phrasal verb
Verb plus particle
A phrasal verb is a verb combined with an adverb or preposition—or both—that creates a meaning different from the original verb alone.
Give up, look into, and put up with are common examples.
English is thick with phrasal verbs, and they often have single-word equivalents that sound more formal: find out versus discover, throw away versus discard.
Learners of English find phrasal verbs challenging because their meanings aren't always predictable from their parts.
- come acrossFind accidentally
- look upSeek information about
- turn downReject or reduce
- break outTo suddenly emerge or escape
- carry onContinue doing something
hold on · set up · idiom · separable · colloquial · informal speech · collocation · put off · run into · English grammar · native speaker · give up · call off · pick up · imperative · figure out · break down · expression
- grammar termsnoun, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition
- linguistic unitsword, morpheme, phoneme, grapheme, syllable
- dictionariesdictionary, dictionaries, definitions, definition, entries
- language termsgrammar, word, vocabulary, syntax, synonym
- expressionsexpression, I love you, idioms, thank you, I'm sorry
- grammardeclension, pronouns, adjectives, conjugation, nouns