Phrasal Verb

A Phrasal Verb is an English verb which is composed of two or three words. One verb is combined with a preposition (like on, in, under) or an adverb (like up, down, away). Sometimes a phrasal verb can have a meaning that is very different to the meaning of at least one of those two or three words separately. Phrasal verbs are used more frequently in everyday speech than in formal, official writing or speaking.

Phrasal verbs are generally more common in spoken or informal English than in written or formal English. When phrasal verbs are only found in very informal contexts, we state this in the explanation. Similarly, we tell you when a particular phrasal verb is only in formal or technical contexts, or when it is found mainly in either British or American English.

Phrasal verb- syntactic patterns

The commonest patterns 

1)    V+ Adv+ N

2)    V+ Pron+ Adv,

3)    V+ Adv

Ask out: if you ask someone out, you invite them to go somewhere with you.
To ask to go on a date.  

ex. "I'm going to ask her out tomorrow." 

Last week, Erik and his friends asked all of CEP students out to dinner at Night Market. 

Ask over: if you ask someone over, you invite them to come or visit you.
To invite to one's home.

ex. "I would ask him over for dinner, but I'm afraid he would eat too much." She is asking us over to her new house this evening.

Be along:
To arrive. ex. "He'll be along in a bit."

Bump into (or run into) someone:  if you bump into someone you know, you meet them by chance.
To meet someone you know unexpectedly. 

ex. "I bumped into her at the party last night."

I probably won’t see him any more unless I bump into him on the street.

Chalk (something) up to: အေၾကာင္းတရားအျဖစ္ ယူဆသည္။
To blame (something) on; To give the reason for (something).

ex. "Don't worry about losing your wallet. Just chalk it up to bad luck."

Dwell on (something):
To spend a lot of time thinking about something. Often has a slightly negative connotation. 

ex. "Stop dwelling on the past!" people are reluctant to dwell on the subject of death.

Drop off: အိပ္ေပ်ာ္သြားသည္။ 

1) if you drop off to sleep, you go to sleep. 2) if you drop someone off, you take them to where they want to go and leave them there.

Eg# I can drop Ka Lay off on my way home. I come to see Arker but he drops off to sleep. 

Egg (someone) on: if you egg someone on, you encourage them to do something foolish or daring.
To urge/ push someone to do something.  

ex. "The boy always eggs his friends on to do stupid things." Jerry eggs Kyaw Htike Soe on to kill his girlfriend.

Freshen up: လန္းဆန္းေစသည္။ သစ္လြင္ ေစသည္။ ေအးျမလာသည္။

1)    If you freshen up or freshen yourself up, you wash and make yourself look neat and tidy.

Eg# he went to the bathroom to freshen up.

2)    If you freshen something up, you make it look cleaner, brighter and more attractive. 

Eg# the curtains and the paintings will freshen up the room.

Get (something) across to (someone):  if an idea or argument gets across, or if you get it across, you succeed in making other people understand it. 

Eg# we know that Satkyar’s words are getting across.
To get someone to understand something.  

ex. "I tried and I tried, but I just couldn't get my message across to her.

Grub sth up or out: တစ္စုံတစ္ရာကိုတူးဆြသည္၊တူးထုတ္သည္။ 

if you grub sth up, you dig it out of the ground. 

Eg# Birds are grubbing up insects to eat.

Jump all over:
To seriously scold.  

ex. "She jumped all over me when I got home at 3:00 AM last Tuesday."

Eg# Alison jumps all over me because I missed class yesterday.

Nose around: ဟိုၾကည့္ဒီၾကည့္လုပ္သည္။ ဟိုေမးဒေမးလုပ္သည္။

if you nose around or round or about, you look for interesting things or information in a place which belongs to someone else; an informal expression. 

Eg# Yi Yi always noses around something when she is somewhere.
To look for something (secret), to pry (ကေလာ္သည္။).  

ex. "I hate it when my brother noses around my room."

Open up: if someone opens up, they start to relax and to say exactly what they know or think about sth to someone. 

Eg# The teacher’s notice that new students begin to open up.
To talk about one's feelings honestly. 

ex. "I don't usually open up to people this way."

Shame into: if you shame someone into doing something, you force them to do it by making feel ashamed. 

Eg# Mother was shamed into leaving home. The children are shamed into begging around the market.

Shape up:
To develop. ex. "How's your project shaping up?" Our BOCEP is shaping up now.

Water down:
To add water to something (usually used when someone adds water to alcohol, etc.)  

ex. "I'm sure they water down the beer/this beer tastes watered down." They always water down the cow milk.

Zip around:
To move around. 

ex. "Peter zipped around town after school." Go back to your home after class, don’t zip around town!