The Inalienable Pleasures of Phrasal Verbs

 

I’ve given some thought to phrasal verbs over the years.  Haven’t we all?   As a native English speaker, there’s not much reason for you to think about them.  They happen all the time and you’ve been exposed for so long and so often that you incorporate them with no hardship at all.  I’m here to make you think about them; they’re as common as dirt.

The preposition (it’s almost always those damned prepositions) modifies what the verb means, often in very ridiculous ways.

For instance, to ask is very different from to ask out.  

 

Other examples:

Break vs Break Down vs Break Up.  Glasses break but are not mechanically complex enough to break down.  Cars can be broken but more often break down.  They can’t break up, though.  That’s for human couples and icebergs. If common sense were involved in this, a couple who breaks up and then has a change of heart should be able to break down and live happily ever after in the suburbs, but no, it doesn’t work that way.

Then there’s break out verses break in.   Criminals who break in to your house probably just leave through a door rather than break out of your house.  Those same criminals might break out of prison later but wouldn’t normally consider breaking in to the same institution.

There’s also the old standby, ‘to burn’.   Add a word, and it changes.   Houses burn down while other things burn up.   Cars burn up while a fire itself generally just burns.   You can burn money but it isn’t the same as burning through money.   Lots of old hippies burn out but haven’t really caught fire.   Some electronics used to suggest a burn in period.   Kids need to burn off energy.  Can you imagine learning English as a second language?

Years ago, we were expecting my mother to come visit, and my mother never visited anyone.  You wanted to see her, you went to her.  But she was going to make an exception, she said.  More than anything, this is a testament to how much she loved my ex-wife.  A few days before she was to arrive, the ex turned to me and asked, “Do you think she’s going to...chicken off?”  Her command of English is excellent, but a phrasal verb – idiomatic – had ruined her sentence.  I found it funnier than she did, but it again made me think about phrasals.  I mean, is chicken alone even a verb? 

It’s not.  Chicken is not a verb.  But add a little tiny preposition and you can chicken out.  As far as I know, that’s it, though.  No chickening off or chickening up or chickening over.  And we all understand that while you can chicken out, you absolutely cannot chicken back in. 

Also, my ex contributed another great one some years back.  We were getting ready to go somewhere and she had just taken a shower.  I was brushing my teeth or something at the sink and she asked, “Am I drying up or am I drying out?”   She was, of course, drying off.   I tried my best to explain what dries up versus what dries out.  Rain puddles dry up.  Cake dries out.  People dry off.   Other things simply dry, like clothes in the dryer. 

Anyway, once you calm down, you can’t calm up.  By the same token, you can’t cheer down.  I don’t make these rules, or else we’d all chicken off every now and then.

Other things you cannot do:  

Chip out for dinner.  Once you chip in, it’s over.  No waffling. Get your wallet out.

Nor can you clean down.   I can’t think of many other prepositions for that verb.  Clean out, I guess, but once you clean out that closet, you can’t then clean it back in.

If you count on someone and they fail you, you can’t then count them off.   If you cut back on sugar and fatty foods, you can’t cut front on them when no one’s watching.  

Once you make up a story about being taken by aliens, you can’t make down the story. 

Fuck, as a verb, is so useful in so many different ways.  But first let’s talk about its use as an adverb.  I really got into this when carpooling with two New York Italians, Frank Vomero and Lenny Gentile.  Often, if they were both in the front seat, I would have to ask one or the other to put at least one hand on the steering wheel.  This really inhibited their ability to speak.  Anyway, fuck as an adverb.   “I’m fucking sitting at home, Franky, I’m fucking watching the Giants.  The phone won’t stop fucking ringing.  The wife is fucking talking to everyone she ever fucking knew.”   And Franky would say, “Don’t I fucking know, Lenny.”

I asked them both what fucking did to the following verb.  They had no idea what I was fucking talking about.  

My theory is that it simply makes the verb more Italian. 

Anyway, as the meat on the bones of a phrasal verb, it’s a beauty.   Paired with up, it really shines. 

-        It can be transitive or intransitive.   So you can fuck something or someone up, or you can simply fuck up.  But if you fuck someone up, you can’t possibly fuck them back down.  If you can, please send photos and an explanation.

-        Ponder the difference between “I fucked up” and “I’m fucked up.”  So close!  But not the same at all.  And if you’re fucked up, again, you can’t then be fucked down.

-        Your friends or your significant other can fuck you over.  But no fucking you under.  No one wants to see that.

-        How about to fuck with?   Once you fuck with something, you can’t then fuck without it.  (I once heard a fellow bassist who loved to modify perfectly good instruments say, “Until I have fucked with it, it’s not truly mine.)

-        Once you tell someone to fuck off and they comply, you cannot request that they fuck on.  Apparently, fucking off is forever, like the bond between certain bird species.

 

Speaking of birds, you may now chicken off and fuck on, my friends, but if you have other weird phrasals I can add to this, let me know and I’ll toss them into the mix.