Phrasal-prepositional Verbs

Phrasal-prepositional verbs are a small group of multi-word verbs made from a verb plus another word or words. Many people refer to all multi-word verbs as phrasal verbs. On these pages we make a distinction between three types of multi-word verbs: prepositional verbs, phrasal verbs and phrasal-prepositional verbs. On this page we look at phrasal-prepositional verbs.

Phrasal-prepositional verbs are made of:

verb + adverb + preposition

Look at these examples of phrasal-prepositional verbs:

phrasal-prepositional verbs	meaning	examples
			direct object
get on with	have a friendly relationship with	He doesn't get on with	his wife.
put up with	tolerate	I won't put up with	your attitude.
look forward to	anticipate with pleasure	I look forward to	seeing you.
run out of	use up, exhaust	We have run out of	eggs.

Because phrasal-prepositional verbs end with a preposition, there is always a direct object. And, like prepositional verbs, phrasal-prepositional verbs cannot be separated. Look at these examples:

phrasal-prepositional verbs are inseparable		We	ran out of	fuel.
		We	ran out of	it.

It is a good idea to write "something/somebody" in your vocabulary book when you learn a new phrasal-prepositional verb, like this:

• get on with somebody
• put up with sthg/sby
• run out of something

This reminds you that this verb needs a direct object (and where to put it).