Phrasal-prepositional verbs in English: 16 with examples

Open any list of phrasal verbs and a few entries look longer than the rest: look forward to, put up with, run out of. Three words, not two. These are phrasal-prepositional verbs (some books write phrasal prepositional verbs, without the hyphen; it is the same thing), and they are worth learning as their own small group, because they follow two rules that hold for every common one. In a topic famous for chaos, that is a gift.

Three parts, one meaning

A phrasal-prepositional verb is a verb + a particle + a preposition, and the three together mean something you cannot build from the parts:

• put up with = tolerate. Not put, not up, not with.
• run out of = have none left. Nobody is running.
• come up with = think of. Nobody is coming.

Compare the two-part verbs: give up (verb + particle) and look after (verb + preposition) each have two pieces. The three-part verbs simply add a preposition on the end, and that preposition needs an object: you do not just put up with, you put up with something.

The rule exams test: never separable

Some two-part phrasal verbs split around their object: turn the light off is as correct as turn off the light, and separable phrasal verbs have their own rules about pronouns.

Phrasal-prepositional verbs never do this. The three parts always stay together, and the object always comes after the preposition. All of these are wrong, whatever the object is:

• I cannot put the noise up with.
• I cannot put it up with.
• She came an idea up with.

And all of these are right:

• I cannot put up with the noise.
• I cannot put up with it.
• She came up with an idea.

There is no special case with pronouns, nothing to weigh up. If a grammar test asks whether a three-part verb is separable, the answer is no. (You will later meet a handful that take a second object straight after the verb, such as I will take you up on that offer and she put it down to bad luck. Even there, the particle and the preposition stay side by side, and the verbs on this page never do it.) The parts hold together in questions too; the preposition does not wander off:

• What are you looking forward to?
• Who does she get on with?

Yes, English happily ends a question with a preposition here. That is normal and correct.

The 16 you need

Learn these and you have covered the three-part verbs that ordinary English uses most.

Two small notes on that table. Get on with has a second meaning, continue doing: get on with your work. And catch up with also means talk to a friend after time apart: we caught up with each other over coffee. Context makes both obvious. Get round to is the British form; American English says get around to, and British speakers use that too.

Many of these are built on the busiest base verbs in English, so once this page makes sense, the two-part families are the natural next step: phrasal verbs with look, with get, with come and with put each cover one family properly.

look forward to seeing: the -ing rule

Here is the error that fills learner emails everywhere:

• I look forward to see you. Wrong.
• I look forward to seeing you. Right.

The problem is that to. In I want to see you, the to belongs to the infinitive, so see follows it. In look forward to, the to is a preposition, part of the verb itself, and a verb after a preposition always takes the -ing form, exactly as it does after at, in and before. The wider rule lives at gerund and infinitive; here it means:

• I look forward to hearing from you.
• I will not put up with being ignored.
• He got away with doing nothing.
• You should cut down on eating sweets.
• I never got round to sending the form.

The test, if you are unsure: can a noun sit in the same spot? I look forward to the weekend works, so to is a preposition, so the verb form is -ing. You cannot say I want to the weekend, so the to in want to is a different animal and takes the infinitive.

Common mistakes

1. Infinitive after the preposition. I look forward to meet you. The to is a preposition: I look forward to meeting you.
2. Splitting the verb. I cannot put it up with. Three-part verbs never separate: I cannot put up with it.
3. Dropping the preposition. We ran out milk. The preposition carries the object: we ran out of milk.
4. Wrong preposition. Get on to your sister does not mean have a good relationship. It is get on with. The preposition is part of the meaning, so learn the three words as one item, never as verb plus decoration.
5. Translating word by word. No language builds tolerate from put, up and with. Treat each three-part verb as a single new word with an odd spelling.

Practice

Complete each sentence. Answers are below.

1. I look forward to ___ (hear) from you soon.
2. We have run out ___ bread.
3. What is wrong with: She could not put the delay up with.
4. He never got round to ___ (fix) the gate.
5. I do not know how you put up ___ him.

Answers: 1. hearing (a verb after a preposition takes -ing) 2. of 3. The three parts must stay together: she could not put up with the delay. 4. fixing 5. with

For a full workout on these and every other kind of phrasal verb, the phrasal verbs exercises page has a set built on exactly the two traps above, and the examples list puts the three-part verbs beside the whole two-part family.