English — Phrasal verbs
A phrasal verb is a verb plus a small particle (a preposition or adverb) that together carry a meaning you often cannot guess from the verb alone. Compare literal take off ("remove") with the figurative take off ("leave the ground") in the plane took off.
How it works
The particle can shift the meaning far from the base verb: give up means "stop trying", not "give"; look after means "take care of", not "look". With many transitive phrasal verbs the object can go before or after the particle — put on your coat or put your coat on — but a pronoun object must sit in the middle: put it on, never put on it.
Examples
| Phrasal verb | Meaning (vs. literal verb) |
|---|---|
| give up (I gave up smoking) | stop doing something — not "give" a thing |
| take off (the plane took off) | leave the ground — or, literally, remove (take off your shoes) |
| put on (put on your coat) | dress in a garment; also switch on (put on the light) |
| look after (she looks after the baby) | take care of someone — not just "look" |
| look up (I looked up the word) | search for information — not "look upward" |
| turn down (they turned down the offer) | reject; also lower volume (turn down the music) |
Good to know
Some phrasal verbs are inseparable: you cannot split look after — say look after her, never look her after. And one combination can have several unrelated meanings (take off = remove / leave the ground / become popular), so let the context decide.