Professional English Practice · Phrasal Verbs
26 · GET across the particles
Progress and difficulty: how far you make it, and how hard it was.
ACCESS
Another prediction clinic. The verb get never changes; only the particle moves. One phrase, get ahead, is never taught here. Predict it from the particle before you read on.
A support and operations team in the middle of the month's third outage.
Rosa Third outage this month. We need to get through today without losing the big accounts.
Tomas We're getting by on the failover, but it won't hold under peak load.
Rosa Then get around the bottleneck manually while we patch it.
Tomas On it. Once it's stable, I'll get on with the root-cause writeup.
Rosa Good. If we fix the caching, we finally get ahead of the incidents instead of chasing them.
Tomas Agreed. I'll get back to the enterprise clients the moment we're green.
ANALYSIS
ONE QUESTION RUNS THIS WHOLE UNIT
How far did you get, and how hard was it?
Get is the vaguest verb in English: to come to have, or come to be. Held still, every sharper meaning here is the particle measuring the journey: all the way, barely, around, or out.
The structure
The verb get is the busiest word in English precisely because it is so vague. On its own it just means to come to have, or come to be. Hold it still, and every sharper meaning here, survival, escape, progress, is the particle's doing.
Get is about motion toward a state, so its particles are about how far you make it and how hard it was. Get through it (all the way across, survive), get by (just past, barely), get around it (circle the obstacle), get on with it (keep moving), get back to someone (return), get out of it (escape).
Through: end to end
- Sense
- all the way across, and out the far side
- How you know
- the passage was hard and it is over
- Use it to
- report survival, not achievement
By: just past
- Sense
- only just past, with nothing to spare
- How you know
- the standard was met and no more
- Use it to
- report coping, with a note of insufficiency
Around: in a circle
- Sense
- round the obstacle rather than into it
- How you know
- the obstacle is still there afterward
- Use it to
- report a workaround
Ahead: in front
- Sense
- out in front of the thing instead of behind it
- How you know
- you were chasing before, and now you are not
- Use it to
- report gaining on a problem
Read down the particle column. You already know each one. Predict the meaning before your eye reaches the third column.
Getting through, and getting by
These two sit closest together and carry very different news about you.
Get through the quarter and you came out the other side: it is over. Get by and nothing is over: you are still in it, and only just. One is a finish line, the other is a margin.
That is why get by almost always attracts a phrase saying on how little: getting by on one analyst, on a smaller budget, on four hours. The particle means barely past, and the sentence usually wants to say past what.
The test you can run with no book
Ask: how much of the distance did you cover?
All of it, and the particle is through. Barely any margin, and it is by. None of it, because you went round, and it is around. Past the thing and in front of it, and it is ahead.
Because get contributes almost nothing, this unit is the best place in the book to practice reading a phrasal verb backwards: cover the verb, look only at the particle, and the sense is still there.
The mechanical half: get by takes no object. You get through something; you simply get by. The moment an object appears, the particle has to change.
Because get is nearly meaningless alone, it is the clearest proof the method has. Get through and get out of share a verb and could not be further apart: one is survival, the other is escape, and the entire difference is through versus out of.
ACTIVATION
Work down the page: predict the particle first, then the strangers, then the particle choices, then the words, then say one out loud.
Complete the particle
Complete each with the right particle after get: through, by, around, on with, back to, or out of. The meaning is in brackets.
Spot and fix the error
Each sentence has the wrong particle. Rewrite it with the right one.
1. We're getting by on the failover, but it won't hold at peak.
2. Get around the bottleneck manually while we patch it.
3. Now it's stable, I'll get on with the root-cause writeup.
4. I'll get back to the enterprise clients once we're green.
5. No one should get out of the postmortem.
Rewrite with get plus a particle
Replace the formal verb with get plus the particle that carries the same meaning.
1. We need to get through today without losing accounts.
2. We're getting by on the failover.
3. Get around the bottleneck manually.
4. I'll get on with the root-cause writeup.
5. I'll get back to the clients once we're green.
Match the halves
Join each get phrase to the ending that fits its particle.
Meet a Stranger
These three get phrases are not taught anywhere in this book. Predict each from its particle, then reveal the key.
1. “The meeting won't get off the ground without the client's sign-off.”
2. “I couldn't tell what the reviewer was getting at.”
3. “Nobody gets away with skipping the postmortem.”
get off: to start, or to begin moving. Off: leaving a starting point.
get at: to imply, or to reach. At: aiming toward a point.
get away with: to escape the consequences of something. Away with: carrying it off out of reach.
Particle swap
Same verb, three particles, one right answer. Choose the particle the situation needs.
Vocabulary: progress and difficulty
Match each expression to its meaning.
Vocabulary in context
Complete each sentence with an expression from G.