William Shakespeare, who wrote many plays between 1589 and 1613, is a well-known writer of the time. His works, written in Early Middle English, include over 5,744 phrasal verbs.

Formal language and phrasal verbs

In Modern English, we use phrasal verbs more often in informal language. The reason for that practice goes back to the time when French influenced English. English speakers thought that French words, or words of Latin origin, were polite or cultured. When you want to speak more formally, you can use a single word of Latin or French origin instead of most phrasal verbs. For example, the phrasal verb look over can be replaced by review.

As English learners know well, daily conversation in English is almost never formal. So feel free to use phrasal verbs when you speak English in everyday settings.

Another general fact about phrasal verbs is that British English uses different ones from American English. At one time, British English speakers used phrasal verbs much less often than American English speakers. Now, the Oxford English Dictionary lists many phrasal verbs in common use in British English.

The structure of phrasal verbs

Let’s start with the basic structure of phrasal verbs. A phrasal verb is a phrase with two or more words: a verb and a preposition or adverb or both. An example is in this sentence:

“I looked up my cousin’s phone number.”

The verb is look, and up is the adverb. The phrasal verb look up means “to research” or “search for”.

Some phrasal verbs allow an object to separate the phrase.

“I didn’t know the number so I had to look it up.”

Here, the pronoun it stands for the object, number.

Other phrasal verbs have to stay together. You can say you care for someone with the phrasal verb look after as in:

“I looked after Andy’s dog while he was on vacation.”

But you cannot say, “I looked his dog after while he was on vacation.”

The first two kinds of phrasal verbs we looked at have two words. The next kind has three words. For example,

“I put up with the noise of my neighbor’s party because I knew it was his birthday.”

Here, the phrasal verb put up with means tolerate. The verb put is followed by the particle up and the prepositional phrase with + object (the noise).

These phrasal verbs must have direct objects. We cannot say, “I put up because I knew it was his birthday.”

Let’s look at some examples.

“Carrie asked me to help out with the cooking.” Here, we can substitute a single verb, assist, for the phrasal verb help out.

However, we need to keep the preposition with when we paraphrase the sentence, as in:

“Carrie asked me to assist with the cooking.”

Another three-part phrasal verb is look up to. It means admire. We can say,

“She looks up to her sister.”

Here, sister is the direct object. We cannot move sister to any other place in the sentence, as in “She looks her sister up to.”

How to identify a phrasal verb

Learners may be confused because there are combinations of verbs and prepositions that look like phrasal verbs. How do you tell the difference?

A regular verb + preposition combination has two meanings. Take the sentence,

“I looked up at the sky.”

Here look means view and up means in a higher direction. On the other hand, a phrasal verb has a single meaning. We saw look up earlier, meaning “research.”

Another test is whether you can move the object. You cannot say, “I looked the sky up,” with the meaning “I gazed upwards at the sky.”

So if you want to test whether a combination of words is a phrasal verb, ask these questions:

Can I substitute a single word for a two-word phrase?

The answer should be “yes.”

Can I remove the direct object in a three-word phrase?

The answer should be “no.”