In English traditional grammar, a phrasal verb is the combination of two or three words from different grammatical categories – a verb and a particle, such as an adverb or a preposition – to form a single semantic unit on a lexical or syntactic level.
Examples: turn down, run into, sit up. There are tens of thousands of them, and they are in every day, constant use. These semantic units cannot be understood based upon the meanings of the individual parts alone but must be taken as a whole. In other words, the meaning is non-compositional and thus unpredictable. Phrasal verbs that include a preposition are known as prepositional verbs and phrasal verbs that include a particle are also known as particle verbs. Additional alternative terms for phrasal verbs are compound verb, verb-adverb combination, verb-particle construction, two-part word/verb or three-part word/verb (depending on the number of particles) and multi-word verb.
Here Are The Top 150 Most Important Phrasal Verbs.
| SL No. | Phrasal Verbs | Meaning | Examples |
| 1 | Ask out | To invite someone to a social event or special occasion | When Riya asked me out for the party, I had to deny it because I was busy. |
| 2 | Ask around | Ask many people the same question | I asked around but nobody has seen my wallet. |
| 3 | Ask Over | Invite to one’s home | We should ask over Rita as she is alone in her home. |
| 4 | Back down | Stop defending your opinion in a debate | Raman never backs down and wins almost all cases. |
| 5 | Bawl out | Criticize, reprimand | The minister bawled him out for arriving late. |
| 6 | Bear on | Have to do with | Those facts do not bear on this matter at all. |
| 7 | Bear up | Withstand | I did not know that Karan would bear up so well in that hard situation. |
| 8 | Beef up | Improve or make more substantial | He beefed up his presentation with diagrams and statistics |
| 9 | Blow over | pass without creating a problem | All this negative publicity will Blow over in a couple of weeks. |
| 10 | Blow up | Suddenly become very angry | When Kavita heard the news, she blew up and rushed out of the room. |
| 11 | Bog Down | Get caught up in something and be unable to make progress. | Try not to get bogged down with / unimportant details. |
| 12 | Break down | Stop working properly | The truck broke down in the desert. |
| 13 | Break-in / Break into | interrupt/enter a place unlawfully | While we were discussing the situation, the little girl Break into unlawfully broke in to give her opinion. |
| 14 | Break off | End something | My brother broke’ her engagement to Rita off. |
| 15 | Break out | Appear violently | Violent protests broke out in response to the military coup. |
| 16 | Bring around | Change Someone’s Mind, Convince someone | She doesn’t want to go, but we’ll eventually bring her around |
| 17 | Bump In to | Meet by accident or Unexpectedly | Gopal bump into his maths teacher at the super mall |
| 18 | Buy out | One company buy shares to another’s company | Flipkart was bought out by Walmart |
| 19 | Buy Up | Buy all the supply of an item | We bought up all the cooldrinks in the store |
| 20 | Call for | Require (as in a recipe) | This recipe calls for butter not cheese |
| 21 | Call off | Cancel something | Ramesh called off to the cricket match |
| 22 | Call on | Visit / Invite someone to speak | Rahul called on his friend while he was in town |
| 23 | Carry On | Continue (Conversation or game) | Carry on your conversation, I just came here to take the water bottle |
| 24 | Carry Out | Complete or Accomplish something | The secret agent carried out his orders exactly as planned |
| 25 | Deck Out (In / With ) | Dress or Decorate | The girls in birthday party of my daughter were decked out in pretty dresses |
| 26 | Die away / Die Down | Diminish in Intensity | The controversy about the president’s illness finally died down |
| 27 | Die-off / Die out | Become extinct | Elephants are in danger of dying off |
| 28 | Dispense with | Decide to do without something | The company has disp[ensed with the paper version so you’ll have to download it |
| 29 | Drift Apart | Become less and less close | We are childhood friends but we drifted apart over the years |
| 30 | Do over | Repeat | You made many mistakes, so I want you to do the report over |
| 31 | Drop-In/ On | Visit someone unexpectedly | Meg dropped in yesterday after dinner. Let’s drop in on julie since we’re driving by her house |
| 32 | Drop out | Quit an organized activity | Suraj isn’t on the team anymore, he dropped out |
| 33 | Drop over | Visit someone casually | Do not feel alone in this city, you can drop over any time you feel like talking |
| 34 | Drown out | Be louder in order to cover another sound | They turned up the music to drown out the noise of the children outside |
| 35 | Eat away | Gradually destroy, Erode | The Strom ate away the newly designed outside |
| 36 | Ease off / Up | Reduce, become less severe or slow down | After Christmas, the workload generally eases off |
| 37 | Egg on | Encourage someone to do something | you need to egg on your daughter properly |
| 38 | Embark on / up | Start or Engage in something | Riya embarked on a career that leads her to fame |
| 39 | Explain Away | Find an excuse or plausible explanation | It is not easy to explain away the missing money |
| 40 | Face up to | Acknowledge something difficult or embarrassing | I’ll never be able to face up to my friend after getting caught stealing his watch |
| 41 | Fall back on | Be able to use in case of emergency | you should have a fallback if you don’t succeed in the acting career |
| 42 | Fall out with | Have an argument with | I had a falling out with my sister last month and we haven’t talked to each other since |
| 43 | Fall through | Fail to happen | Unfortunately, the trip to America fell through because I couldn’t save enough money |
