252 Part IV: The Grammar You Need to Know – and How to Teach It
✓ grow out of *
✓ hold on
✓ keep something up*
✓ pass away
✓ run out of*
✓ show off
✓ turn up
✓ wear off
The phrasal verbs in the list marked with * are also transitive, which means
that they need a direct object. So basically, you can’t just say ‘I’ve grown out
of’. You have to add what you’ve grown out of. Likewise, you can’t say ‘I asked
out’ because you need to say who you asked out.
For most phrasal verbs synonyms exist that are little more formal. For exam-
ple, ‘to back someone up’ means to support them and ‘to keep something up’
means to maintain it. Students tend to latch onto the formal words because
they translate better into their own languages (especially Latin languages) but
then they don’t sound conversational enough when they speak. So remember
that, given a choice, most native speakers opt for a phrasal verb in everyday
life.
Note that some phrasal verbs are separated by ‘someone’ or ‘something’. This
conveniently brings us to another difficulty; phrasal verbs can be separable
or inseparable. I deal with this in the following section. The other phrasal
verbs in the list are all intransitive so you can’t put an object in the middle.
Following the rules about separable and inseparable phrasals
Basically, if you can put ‘someone’ or ‘something’ between the verb and the
preposition in a phrasal verb, it’s separable and transitive, which means it
requires a direct object. (I talk about objects in Chapter 15.) This doesn’t
necessarily mean you have to separate it, it just means that you can. For
example:
I have to call the party off.
I have to call off the party.
If you can’t put ’something’ or ‘someone’ in the middle of a phrasal verb, it’s
both intransitive and inseparable, which means that you can’t separate the
verb and the preposition: intransitive verbs have no direct object. You don’t
need ‘someone’ or ‘something’ for it to make sense. For example:
