English LCI

A Concise Guide to Phrasal Verbs

A phrasal verb is a combination of a verb and an adverb, a verb and a preposition, or a verb, an adverb, and a preposition. Phrasal verbs act semantically as units, that is, they possess their own meaning, which is generally an alteration of the original meaning of the verb. Nevertheless, the meaning may vary completely. For example:

She came across his sister in the gym. (She met his sister in the gym.)

In this case, we combined the verb to come with the preposition across to indicate that she out of the blue met his sister in the gym. Even though the meaning is very different from the meaning of come, you are able to perceive that the combination effortlessly shows somebody bumping into someone else, or two things interfering with each other in any manner.

In ESL programs, teachers do not encourage this intent to retrieve the new meaning by digging in the roots of the verb, however, I believe they are mistaken, and I encourage you to do it.

This is because of literal against idiomatic practice. Nevertheless, idiomatic practice always comes from literal practice, and their association isn’t a senseless and absurd one. As an example, to get over exactly means to climb over something, and when you declare She finally got over her daughter’s death, giving an idiomatic practice to the phrasal verb, the relation to the literal meaning is absolute and obvious: in reality, only if you own a fresh feeling of its literal practice you’ll be capable of feeling its full connotation, the burden over her; the draining effort that was necessary to get over that wall.

This doesn’t mean you can foretell the meaning of a phrasal verb simply by looking at its elements, or that you can structure phrasal verbs by adding particles to verbs out of choice, but when you understand the meaning of a phrasal verb, trying to discover its literal source is always interesting.

Note that occasionally, the meaning varies completely based on whether the phrasal verb carries an object or not. As an example:

He came across triumphantly in the interview. (He made a good impact on them.)

In this case, across is used as an adverb, not a preposition, and since the phrasal verb doesn’t carry an object, the meaning is different.

Finally, there are some grammar rules you need to learn about phrasal verbs. One of them restricts the order of the particles in the sentence. Let’s see:

Separable phrasal verbs may stay united excluding when a pronoun is the object. In this eventuality, the pronoun must go between the verb and the particle. For example:

He gave up that stupid career = He gave that stupid career up = He gave it up (OK)
But you should not declare He gave up it. (Not right)

Inseparable phrasal verbs constantly stay united, no matter if you employ a noun, a noun phrase, or a pronoun as an object:

He was looking after his daughter = He was looking after her (OK)
He was looking his daughter after (Not right)
He was looking her after (Not right)

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