What Is a Phrasal Verb
A phrasal verb combines a verb with 1 or 2 particles to create a meaning the verb alone doesn't carry. "Sit down" keeps its literal sense, but "give up" means to quit, not to lift anything. Learners encounter thousands of these combinations, though a much smaller core set covers most daily conversation.
Some phrasal verbs are separable, letting the object sit between the verb and particle: "turn it off," not "turn off it." Others are inseparable, like "look after her," which never splits. Business English leans on set phrases like "follow up" or "roll out," everyday speech favors "get up" and "hang out," and travel contexts bring "check in" and "set off." Mixing up separable and inseparable rules is one of the most common errors at B1 and B2 level.
Most learners searching for phrasal verbs online want worked examples, not grammar definitions. The full categorized lists, sorted by business, everyday, and travel use, live in the /vocabulary/ section.
Examinizer's free practice questions cover phrasal verbs at multiple CEFR levels. No signup is needed to start, and results show up immediately after the last question.
Phrasal Verbs by Category: Business, Everyday, and Travel Examples
Nine phrasal verbs cover most situations learners face, split into three groups of three. Business English relies on "follow up," "roll out," and "touch base," phrases that appear constantly in emails and meetings. Everyday conversation needs "wake up," "run out of," and "get along" for describing routines, shortages, and relationships. Travel situations require "check in," "take off," and "set off," the core vocabulary for airports and trip planning.
| Phrasal verb | Category | Separable? | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Follow up | Business | Yes | "I'll follow up that email tomorrow." |
| Roll out | Business | Yes | "We rolled the new policy out in March." |
| Touch base | Business | No | "Let's touch base after the meeting." |
| Wake up | Everyday | No | "I wake up at 7am." |
| Run out of | Everyday | No | "We ran out of milk." |
| Get along | Everyday | No | "They get along well." |
| Check in | Travel | Yes | "Please check her in at the counter." |
| Take off | Travel | Yes | "The plane takes off at noon." |
| Set off | Travel | Yes | "We set off early to beat traffic." |
The table sorts all 9 examples by separable versus inseparable status. "Roll out" and "check in" separate from their object ("roll it out," "check her in"), while "run out of" and "touch base" stay fixed and never split. This distinction matters more for writing accuracy than most learners assume, since word order errors are a common flag in CEFR writing sections.
Learners searching for phrasal verb examples online tend to type the same request in different words: "phrasal verbs examples," "examples of phrasal verbs," "give me examples of phrasal verbs." The wording changes, but the intent stays identical, which points to a gap between how people search and how they actually test what they know.
The English vocabulary test checks recognition across all three categories in one sitting. It asks learners to identify business, everyday, and travel phrasal verbs in context, not just define them. Results arrive with a CEFR-aligned score, and a certificate costs €8 (incl. 21% EU VAT = €9.68), delivered by email in 30 seconds. This is a practice tool, not a substitute for accredited exams like Cambridge or IELTS.
CEFR Level Breakdown: When Phrasal Verbs Are Taught (A1-C2)
The Council of Europe built the CEFR framework around 6 proficiency levels, and phrasal verb complexity climbs steadily through each one. A1 and A2 learners handle a small set of high-frequency combinations such as "get up," "put on," and "turn off," mostly tied to daily routines and everyday objects. These early-stage verbs rarely carry hidden meanings; "sit down" means exactly what it says.
By B1 and B2, learners are expected to recognize a much wider range of phrasal verbs, including trickier two-particle forms like "look forward to" and "come up with." Business contexts start appearing here too: "follow up on," "run out of," and "deal with" show up constantly in workplace English. Travel-related verbs like "check in" and "set off" also get introduced around this stage, since B1-B2 learners are assumed to function independently abroad.
C1 and C2 push into idiomatic territory where meaning depends heavily on context and register. "Get on with" can mean cooperate or continue, "come across" can mean encounter or seem, and choosing the wrong version in a formal email versus a casual chat signals a gap in fluency. Particle placement rules, separable versus inseparable verbs, get detailed treatment in our grammar section, since misplacing an object often trips up even C1 learners.
If you're unsure which level your phrasal verb knowledge actually matches, a short practice test gives a faster answer than reading through level descriptions alone.
Common Mistakes with Phrasal Verbs
Four errors repeat across every CEFR level, from A1 to C1, and none of them disappear with time alone. The first is word order: learners write "turn off it" instead of "turn it off," not realizing that separable phrasal verbs require the pronoun between the verb and particle. The second is particle confusion, where "look up" (research) and "look after" (care for) get mixed up because the base verb is identical and only the particle carries the meaning.
The third mistake comes from direct translation. A speaker thinks in their first language, finds the closest words, and produces something like "I search for" instead of the idiomatic "I look for," missing the natural phrasing entirely. The fourth is the opposite problem: overusing formal single-word verbs, "investigate," "postpone," "encounter", in spoken English where native speakers would say "look into," "put off," or "run into."
Reading a list of correct examples rarely fixes these habits on its own. Recognizing an error in someone else's sentence and avoiding it in your own writing under time pressure are two different skills, which is why the mistakes above show up at every level rather than fading out after A2.
A short practice test built around these four error types shows which one still trips you up, faster than reviewing another list of rules.
When to Use Phrasal Verbs
Native speakers use phrasal verbs constantly in casual speech, but formal writing calls for restraint. Three contexts favor them: everyday conversation ("run into a friend"), emails to colleagues ("touch base," "follow up"), and travel situations ("check in," "take off"). Academic papers and legal documents read better with single-word equivalents like "encounter" instead of "run into" or "postpone" instead of "put off."
This shift between casual and formal register is exactly what the CEFR framework tests at C1 and C2 levels. Examiners want proof you can choose "investigate" in a report and "look into" in a Slack message, not use one everywhere regardless of context.
Register mistakes are easy to make in the opposite direction too: a formal email stacked with "encounter," "postpone," and "investigate" can sound stiff to a colleague who expects "run into," "put off," and "look into." Matching tone to context takes practice, not just vocabulary knowledge.
A free CEFR-style test on Examinizer checks register control directly, asking you to pick the phrasal or single-word form that fits a given context before you commit to using either in something formal.
Why Phrasal Verb Examples Dominates Search
People searching for phrasal verbs overwhelmingly want worked examples rather than definitions. Queries like "phrasal verb examples," "examples of phrasal verbs," and "examples phrasal verbs list" all point to the same underlying request, phrased slightly differently each time. Examinizer's own keyword research found 20 of 303 unique phrasal-verb search phrasings collected (6.6%) are just word-order variations of that one request, and all 20 tie at an identical search volume of 590 searches a month each, occupying the entire top of the ranking ahead of every other phrasal-verb query.
This repetition rules out coincidence. Learners aren't hunting for an explanation of what a phrasal verb is; they already know that part. What they lack is a way to see the verbs used correctly, in context, across situations like business emails, everyday chat, or booking a hotel abroad.
Static lists rank for these terms but rarely fix the underlying problem. A learner can read 50 examples of "look up" and still misuse it in a sentence, because reading examples isn't the same as testing recall under pressure. The gap is about application, not theory.
A structured test exposes exactly where that gap sits. Take the English Test Free and see your own phrasal verb level in 20 to 25 minutes, with categorized results across everyday, business, and travel usage instead of another static example page.