You can go in for something. You can go out with someone. You can go down on someone. Go up?
You can’t do that.
You can get up. You can get down. You can get in. You can get out! You can get over, but you can’t get under.
You can’t do that.
You can take in a relative, and take him out for take-out. He may take over your life, but he won’t take under, because you can’t do that.
If you want to do that, you’ll have to undertake. But you still can’t underget.
Understand?
You can come up with something. You can come down with something. You can come before me. You can come after me. You can come up, and sooner or later you’re gonna come down. You can come over, and come across.
But you can’t come under.
You can’t do that.
You can see into it. You can see out of it, on a clear day. You can see about it. You can see through it. If you’re really good, you can see around it. You can see to it, but you can’t see from it.
You can’t do that.
If you want to do that, you’ll have to see it from here.
You can make up, but you can’t make down.
You can make over, but you can’t make under.
You can make out, but you can’t make in.
You can make with, and you can make do, but you can’t make without.
You’ll have to do without instead.
Did you get it? Well, I had it. But I would have to have gotten it.
Nobody’s pluperfect.
Not to spoil the mood or anything, but you’re actually just using phrasal verbs, which don’t count as prepositions because they’re not positioned before anything. They also don’t need objects. This is, I’m told, the hardest thing for non-English speakers to master about our language.
Anyway,
You can look up my number to call me over to look over your paper, assuming you’re too tired from calling after your kids and looking out for their best interests. If you lose the paper, you’ll have to look around for it. If it’s still lost, you’ll have to call in reinforcements to look for it. If I find a typo, I’ll make you look up the right spelling. So look out for carelessness, or you’ll get called out on your mistakes.
“Anything a bunny can do to a log” was the rule ingrained into my head in 7th grade for Prepositions.
Why they chose to taught it to us that way, I have NO idea. But I still find myself checking anytime- “Is it a preposition- hmmm, can a bunny do it to a log?”
Well actually, I was playing with the fact that they are phrasal verbs, which can more or less be used alone without an object. I actually considered saying something like, “you can come under, but only under certain circumstances involving an object.” But it seemed to disrupt the flow.
pulykamell: Ha ha! No, I never heard that!! But it’s just the kind of thing I would say all the time, if I’d thought of it! I am so gonna use that now!
I do however have a phrase I use to describe a certain type of philandering mate: the kind of person that can’t get off unless they’re getting over.
This reminds me of the prostitute who was arrested and attempted to get out of jail time by offering her services gratis to the judge. Being a former English teacher, he of course chastized her for trying to end her sentence with a preposition.
While still a teacher, he had done a stint in the Peace Corps in which he was the tutor to a youthful absolute monarch, who was called on to pronounce and execute the traditional sentence against some rebels: death by disembowelment. The teacher flunked him for the day, for ending their sentence with a semicolon.
Hindered, no doubt by the continued insistence of some to refer to them as phrasal verbs when they are neither phrases nor verbs. They’re verbs with a prepositon, which in English can certainly be postpositioned.
