Phrasal-prepositional verbs: look forward to, put up with and the other three-part verbs
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 with no exceptions at all. 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. , 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 exception, 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. 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 nearly every three-part verb that ordinary English uses.
| Verb | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| look forward to | I look forward to the holidays. | |
| put up with | unpleasant | How do you put up with the noise? |
| get on with | She gets on with everyone. | |
| run out of | We ran out of milk. | |
| come up with | He came up with a better answer. | |
| get away with | You will not get away with this. | |
| look down on | They look down on tourists. | |
| look up to | He looks up to his grandmother. | |
| catch up with | Run! We can catch up with them. | |
| keep up with | I cannot keep up with the class. | |
| cut down on | Cut down on coffee after lunch. | |
| get round to | I never got round to replying. | |
| come down with | She came down with the flu. | |
| stand up for | Stand up for your friends. | |
| watch out for | Watch out for ice on the path. | |
| face up to | He must face up to his mistakes. |
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.
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
- Infinitive preposition. I look forward to meet you. The to is a preposition: I look forward to meeting you.
- Splitting verb. I cannot put it up with. Three-part verbs never separate: I cannot put up with it.
- preposition. We ran out milk. The preposition carries the object: we ran out of milk.
- 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.
- Translating . 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.
- I look forward to
___(hear) from you soon. - We have run out
___bread. - What is wrong with: She could not put the delay up with.
- He never got round to
___(fix) the gate. - I do not know how you put up
___him.
: 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.