Spotlight - 14.2019

VERB POWER 14/2019 Spotlight 21

4. Phrasal verbs

Put the words below in the right order. All the phrasal

verbs used here are separable, so there are two ways to ar-

range the words.

A. My | Spotlight magazine | picked | up | wife

.

.

B. a | grammar | out | read | She | test

.

.

C. filled | answers | We | the | in

.

.

D. away | She | the | put | magazine

.

.

Answers

4.

Phr

asal verbs

A.

My wif

e picked

up

Spotlight

magazine. / My wife picked Spotlight

magazine up.

B.

She r

ead out a

grammar test. / She read a grammar test out.

C.

W

e filled in the

answers. / We filled the answers in.

D.

She put aw

ay the

magazine. / She put the magazine away.

come up with sth.

[)kVm (Vp wID]

, sich etw. einfallen

lassen

faded [(feIdId]

, verblasst, verblichen

fall apart [fO:l E(pA:t]

, auseinanderfallen

hang in [)hÄN (In] ifml.

, durchhalten

wallet [(wQlIt]

, Brieftasche

D

own the hall, Victor Vanguard picked up his wallet and

looked at a faded photograph of his father. “Have I let you

down, Dad?” Victor wondered out loud. He knew his father had

gone through hard times, but he had never given up. Somehow,

they had always hung in there and found a way to keep the busi-

ness going. Now, though, it seemed as if Delirious Decorations

was finally going to fall apart. Even the idea with the coach

hadn’t really worked out. If he, Victor, didn’t come up with a

plan before 1 January, the company would go into liquidation.

Phrasal verbs

A phrasal verb is a verb that has two parts. The first

part is a normal verb, such as “let”, “go” or “come”. The

second part is a preposition or particle, like “down”,

“through” or “up”. Put the two parts together and you

have a new meaning (“let down” or “go through”).

Sometimes, the meaning is clear and logical, as in “fall

apart”, but many phrasal verbs have a meaning that is

different from the meanings of its two separate parts.

This is the case with “let down”, for example, which

means “disappoint”.

There are two sorts of phrasal verbs: separable and

inseparable. If a phrasal verb is separable, as in “let

down”, the two parts of the verb can be written together

or separately:

• He let down his father.


• He let his father down.
  However, if the object (“his father”) is a pronoun (“him”),
  this must go between the verb and the particle:


• He let him down. (not: He let down him.)
  If a phrasal verb is inseparable, as in “look after”, the two
  parts of the verb always go together:


• You must look after our guests. (not: You must look our
  guests after.)


• You must look after them. (not: You must look them
  after.)
  A good dictionary will tell you to which category a
  phrasal verb belongs: separable (“sep.”) or inseparable
  (“insep.”). Larger dictionaries for learners write a
  separable phrasal verb in this helpful way: “turn
  (something) on” or “turn on (something)”. This shows
  you that the two parts of the verb can be written
  separately or together.