A History of English Language

A history of the english language 326
236. Verb-adverb Combinations.
An important characteristic of the modern vocabulary is the large number of expressions
like set out, gather up, put off, bring in, made up of a common verb, often of one syllable,
combined with an adverb. 54 They suggest comparison with verbs having separable
prefixes in German, and to a smaller extent with English verbs like withstand and
overcome. The latter were much more common in Old English than they are today, and
we have seen (§§ 138–39) that their gradual disuse was one of the consequences of the
Norman Conquest. Old English made but slight use of the modern type, and during the
Middle English period the large number of new verbs from French seems to have
retarded for a time what would probably have been a normal and rapid development.
Such combinations as we do find before the modern period are generally expressions in
which the meaning is the fairly literal sense of the verb and the adverb in the combination
(climb up, fall down), often a mere intensification of the idea expressed by the simple
verb. One of the most interesting features of such combinations in modern times,
however, is the large number of figurative and idiomatic senses in which they have come
to be used. Familiar examples are bring about (cause or accomplish), catch on
(comprehend), give out (become exhausted), keep on (continue), put up with (tolerate),
hold up (rob), lay off (cease to employ), turn over (surrender), size up (estimate), let up
(cease), bid up, bid in, and knock down with their meanings at an auction sale. Another is
the extensive use, especially in colloquial speech, of these verb-adverb combinations as
nouns: blowout, cave-in, holdup, runaway. 55
52
Cf. J.S.Kenyon, “On Who and Whom,” American Speech, 5 (1930), 253–55.
53
OED, s.v. get, 34b.
54 On this subject see A.G.Kennedy, The Modern English Verb-Adverb Combination (Stanford
University, 1920), and Bruce Fraser, The Verb-Particle Combination in English (corrected
ed.,NewYork, 1976).
55
See Edwin R.Hunter, “Verb+adverb=noun,” American Speech, 22 (1947), 115–19; U.Lindelöf,
English Verb-adverb Groups Converted into Nouns (Helsinki, Finland, 1937; Societas Scientiarum
Fennica, Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum, vol. 9, no. 5).