that operates more like a phrase than a word, such as go up (as in the balloon went up), put off (as in don t put it off any longer), and take down (as in that ll take him down a peg or two). Such composites derive primarily from verbs of movement and action (go, put, take) and adverbial particles of direction and location (up, off, down). The base verbs are mainly monosyllabic and may underlie a range of phrasal verbs: for example, get underlying get up, get down, get in, get out, get on, get off, get away, and get back. The combinations are used both literally and figuratively, and are often idioms or elements in idioms: to get away with murder, to get on like a house on fire, to get back at someone, to get up to mischief.
The use of phrasal verbs.verbs are often informal, emotive, and slangy, and may contrast with Latinate verbs, as in They used up / consumed all the fuel; they gathered together / assembled / congregated in the hall; the soldiers moved forward / advanced. Putting off a meeting parallels postponing it; driving back enemy forces repels them; putting out a fire extinguishes it; bringing back the death penalty restores it. However, such pairing often depends on context and collocation. In some cases, one phrasal verb may match several Latinate verbs: bring back=restore (the death penalty), return (money to someone), and retrieve (a shot bird or animal from where it has fallen). In other cases, one Latinate verb may match several phrasal verbs: demolish matching knock down, tear down, and blow up as variants in destructive style. It is sometimes possible to match the elements of phrasal verbs and Latinate verbs: climb up with a / scend; climb down with de / scend.verbs and prepositionsis a continuum between the phrasal verb as described above and verbs followed by phrases in which the preposition may or may not be part of the phrase. A phrasal verb can be formed elliptically from a verb plus prepositional phrase (like He took the box up from He took the box up the stairs). A transitive usage may not be separable (like pick up the book / pick the book up), but may have distinct meanings depending on where the particle is placed (get round someone, get someone round). Particles may not be clearly either adverbial or prepositional, as with off in BrE get off the bus (compare widespread AmE get off of the bus). Some prepositions may be attached to verbs preceding them, usually for figurative reasons: where the sentence He came across the street is analyzable as (He came) (across the street), the sentence He came across an old friend makes more sense as a phrasal form: (He came across) (an old friend), come across glossed as meet by chance. Some grammarians and lexicologists call a usage like come across a prepositional verb, because the particle is not adverbial but prepositional. Such a terminology, if extended, should turn phrasal verbs proper into adverbial verbs, but has not yet done so. Other commentators call the usage a fused or non-separable phrasal verb, because the preposition has been stolen from its own phrase and fused with the preceding verb in an idiom. Others still consider some particles so equivocal that they are neither adverbs as such nor prepositions as such, but ad preps. Usages include: act for represent, bargain for expect, call for demand, come by obtain, get at imply, go for attack. The issue is further complicated by occasions when the fusion occur...
