In class the other a day a text included the phrases "catch up" and "keep up with" which are both phrasal verbs. It took only a few seconds to define them and to remind the students that English has lots of them and the meanings aren't always obvious from the components. We also did a bit of quick revision on common examples but some of the students wanted to know how these meanings have arisen and, while I could make a guess at some, I couldn't at others.

For example how did "take in" come to mean "give shelter to"/"deceive"/"comprehend". Are they all just straightforward metaphorical extensions of "take" meaning "get/seize/grasp"?

What about even more obscure ones, for example "put down" which can either "insult" or "euthanase".

Has anyone ever heard of any books on phrasal verbs that go into their derivation rather than just listing them and their meanings?

Has anyone ever heard of any books on phrasal verbs that go into their derivation rather than just listing them and their meanings?

Most of the books which I have are historical and syntactical studies of phrasal verbs. They are:

* Bollinger, Dwight. 1971. The Phrasal Verb in English.
* Harrison, Thomas Perrin. 1892 [1970]. The Separable Prefixes in Anglo-Saxon.
* Palmer, F R. 1968. A Linguistic Study of the English Phrasal Verb.
* Sroka, Kazimierz A. 1972. The Syntax of English Phrasal Verbs.

As usual, you can probably do no worse than first going to Huddleston and Pullum The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, or any of the other large, linguistic grammars of English: e.g., H Poutsma TBD, Otto Jespersen A Modern English Grammar (in 7 volumes). I've not finished reading all of the four books listed above yet, but I think the Bollinger should be easy to find in libraries or buy used and would be a good place to start. Also, checking out the bilbiographies in any of the others might reveal shorter monographs and/or articles of interest.

Thanks zm, I shall check some of them out.

It's a great question, Bob, as to how they developed. Some of them are more obvious than others. "Take in" meaning "to deceive," for example, is so different from its meaning "to give someone shelter."

We've also been known to take in a movie/flick (go to the cinema) from time to time, though comprehension is not guaranteed. We don't get taken in by high prices for snacks because we bring our own.

Some of us who (used to) sew have also taken in a dress or a pair of slacks, meaning to tailor them to make them smaller or to fit better.

Wordmatic