throw awayFind to reveal
A 1955 magazine celebrated throwaway living as freedom from washing dishes, praising disposable household goods that later became symbols of waste.
Phrasal verbs Word Search
Find familiar words. Discover something unexpected.
Puzzle10 words · 11×11 grid · Medium · Answer key included
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0 of 10 facts revealed
break downFind to reveal
Musicians can play a breakdown without anything failing: the word also names a lively dance or an energetic fiddle tune.
calm downFind to reveal
Calm comes from a word family connected with heat, an unexpected background for an instruction to cool your temper.
come backFind to reveal
Many Australian boomerangs weren't meant to come back, so returning is only one part of a much broader traditional tool's story.
slow downFind to reveal
When your eyes jump to a clock, its first second can seem stretched, an illusion that makes time seem to slow down.
look forFind to reveal
Readers could look for dord in a dictionary: the imaginary word arose when editors misread D or d as one word.
find outFind to reveal
Serendipity means a happy accidental discovery, and its name recalls story princes from Serendip, an older name for Sri Lanka.
carry onFind to reveal
Keep Calm and Carry On was printed for wartime Britain but rarely displayed, becoming familiar mainly through its revival many decades later.
stand upFind to reveal
It carries many senses: rise to your feet, support a cause, or fail to show for a planned date.
give upFind to reveal
Give up can mean surrender, but give it up for someone asks an audience for applause rather than defeat.
True stories · Oxford, England
The busiest verb in English
In May 2011, lexicographers revising the Oxford English Dictionary in Oxford, England, announced that the verb run had overtaken set as the entry with the most distinct meanings, reaching roughly 645 senses. Editor Peter Gilliver spent nine months untangling them all. Some of that sprawl rides on tiny particles: run into, run out, run off, run over, run up. The plain verb shifts meaning the instant a small word joins it. That is the heart of the phrasal verb, and why these short, familiar words can be the hardest to master. For a learner it looks daunting, yet there is comfort in seeing English build huge range from a handful of parts.
Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things.
Flora Lewis
Trivia
What is the term for a verb combined with an adverbial particle, such as get up or turn off?
A phrasal verb.
Roughly how many phrasal verbs does the Cambridge Phrasal Verbs Dictionary cover: about 600, 6,000, or 60,000?
About 6,000.
With a separable phrasal verb such as turn off, where must an object pronoun like it go?
Before the particle (turn it off, not turn off it).
Who popularized the term phrasal verb in print, in his 1925 book Words and Idioms?
Logan Pearsall Smith.
The little word added to a verb, such as up in stand up, is called what in grammar?
A particle.
Trivia · 1 / 5
What is the term for a verb combined with an adverbial particle, such as get up or turn off?
A phrasal verb.
More puzzles
For the classroom
Irregular verbs Word Search
Brought is the past of bring, while bought is the past of buy. A single letter separates two different verbs.
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For the classroom
Opposites Word Search
Happy comes from the old word hap, meaning luck, the same root inside happen, perhaps, and mishap.
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For the classroom
Prepositions Word Search
Between traces to Old English meaning by the two, so its hidden core is the number two.
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Editor's pick
Cooking verbs Word Search
At Everest's summit, water boils at about 71 degrees Celsius, much cooler than boiling water in a seaside kitchen.
Play →or printTrue stories · English-language corpora
A short list does the heavy lifting
Studying how English is really spoken and written, corpus linguist Dilin Liu compiled a ranked list of phrasal verbs from large databases of real usage. The reassuring result: although dictionaries log thousands, a comparatively small group of phrasal verbs accounts for a large share of examples in the corpora he studied. A student who masters a small, well-chosen set can therefore understand far more speech than the raw counts suggest. Frequency lists give teachers a practical place to start, like get up, find out, and turn on. You do not need them all, only the busy few.
One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way.
Frank Smith
Find look for, give up and find out among the words hidden in this puzzle. Play free online or print the puzzle with its answer key.
Is this phrasal verbs word search free to print?
This phrasal verbs word search is a free printable puzzle with 10 hidden words in an 11×11 grid. Find words like THROW AWAY, BREAK DOWN, CALM DOWN hidden across, down, and diagonally. You can play it right here in your browser — tap the first and last letter of a word — or download it as a printable PDF with the full answer key on page two. It's free for personal and classroom use, so teachers can print copies for a whole class with no sign-up and no account. Word searches like this one are a proven way to build vocabulary, spelling, and word-shape recognition, which is why they're a favourite with ESL learners, elementary classrooms, and anyone who likes a quiet puzzle with their coffee.
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Sources: English phrasal verbs (Wikipedia) · OED: run, v. · 150 Most Common Phrasal Verbs (U of Minnesota) · Cambridge Phrasal Verbs Dictionary, 2nd ed.
Word list, facts & trivia researched and compiled by Sam Letterman — spotted a mistake? Tell us and we’ll fix it.