What Are Phrasal Verbs?

A phrasal verb is an ordinary verb with a small word attached that changes what it means. Give is clear. Give up is something else entirely. This page explains how they work, why English is full of them, and what to do about that.

Take a verb you already know. Give. Now add up: give up. The meaning has nothing to do with giving and nothing to do with up. It means to stop trying, and the only way to know that is to have met it before.

Give up is a phrasal verb: a verb and an adverb particle functioning together. Particles include up, off, out, on, down, away and back. Some meanings are idiomatic, as in give up, while others are transparent, as in sit down. A learner dictionary lists the combinations and their individual senses.

Phrasal verbs are not automatically slang. Find out and set up occur in conversation and writing, while mess about is informal. Single-word alternatives can also be natural in speech. Choose the expression that fits the meaning, audience and situation.

How to recognise one

Look for a verb and a particle functioning together. Whether the meaning is predictable does not by itself decide the grammatical category.

Correct: She walked up the hill.

Not a phrasal verb. Walking is walking and up is the direction. Nothing is hidden.

Correct: She made up the story.

A phrasal verb. Made up means invented, and neither word tells you that.

Correct: He turned off the lights.

A phrasal verb. Off suggests the device is no longer operating; the meaning is fairly transparent.

Terminology varies. Some teaching materials use phrasal verb as a broad name that includes prepositional verbs such as look after. In a narrower analysis, phrasal verbs contain an adverb particle. For a learner, the practical task is to learn both the meaning and the word order of the particular construction.

A one-word paraphrase can help explain a sense, but it is not a grammatical test. Put off can mean postpone; sit down has no exact single-word equivalent in ordinary English. Both can be phrasal verbs.

Why English has so many of them

English often offers several ways to express a similar idea. Some use a short verb and particle; others use a single verb. These alternatives are useful, but they are not interchangeable in every sentence.

The plain one is usually older. English began as a Germanic language, and Germanic languages build meaning by attaching small particles to short verbs. Then came centuries of French and Latin influence, which layered a second vocabulary on top, and that second vocabulary is where postpone, discover, tolerate, investigate and extinguish come from.

Both kinds of vocabulary remain in use. Some pairs differ in formality, others in emphasis, collocation or the kinds of object they take. Cancel a flight and call off a flight can describe the same decision, and cancel is perfectly ordinary in conversation.

Phrasal verbs and possible paraphrases

These pairs overlap in meaning in the examples shown. Neither column belongs exclusively to speech or formal writing.

Phrasal verb	Possible equivalent	Where you hear each
put off	postpone	Put the meeting off. The hearing was postponed.
call off	cancel	They called it off. The event was cancelled.
find out	discover	I found out yesterday. The team discovered a fault.
put up with	tolerate	He puts up with it. The policy will not be tolerated.
look into	investigate	We will look into it. The matter is being investigated.
give up	surrender, quit	She gave up. The garrison surrendered.
hand out	distribute	Hand these out. Materials will be distributed.
carry on	continue	Carry on. The programme will continue.
cut down on	reduce	Cut down on sugar. Reduce consumption.
go up	increase	Prices went up. Costs increased.

Check the context rather than replacing words mechanically. A dictionary can show register labels and typical objects for each sense.

The three things that vary

Once you accept that a phrasal verb is a unit, three questions decide how you can use it in a sentence, and each has its own page on this site.

Does it take an object? Some do and some do not. The plane took off has no object; take off your coat does. That is the transitive and intransitive split.

If it takes an object, where does the object go? Turn the lights off and turn off the lights are both fine. Look the baby after is not the caregiving construction. Learn these patterns with examples rather than guessing from spelling.

How many parts does the expression have? Put up with has a particle and a preposition. Some such expressions put an object after the preposition; others also require a direct object earlier, as in put someone up to something.

Literal, idiomatic, and the ground in between

Literal and idiomatic meanings can occur under the same verb. Learn each sense with its own example and construction.

Correct: Sit down and rest.

A transparent particle verb. Its meaning is easy to understand, but its form and use still matter.

Correct: The milk has gone off.

Fully idiomatic. Gone off means spoiled, and no amount of thinking about go or off gets you there.

Correct: Prices have gone up.

In between. Up really does suggest a rise, so the meaning is guessable even if the phrase is fixed.

Many combinations are partly transparent. Up can suggest an increase in go up, while the connection between go off and spoiled food is less obvious. This is a useful observation about meaning, not a classification rule.

Spend time on unfamiliar meanings, but also practise the word order of transparent combinations. Understanding turn off does not automatically tell you to say turn it off rather than turn off it.

One form, several meanings

This is the part learners find genuinely unfair. A single phrasal verb can carry meanings that have nothing to do with each other, and only the sentence around it tells you which one is meant.

Take off is the standard example. A plane takes off. You take off your coat. A business takes off when it suddenly succeeds. Three unrelated senses, one form.

Make up is worse. You make up a story, which is inventing. You make up after an argument, which is reconciling. Women make up half the intake, which is constituting. Same two words each time.

The good news is that context does nearly all the work. Nobody hearing the plane took off wonders whether the plane removed its clothes. Read and listen enough and the right sense arrives on its own. Trying to memorise every sense from a list, before you have met any of them in use, is the slow road.

How to actually learn them

Learn them in sentences as well as in vocabulary lists. A definition helps you recognise a meaning; an example shows how to build a sentence. Record turn it off alongside turn off, so the pronoun pattern is visible from the start.

Learn them in groups that share a situation rather than a particle. Everything you need at an airport, everything that happens in a meeting, everything that goes wrong with a laptop. That is how you will need to recall them, so that is how they should go in. The topic packs on this site are built on exactly that principle.

Learn the pronoun form from the start: turn it off rather than turn off, look after it rather than look after. The pronoun locks the word order in place, so you never have to remember which verbs can split.

Use the new expressions in speech and writing. Compare your sentence with a dictionary example, check the object and tense, and return to it after a few days. Phrasal verbs occur in both spoken and written English.

What goes wrong

Four patterns, all fixable once you can see them.

Not English: We had to put the meeting off it.
Correct: We had to put the meeting off.
Use one object here: the meeting or it. We had to put it off is also correct. Postpone is a valid alternative in both conversation and writing.
Not English: Turn off it.
Correct: Turn it off.
An unstressed personal pronoun object goes between the verb and particle in this separable construction.
Not English: I am looking forward to meet you.
Correct: I am looking forward to meeting you.
The to here is a preposition, not part of an infinitive, so it takes an -ing form. Worth fixing because this sentence closes a great many emails.
Not English: She explained me the meaning of give up.
Correct: She explained the meaning of give up to me.
Not about phrasal verbs at all, but it turns up constantly in the same sentences. Explain takes to before the person.

Common questions

How many phrasal verbs do I need to know?

Start with a manageable set relevant to your life, then add senses as you meet them. This site has 272 learning entries, including repeated verbs, separate senses and a few related expressions. That is an entry count, not a claim about the proportion of English you will understand.

Are phrasal verbs informal?

Their register varies: many are neutral, some are informal, and some are common in formal writing. Find out, point out, carry out and set up appear in perfectly formal writing. A handful, like knock off or mess about, really are casual. The safest habit is to notice where you meet each one rather than assume the whole category is casual.

What is the difference between a phrasal verb and an idiom?

A phrasal verb combines a verb and a particle. An idiom has a meaning that is not fully predictable from its words. Some phrasal verbs are idiomatic, such as give up; others are transparent, such as sit down. The categories overlap, but neither is simply the definition of the other.

Is look at a phrasal verb?

Strictly, no. At is a preposition doing its ordinary job, and the meaning is exactly what the parts suggest, so look at is a prepositional verb. Many coursebooks file both under phrasal verbs because the practical advice is the same, and the distinction only starts to matter when you look at word order.

Why can I understand phrasal verbs but never produce them?

Because recognition and production are different skills, and phrasal verbs are learned mostly through use. You have met turn it down often enough to understand it instantly, but the formal synonym is what surfaces when you speak, because that is what you practised. The fix is speaking practice rather than more study.

Do phrasal verbs change in the past tense?

Only the verb changes. The particle never does. Take off becomes took off, put up with becomes put up with, and give up becomes gave up. If the base verb is irregular, its irregular form is the one you need.