trying to write in an elegant and terse manner : The government first ...
DevShark's user avatar
  • 313
2 votes
2 answers
196 views

"centers around the concept" vs is "based on the concept"? [closed]

I've met a sentence like this in a technical book. It centers around the concept of [some concept]. I would simply use: It is based on the concept of [some concept]. I would like to understand the ...
olha's user avatar
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Grammatical Structure of Complex Sentence

The Sentence in Question The legal “theories” of democracy that evolved in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were precisely intended to provide such definitions as would link certain actual or ...
seministic's user avatar
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1 answer
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What is the meaning of "bruing/brewing conversation" or "bru/brew some conversation"?

I heard this in a talk show. But I couldn't catch the word. Like the man said - I can't wait to bru/brew some exciting conversations. I don't know, what does that mean? I found on my research that &...
Anna's user avatar
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1 vote
2 answers
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flung himself off meaning [closed]

Recently, I found this sentence, and I'm not sure the correct meaning of it. Unfortunately, I have neither context nor remember where it came from. Here's the phrase: He grinned at me and flung ...
i100's user avatar
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-1 votes
2 answers
268 views

Do break down vs break up (meaning "to divide" something) have the same usage?

According to the Cambridge dictionary (image below), the phrasal verbs "break down" and "break up" share the same meaning, "to divide". Moreover, according to this answer ...
Marlonchosky's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
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Expressing the idea of killing, finishing/knocking someone off with the phrasal verb "to blip off"

Somehow I was in the knowledge of the fact that the phrasal verb "to blip off" could be used to convey the idea of "to bump off", "to kill", "to knock off" and ...
Eugene's user avatar
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1 answer
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"hack it" - phrasal verb or prepositional verb? [closed]

I'm trying to understand the difference between particles and prepositions for my English assignment but specifically I'm trying to identify parts of speech in the sentence "he couldn't hack it ...
noemi's user avatar
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7 votes
2 answers
212 views

What is the path of the expression "fall out" to mean have a quarrel?

I wonder what would be the logical or historical path that led the phrasal verb "fall out" to mean to have a quarrel? I mean phrasal verbs are not baptized to an action out of the blue, ...
Lynera pintcho's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
384 views

Usage of "suss out" in Australian English

What's the meaning of "suss out" in Australian English? (Sydney, specifically) How does it compare with "figure out"? I've heard the verb used slightly differently than normal in a ...
Chuy CN's user avatar
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2 answers
302 views

What's the meaning of "so in"?

I couldn't find anything about "so in" in my research on Google. I heard people say it. And today I saw that on a Facebook post. So here's the context- You want long hair but short hair is ...
Anna's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
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Is it "come to" vs "come down" to a place?

When asking if they visit the city I live in, What should I say? Do you come down to xyz often? or Do you come to xyz often? Assume xyz is a name of a city. When instructing someone to come to a ...
Jay Dixit's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
44 views

What does "we were just popping off each other" mean?

In an interview, when Paul McCartney talked about his memory with Michael Jackson: It was actually upstairs, here. In this office. Michael originally rang me, and said ‘do you want to make some hits?’...
Rex T's user avatar
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-1 votes
1 answer
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To remove someone's sins

Is there a phrasal verb or an idiom that people use, especially in religious contexts, to wish that God would remove someone's sins? Something like: Hassan used to rape girls, but he repented of his ...
Mohamed Ali's user avatar
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1 vote
2 answers
105 views

Are "go into," "come into," and "get into" transitive?

As the subject says. Note the following sentences: "I got into a taxi." "He came into the room." "We went into the store." For some reason, I have always been under the ...
Alex's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
649 views

The phrase "belong to" in a question [duplicate]

Can we separate the words "belong" and "to" in a question like this? To what language family does English belong?
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