Monday, October 24, 2011

Pearson Brown English Lesson - Phrasal Verb "up" part 5

If you ‘do up’ your coat, you fasten it.

* Do up your jacket. It looks untidy.
* Can you do up my coat for me? My hands are frozen.

Do up’ can also mean to decorate or make repairs to something.

* Buy me the paint and I will do up my room.
* I’m going to do up my car so that I can sell it.

To ‘hold up’ can mean to delay.

* We were held up by a traffic accident.
* I don’t mean to hold you up but we must finish this discussion.

To ‘keep up with’ can mean to go at the same speed as.

* It is difficult to keep up with all the changes they are making.
* I don’t know how you keep up with all the news.

To ‘keep up’ can mean to maintain.

* It is difficult to keep up the payments on my new car.
* I can’t afford to keep up an apartment in town and a house in the country.

If you ‘kick up a fuss’, you complain loudly about something.

* He will kick up a fuss when he finds out that he is not invited to the meeting.
* The restaurant had given away our table so I kicked up a fuss and got another one.

If you ‘stir up’ trouble, you cause it by agitation.

* She is always stirring up trouble about some grievance or another.
* Some shareholders tried to stir up trouble about the sale of the factory.

If you ‘sum up’, you briefly restate the main points of a meeting or discussion.

* I’d like to sum up my presentation with this quote from Winston Churchill.
* Could somebody sum up what you talked about this morning?

If you ‘turn up’ a dial, you increase it.

* Could you turn up the volume? I cannot hear it.
* That’s the brightest I can make the picture. I’ve turned up the control to the maximum.

If you ‘turn up’ somewhere, you arrive, sometimes unexpectedly.

* John turned up at the party, even though he wasn’t invited.
* He’s always turning up for work an hour late.

Exercises:

http://business-english.com/upphrasals5/exercise1.swf
http://business-english.com/upphrasals5/exercise2.swf
http://business-english.com/upphrasals5/exercise3.swf
http://business-english.com/upphrasals5/exercise4.swf

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