phrasal verb

Definition:

A complex verb made up of a verb (usually one of action or movement) and an adverbial particle (of direction or location). See also: prepositional verb.

Etymology:

According to Logan Pearsall Smith in Words and Idioms (1925), the term was introduced by Henry Bradley, senior editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Examples and Observations:

• "Put out the light, and then put out the light."
  (William Shakespeare, Othello)



• "a wind has blown the rain away and blown
  the sky away and all the leaves away,
  and the trees stand."
  (E.E. Cummings, "A Wind Has Blown the Rain Away and Blown")



• "Like compounds, phrasal verbs have semantic coherence, evidenced by the fact that they are sometimes replaceable by single Latinate verbs, as in the following:
  • break out -- erupt, escape
  • count out -- exclude
  • think up -- imagine
  • take off -- depart, remove
  • work out -- solve
  • put off -- delay
  • egg on -- incite
  • put out -- extinguish
  • put off -- postpone
  Furthermore, the meaning of the combination of verb and particle in the phrasal verb may be opaque, that is, not predictable from the meaning of the parts."
  (Laurel J. Brinton, The Structure of Modern English: A Linguistic Introduction, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2000)



• "A phrasal verb differs from a sequence of a verb and a preposition (a prepositional verb) in [these] respects. Here call up is a phrasal verb, while call on is only a verb plus a preposition:
  1. The particle in a phrasal verb is stressed: They called up the teacher, but not *They called on the teacher.
  2. The particle of a phrasal verb can be moved to the end: They called the teacher up, but not *They called the teacher on.
  3. The simple verb of a phrasal verb may not be separated from its particle by an adverb: *They called early up the teacher is no good, but They called early on the teacher is fine."
  (R.L. Trask, Dictionary of English Grammar, Penguin, 2000)

Also Known As: compound verb, verb phrase, verb-adverb combination, verb-particle combination, two-part verb, three-part verb