Transitive and Intransitive Phrasal Verbs

A transitive construction has a direct object: she handed in her essay. An intransitive construction has no direct object: the plane took off. A sentence may still have other phrases, such as at six or from the runway. Those phrases are not direct objects.

Some verbs have both transitive and intransitive uses, and some allow an understood object to be omitted. Classify the use in its context, not every occurrence of the same spelling. A change in meaning may change the pattern, but it does not have to.

Intransitive uses have no direct object

These are usually the easiest phrasal verbs to use, because there is no object to place and therefore no word order to get wrong. Learners who have been warned about separability sometimes try to apply it here anyway and produce the plane took it off, which is the one mistake this group invites.

Transitive uses and their objects

Transitive particle verbs such as turn off raise the question of where the direct object goes. Prepositional verbs such as look after have an object of the preposition instead. Teaching materials often group both under transitive multi-word verbs; a narrower grammatical analysis distinguishes them.

Quick reference

These examples include verbs from the practice packs and additional grammar examples. The last rows illustrate contrasting constructions.

The verbs that do both

Both patterns can occur with related or different meanings. She cheered up and the news cheered her up describe a change to a happier state; the second adds the cause and a direct object. Take off, in contrast, has clearly distinct flight and clothing senses.

Take off is the clearest. Intransitively, a plane leaves the ground. Transitively, you remove a piece of clothing. There is a faint family resemblance if you squint, but you cannot derive one from the other, and a learner who knows only the plane sense will be lost the first time somebody says take your shoes off.

Turn up works the same way. Nobody turned up means nobody arrived. Turn the radio up means increase the volume. Give up alone means stop trying; give up something means quit that thing. Made up with no object after an argument means reconciled; made something up means invented it.

The practical takeaway is small but useful: when you meet a familiar phrasal verb with an object for the first time, or without one, do not assume you know what it means. Check.

What the passive can and cannot tell you

The passive is not a reliable yes-or-no test for an unfamiliar verb. Some transitive constructions resist a natural passive. English also has prepositional passives, such as the children were looked after, where the active object belongs to a preposition. Check dictionary patterns rather than judging a sentence you have never heard.

Passive constructions are useful in their own right, especially when the receiver of an action is the topic: the match was called off. Keep the original sense in view. A passive with a different meaning does not establish the grammar of the sense you are studying.

How dictionaries mark this

A learner dictionary often marks uses with T for transitive and I for intransitive, or shows object slots such as turn something up. An optional slot may appear in brackets. Read the examples as well: some headwords cover more than one construction or meaning.

Notations vary between dictionaries, so it is worth spending a minute with the front matter of whichever one you use. The information is always there, but it is easy to read past.

Mistakes worth catching

• Not English: The plane took it off at six.
  Correct: The plane took off at six.

  Take off in the flight sense has no object, so there is nothing to put in the middle. Separability only applies to transitive verbs.

• Not English: I have handed in it.
  Correct: I have handed it in.

  With hand in, the unstressed personal-pronoun object goes before in: hand it in. An understood object may sometimes be omitted in context, but it cannot be placed after in in this example.

• Not English: The car was broken down by itself on the motorway.
  Correct: The car broke down on the motorway.

  Use broke down for a car that stopped working. Break something down also exists, for example to analyse information, but it is a different sense.

• Not English: She gave smoking up it two years ago.
  Correct: She gave up smoking two years ago.

  Do not add it when smoking already supplies the object. She gave up can also be correct on its own when it means stopped trying or when the activity is understood.

Common questions