A phrasal verb is a verb plus one or two small words (up, out, off, on, down…) that together take on a new meaning. Give is to hand something over. Give up is to quit. Look is to see. Look after is to take care of.
For anyone who learned English at school, phrasal verbs are the biggest gap between textbook English and the English on TV. In formal writing you barely run into them. In conversation they are in almost every sentence. If you do not know the main ones, you can understand every single word in a scene and still miss what is going on.
The good news: a small group accounts for most of the use. The 35 below cover a large share of what you will hear day to day.
The 15 you hear all the time
| Phrasal verb | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| find out | discover (a piece of information) | I just found out she’s leaving. |
| figure out | understand, solve | I can’t figure out how this works. |
| give up | quit, stop trying | Don’t give up now. |
| come back | return | When are you coming back? |
| go on | continue; happen | What’s going on here? |
| pick up | collect (someone); answer (the phone) | Can you pick me up at six? |
| get up | get out of bed | I got up late today. |
| turn out | end up being, prove to be | It turned out he was right. |
| show up | appear, arrive | He didn’t show up to the meeting. |
| hang out | spend time together | We used to hang out every weekend. |
| calm down | become calm | Calm down, it’s okay. |
| work out | go well; exercise | Don’t worry, it’ll work out. |
| look for | search for | I’m looking for my keys. |
| run out (of) | have none left | We ran out of milk. |
| break up | end a relationship | They broke up last year. |
What’s going on? may be the most repeated phrasal-verb line in television history. And turn out is every mystery writer’s favorite: every plot twist starts with it turns out.
10 more for everyday conversation
| Phrasal verb | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| get along (with) | have a good relationship with | Do you get along with your sister? |
| look after | take care of | Can you look after the kids tonight? |
| look forward to | be excited about (something coming) | I’m looking forward to the trip. |
| put off | postpone | Stop putting it off. |
| set up | arrange, organize; frame someone | They set up a meeting. / I was set up! |
| take off | leave the ground (a plane); remove (clothes) | The plane takes off at nine. |
| give back | return something | Give me back my phone. |
| bring up | mention a topic; raise (a child) | Why did you bring that up? |
| check out | take a look at; leave a hotel | Check this out! |
| end up | finally be in a place or situation | We ended up staying home. |
Look forward to has a grammar trap: the verb after it takes -ing. It is I’m looking forward to seeing you, not to see you. Even advanced learners get this one wrong.
And 10 from drama and thrillers
| Phrasal verb | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| come up with | think of (an idea), invent | She came up with a plan. |
| get away (with) | escape; avoid punishment | You won’t get away with this. |
| freak out | panic, lose control | Don’t freak out, it’s just a dream. |
| break into | enter by force | Someone broke into the house. |
| take over | take control | He’s trying to take over the company. |
| cover up | hide (a wrongdoing) | They covered up the accident. |
| back off | move away, stop pressuring | Back off! Leave her alone. |
| turn in | hand over to the police; go to bed | She turned him in. |
| mess up | ruin, make a mistake | I really messed up this time. |
| pull over | stop the car at the side of the road | The police told him to pull over. |
Find out, from the first table, lives in crime shows too: it comes up in nearly every episode. And you won’t get away with this is such a classic villain line that series now use it as a joke.
Why memorizing lists does not work
A list like this is useful for recognizing phrasal verbs. But a phrasal verb memorized on its own does not stick. The reason is that the meaning often has no logic: nothing in turn + out suggests “end up being”. Without context, memory has nothing to hold on to.
What works is meeting the phrasal verb in a scene: with a voice, a situation, an emotion. “You won’t get away with this”, said by a cornered villain, stays with you in a way no table can.
Three habits help:
Watch the particle. When you hear a common verb followed by up, out, off or on, be suspicious: it may be a phrasal verb with a meaning different from the verb alone.
Save the whole sentence, not just the verb. “We ran out of milk” teaches more than “run out = have none left”.
Review in context. Go back to the sentences you saved after a few days. We cover how to do that without effort in how to remember vocabulary without rote memorization.
The word-by-word translation problem
Phrasal verbs are the nightmare of any translator that goes word by word. Put “She turned him in” through one and you can get something that means “she rotated him inside”. It makes no sense at all.
That is why, when you look one up, what matters is the meaning in the context of the sentence, not the meaning of the verb on its own. Telidioma does exactly that in YouTube and Netflix subtitles: tap the word and the explanation takes the whole sentence into account, including the particle that changes the meaning. The sentence can go into your vocabulary along with the scene it came from.
Want the informal side next? See 30 English slang words you hear in every American show.