I am always fascinated by the attitude of english speaking people to state rules that… well… are full of exceptions.
It’s the first time I see an almost complete list of phrasal verbs with one specific preposition and I find it very useful.
Point 1 surprised me though, as I never thought about it before. Until now I was just learning phrasal verbs on the run, thinking about them as an almost infinite set of variations where verbs and prepositions meet together in fancy ways.
Never thought before about verbs that don’t want a specific preposition.
So I googled them and found out that “wear up” applies to hair, while to colour up means to blush.
I wasn’t actually able to find “juggle up” which is funny, since obviously the act of juggling throws things “up” in the air.
You also forgot to mention the very first case that I learnt when I was about 6 yo: to get up (from bed). My mother tried to teach me english using a nice course for kids, books + records, called “L’inglese giocando” (something like learning english while playing).
I still remember the very first lesson about Jack, who had to wake up, get up, wash himself and dress (up???) for school.
“Sun is up, birds are up and up you get, Jack!”
I think one of my English teachers in their first introduction, started with the joke that there is only one rule in English grammar without exceptions, namely the rule that there is an exception to every rule.
wash can also take up: to wash up is to wash dishes.
Here are some other phrasal verb examples.
mess up / muck up: to ruin, dirty, make worse
dig up can have a literal meaning dig up from the ground, or a metaphorical bring lo light.
dig down can again have a literal meaning, or to gather strength from within oneself
coil up has a similar modification to curl up.
mist up / fog up : to cover with mist or fog, eg. glasses
pile up: to place in a pile
stack up : an alternative to stack
play down : the opposite of play up, ie. to minimise the merits of
talk down : to patronise
blow up : to explode
simmer down : the literal meaning, or to become calmer
calm down : again, to become calmer
follow up : to continue from a previous action
chase up : to politely remind a busy person of an obligation
chase down : to chase and capture
build up : to urbanise, used especially in an adjectival sense built up.
magic up : to create using magic, usually figuratively
bake up, cook up, think up etc. : to create by baking, cooking, thinking etc. To cook up can also be to devise a plan.
come up : to think up, or to produce something (often under pressure), eg. “come up with the money”
spice up : to add spice to, to make more exciting
go, drive etc. up / down can have the literal meaning, or to travel north or south, or towards or away from the city or capital
churn up : to agitate by churning, eg. mud into water
grow up : to become more physically or mentally mature
gird up : to steel oneself
speed up : go faster
slow down : go slower
watch out : to be alert to or on one’s guard against
light up : to illuminate
skill up : to increase one’s skills. Also appears as upskill.
branch off : literal, or to make a new figurative branch on a game tree, a tree of evolution etc.
mouth off : to complain inappropriately
chop up, slice up etc. : to chop, slice etc.
grind up : to make into a powder by grinding
talk around : to avoid a subject in speech
fall in : literal, or to assume military formation. The opposite is fall out.
jumped-up : pejorative adjective referring to a social climber
study up : to increase one’s knowledge on a subject by studying
load up : to load
meet up : to attend an arranged meeting, usually informally, eg. with friends or parents
soak up : to absorb
charge up : to charge a battery
mix up : to mix or confuse. A recipe would usually just use mix.
muddle up : to muddle
beat up : to violently assault
note down or simply take down : to note. However, take down can also have its literal meaning, or to take an opponent to the floor in combat sports, or figuratively to defeat an opponent or enemy in some other way.
write down, write out, write up : slightly different inflections of write
take out : literal, or, again, to defeat or kill an opponent or enemy; or, as a noun, take-away fast food.
string out : to take an unnecessary amount of time over
bunch up : to gather into a bunch or, figuratively, a tight group
boil down : to reduce to a concentrated stock by boiling, or figuratively, to reduce an issue or dispute to its key components or foundational reason
wear out : to reduce the quality of by use, or to tire a person
wear down : to reduce the resistance of
wear on, chafe on : to irritate, physically or mentally
cook-out : American noun describing a light outdoor barbecue of burgers, sausages etc.
tune in / out : to tune a radio to a particular frequency, figuratively to pay / lose attention to a subject or speaker
ride up : literal, or of underwear, to become uncomfortable high by movement
ride out : again, literal, or to survive difficulties
hunker down, bunker down : to strengthen oneself to survive difficulties, in either a literal sense of locating to a strong position (cf hole up) or figuratively to harden one’s attitude
warm up, cool down : to warm, cool
freeze up : to become immobile, either literally by frost or by figuratively “freezing”
freeze out : to exclude someone
smash up, break up etc. : to smash, break etc.
lock down : to control people by measures of restraint
shut down : to turn off, end
shut up : to be quiet, to make quiet; or more literally to shut inside
clean up, clear up, tidy up : to clean, clear, tidy
brush up : to reacquaint oneself with a subject by study
fill in, fill out : to complete a form. fill in can also mean to substitute for, and fill out can mean to gain weight.
fill up : to fill
fish up : literal, or to go looking for information from the past
fish out : literal, or to find an item amongst clutter
clutter up, clog up : to clutter, clog
wire up : to supply with electrical wiring
scrub up : literally, or to improve one’s appearance
make up : to fabricate, or ofc the noun
tally up, count up : to tally, count
choke out : to win a fight by choking one’s opponent, eg. in MMA
choke up : to cry or be on the verge of tears
knock out : to knock unconscious
knock down : literal, or to demolish
pat down : to frisk for hidden weaponry
draw up : to produce a diagram, of figuratively to make a plan
burn out : to overindulge in or be overexposed to something and become tired of it
bear out : to prove
buy out : to buy a shop or company
buy in : to buy goods for a company from external sources
sell out : to sell a shop or company, figuratively to “sell” one’s integrity
seal-, package-, cage up : to seal, package, cage
stir up : to stir, or figuratively to foment disagreement
shake up : to mix by shaking
hammer out : to produce by hammering; figuratively, to find the truth of a matter by effort
That’s why one needs to get in on the ground floor. Even so, I’m sure one could marathon the thread pretty easily still if they just put in a few minutes per day. How many words are in the typical post of this thread? 100? and there are 1000 posts, so that’s only 100,000 words, which is about the length of a novella, or 1/6 the length of Les Mis or The Count of Monte Cristo. That’s eminently manageable.
I tried to read De Re Rustica… I failed at the very first sentence:
Quaeris ex me, Publi Silvine, quod ego sine cunctatione non recuso docere, cur priore libro veterem opinionem fere omnium, qui de cultu agrorum locuti sunt, a principio confestim reppulerim, falsamque sententiam repudiaverim censentium longo aevi situ longique iam temporis exercitatione fatigatam et effetam humum consenuisse.
Something about rejecting opinions on his previous book… it’s addressed to Publius Silvinus, that much I understood. My inability is a bit of a disappointment, as I thought De Re Rustica would be one of the simplest books on the list, a classical-era work of practical prose. Perhaps I’ll just do a vocab grind on it.
Anyone else trying to read foreign-language literature?
The first sentences of a book are notoriously more difficult. The author often adresses his friend and/or the reader and makes an argument why he needed or wanted to write this book, and to what end, and what he is treating in it. Therefore, he will use many conventions of the rhetoric art.
I’ll try to structure these lines for you. Effectively, you have one long cur-clause. The quod-clause is almost an interjection: 'You ask me, Publius Silvinus – which I will not hesitate to answer you at once – you ask me, why I rejected … ’
Quaeris ex me, Publi Silvine {{ //opens two dependent clauses.
(quod ego sine cunctatione non recuso docere)
} //the quod-clause is over. Actually, you could put it in parentheses or dashes, as I explained above.
cur priore libro veterem opinionem fere omnium {
qui de cultu agrorum locuti sunt
} //the qui-clause is over
a principio confestim reppulerim, //continuation of the cur-clause
falsamque sententiam repudiaverim censentium (censentium: gen. pl. PPA censere) { //'of those who think' - think what? This follows in an AcI.
longo aevi situ
longique iam temporis exercitatione
fatigatam et effetam humum consenuisse.
}
} //the cur-clause is over.
It did help a little, but it would probably have been more useful if I had read the entire sentence and understand what was in the cur clause…
In my translation I was writing something like You look to me, Publius Silvinus, because I do not delay things, nor am I reluctant to teach; why do you speak of…" which seems completely wrong, but I would have needed to make a second pass at it anyway.
you get ‘to me’ from ex me? And you set out with ‘you’ as subject of that clause before you checked the finite verb? But that’s alright, it’s an ‘advanced level’ verb form. Look for reppulerim and repudiaverim.
Just last week, one of my students was in a similar situation. After he found the finite verb and could name correctly its morphology (3. person singular, indicative active present), it did not fit with how he first wanted to begin the sentence. So I told him he needed to question that instinct he had at first. Because the fact was, that the verb was in this and this form, and that this needs to be the fundation to his further assumptions about the sentence. So he had to change his understanding of puella me timet ‘*my girl, you have fear’ into ‘the girl fears me’, with puella being the subject to timet.
How would one show the case of an acronym in Latin?
In English, for instance, we could say NATO’s weaponry or weaponry of NATO but how would we do this in Latin?
tela NATOnis? tela ex NATO?
Just tela NATO?
Or use a participle to say something like “which has been possessed by NATO?”
Perhaps the solution is to introduce NATO as a nominative or accusative earlier in the sentence, and then refer to it obliquely with Societatis, ie. the Organisation’s.
I’m sure we can find historical examples of this. For NATO, I think we can say NATOnis, but something like E.S. for Europaeica Societas just stays E.S. and the reader has to guess the case.
Even so, I’m sure one could marathon the thread pretty easily still if they just put in a few minutes per day. How many words are in the typical post of this thread? 100? and there are 1000 posts, so that’s only 100,000 words, which is about the length of a novella, or 1/6 the length of Les Mis or The Count of Monte Cristo. That’s eminently manageable.