The most common example (I might’ve read this on wikipedia) is that we look up words in a dictionary, even though our eyes are more likely to be engaged in a downward glance.
Whatever other ones you can come up with (oh there’s another one lol), please share.
Forgot to ask how they come about, but the title says it all.
These are generally called “phrasal verbs”, and date back to Old English at least. Sister languages like German have similar constructions. Many other languages do too, for that matter. I guess that what makes phrasal verbs seem a bit unusual is that, although they have become a semantic unit with a distinct meaning, they are still separate words. On the other hand, we don’t think of “apply” as being a periphrastic construction since the two elements are fused together, but it has arisen from “ad” (to) and “plicare” (fold). But I don’t think the process of evolution of meaning of phrasal verbs like “fuck up” or “tap out” is that different from the evolution of words from romance languages that were originally preposition + verb.
I find it odd that “fill out” and “fill in” both mean the same thing (when applied to a form, at any rate).