Free Phrasal Verbs Quiz – Practice Common Phrasal Verbs
Read each sentence and choose the phrasal verb or meaning that correctly completes it. Get instant feedback on each choice. After answering all 5 questions correctly, detailed explanations will appear below each question to help you understand how the phrasal verb is used. Test and learn in a simple and fun way.
Small Verbs, Big Prepositions, Completely New Meanings
A phrasal verb is a verb combined with a preposition or adverb that creates a meaning completely different from the original verb — "give up" doesn't mean "give," it means "quit." "Look after" doesn't mean "look," it means "take care of." This makes phrasal verbs one of the most unpredictable parts of English vocabulary.
Phrasal verbs are everywhere in spoken and informal English — far more common in daily conversation than their formal single-word equivalents ("find out" is used far more often than "discover" in casual speech). That means learners who avoid phrasal verbs often sound noticeably more formal or textbook-like than native speakers.
This quiz focuses on the phrasal verbs you'll actually hear and need daily — in conversations, TV shows, workplace English, and casual writing — rather than obscure combinations rarely used in real life. Each explanation gives you the meaning in context, since phrasal verbs are almost always easier to remember through an example than through a dictionary definition alone.
Try replacing a formal verb in your own recent writing with its phrasal verb equivalent — it's a quick way to check whether the meaning has genuinely sunk in. For more natural expressions in the same spirit, our Idioms and Phrases Quiz is a good companion.