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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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. ...
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Are 'avail + oneself + to-phrase' or ' 'avail + to + NP'' ever acceptable?
My instructor put this in his course materials:
Although this is an online class where you can avail yourself to your textbook etc.
Is there any circumstance in which "avail to [object]" would be ...
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Understanding phrasal verbs [migrated]
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 ...
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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 ...
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Is the second word in phrases like "throw out" and "write down" a preposition or adverb?
There are a couple of places where I get confused on whether a word is an adverb or a preposition (or maybe even both?). For example, a sentence I am confused by is
"Don't throw out the water ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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How would you describe a car kicking up clouds of dust as an adverb of a car heading somewhere?
I am trying to translate a sentence from Turkish to English. I'm almost satisfied and it is something along the lines of
A black car kicking up clouds of dust was seen heading to the city from a ...
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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 ...
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"Watch" vs. "Watch as"
He watched them run.
He watched as they ran.
What's the exact difference, in terms of the information/scene conveyed? He was watching the runners in both cases. Do they have different connotations? ...
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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 ...
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Is "replace it by x" actually correct? [duplicate]
I've always been under the impression that, in standard English, "replace" is only paired with "by" in the passive voice, and that "replace with" is the correct active ...
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'reflect back on' or 'reflect on' some event in the past?
As the title suggests, should I use "reflect back on" or "reflect on" when talking about something in the past?
For example:
I find myself reflecting on the journey that has led ...
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Origins of the phrasal verb "to fall asleep".
I have been googling around, searching for the origins of the phrasal verb "to fall asleep" but so far I have found no references. I was wondering specifically why we use the verb "to fall" to ...
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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?
...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Use of 'laugh' in 'be laughed out of the building' [closed]
I encountered the following sentence, but I'm curious about the use of 'be laughed out of'.
If you had gone to her court in 1850 and suggested that this empire would be over within a generation, you ...
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Is there any rule about splitting phrasal verbs?
I thought of this question right after I posted a tweet about a service upgrading me to a free student account since I am in college. I said "That really helps a broke college student out." I actually ...
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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/...
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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 ...
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The use of the phrasal verb "pay off" in context
Tell me please if it is apt to use the phrasal verb in the following conext.
The tablet was expensive, but I don't regret buying it, because it is paying off.
What I mean is that the tablet proved ...
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"click" vs "click on" vs "click through" [duplicate]
How does "click" in the context of the sentences below differ from click on and click through?
Click the link to subscribe.
Click on the link to subscribe.
Click through the link to ...
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"to go missing" versus "to turn up missing" versus "to take missing"
I have heard all three of these expressions in various parts of the US to describe the disappearance of things.
All three expressions appear to be readily understood. Are some more common in certain ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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....
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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 ...
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What is the meaning of 'to shadow forth'?
Example usage:
With what fairer and nobler emblem could any man desire to shadow forth his character?
or
In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and yet there was a genial ...
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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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Usage of "do by"
By 'do by' :-
You've did wrong/ill by me.
You've done ill by him by prejudging him.
You're doing ill by me.
You've did me ill by by what you groundlessly accused me of.
Sir, you have done me wrong ...
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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 &...
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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 "...
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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: "...
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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, ...
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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, ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Meaning of "dance out" [closed]
What does the following phrase mean?
Robert danced his way out the prison.
Does it mean that Robert succeeded in leaving the prison?
Or that Robert danced while leaving the prison?
A similar ...
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Etymology of "end up" and "wind up"
What is the etymology of the phrase "end up", and of the meaning of "wind up" that means essentially the same thing?
To clarify, I mean the specific meaning of "wind up" that means the same as "end ...
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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 ...
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"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 ...
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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 ...
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Opt into vs opt in to
On the site 'Writing Explained' it is recommended to use "in to" instead of "into" when "in" is part of a verb phrase. As such, I would conclude that the phrase "opt in to" would be preferred over "...
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Getting as set off by it
I'm reading an article about anxiety. The author says that when people feel anxious, they try to make themselves feel better by applying all kinds of coping techniques (e.g. deep breathing). Then it ...
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Is "looks up" a correct phrase when referring to a computer searching for information?
Is the following sentence grammatically correct?
The computer looks up the email address provided.
Guess it's just my brain, but "looks up" didn't have a familiar ring to it when I read ...
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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 &...
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