Phrasal verbs with up, and how to actually use them

Phrasal verbs are the part of English that grammar books handle badly and conversation depends on. A student can know the word "give" perfectly and still be lost when somebody says "the car gave up", "give up smoking", "give up your seat" and "I give up" — four meanings, one verb, one small word after it.

This guide covers the ones with up, because up is the most common and the most misleading. Learn these thirty and a great deal of ordinary spoken English stops being a guess.

First, why up is confusing

Sometimes up means what you expect — upward. Pick up your bag, stand up, look up at the ceiling. Those are easy and you probably already have them.

But up also does three other jobs, and this is where the trouble is:

• It means "completely". Eat up your dinner is not eating in an upward direction; it is eating all of it. Drink up, finish up, use up, fill up.
• It means "into existence" or "into view". A problem comes up. Somebody turns up. You make up a story. You set up a company.
• It means nothing at all. Hurry and hurry up mean the same thing. So do wake and wake up. The up is there because English speakers say it, and leaving it out sounds oddly formal.

Nobody learns those categories and then applies them. What works is meeting each phrasal verb in a sentence you would actually say, which is how the list below is arranged.

The thirty worth learning

Getting through a day

• wake up — stop sleeping. I wake up at seven.
• get up — leave the bed. Not the same as waking. I wake up at seven and get up at half past.
• hurry up — go faster. Usually said to somebody else, usually about being late.
• eat up — eat all of it. What a host family says when a student is being polite about a portion.
• wash up — wash the dishes. ⚠ In American English this means washing your hands. In Britain, "I'll wash up" means the plates.
• tidy up — make a room neat. Could you tidy up before you go out?
• stay up — not go to bed. We stayed up to watch the match.

People

• grow up — become an adult. I grew up in Madrid. Also an insult: grow up!
• bring up — raise a child, or introduce a topic. She brought up three children. · Don't bring that up at dinner.
• meet up — arrange to see somebody. Shall we meet up on Saturday? Warmer than "meet".
• catch up — reach the same point. You go ahead, I'll catch up. Also: Let's catch up — talk about what has happened since.
• make up — three meanings. Invent (he made it up), become friends again after an argument (they've made up), and constitute (students make up half the city).
• split up / break up — end a relationship. Both are used; break up is also what schools do for the holidays.
• put up with — tolerate. Three words, one meaning. I can't put up with the noise.
• look up to — admire. He looks up to his older brother. The opposite is look down on.

Plans and problems

• turn up — arrive, often unexpectedly, or be found. She turned up late. · My phone turned up in my coat.
• show up — the same as turn up, slightly more American, very common.
• come up — happen, arise. Something's come up, I can't make it. The polite way to cancel.
• set up — arrange or establish. Set up a meeting. · She set up her own business.
• give up — stop trying, or stop a habit. Don't give up. · He gave up chocolate.
• end up — finish in a place or state you did not plan. We ended up walking home. Extremely common and almost never taught.
• sort out / clear up — resolve. Let's clear this up.
• mix up — confuse two things. I mixed up the dates.
• mess up — do badly. Informal. I messed up the test.
• use up — finish a supply. We've used up the milk.

Talking and listening

• speak up — talk louder. What a teacher says. Also: say what you think.
• shut up — be quiet. ⚠ Rude. Fine between friends, not to an adult.
• look up — find information. Look it up in the dictionary.
• bring up — see above; it belongs in both lists, which is the point.
• sum up — summarise. To sum up, three things matter. Useful in an essay.
• speak up for — defend somebody. She spoke up for him.

The grammar point that actually matters

Some of these can be split by their object and some cannot, and getting it wrong is the most audible mistake a learner makes here.

Separable — the object can go in the middle, and if the object is a pronoun it must:

• ✔ Look up the word. ✔ Look the word up. ✔ Look it up. ✘ Look up it.
• Same for: pick up, turn on, put on, tidy up, use up, mix up, wake up.

Inseparable — nothing goes in the middle, ever:

• ✔ I look up to him. ✘ I look him up to.
• Same for: put up with, catch up with, come up with, look after.

There is no rule that tells you which is which. There is only exposure — which is the argument for learning these in a place where people say them, rather than from a list.

How to actually learn them

Not by memorising thirty lines. Three things work:

1. Learn them in a sentence you would say about yourself. "I grew up in Seville" is retrievable; "grow up = become an adult" is not.
2. Notice them for one week. Watch something in English with English subtitles and write down every phrasal verb you hear. You will get twenty in an hour, and the twenty you hear are the twenty that matter.
3. Use one a day, badly. Being corrected on "I ended up to walk home" is worth more than saying nothing correctly.

The third is the one a fortnight abroad is for. Our students arrive knowing more phrasal verbs than they can use, and leave using a smaller number without thinking — which is the direction that counts. What that fortnight looks like is in what is a study holiday, and what happens on the first morning is in how much English does my child need.

If you want the classroom hours rather than the fortnight, our general English course runs over more weeks with an examination in view.