Separable Verbs

You know the old rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition. The trouble is that those aren’t prepositions, they’re parts of separable verbs. Some call them adverbs. So you have complete permission to say, “Where did you come from?” “Come from” is the verb.

But sometimes that word is a preposition! Usually it introduces a word or phrase that functions as an adverb. So you can look under the table, or climb up (or down) a tree. But when you don’t have that word or phrase, something like my mother yelling “You come down this instant!” then it reverts to being part of the verb.

Sometimes it matters what preposition you put after a verb. In English you wouldn’t say “similar with” or “have like.” We say “Hope for,” not “hope after,” It’s “derived from,” not “derived at,” of course “arrived at” is okay but not “arrived from” unless you mean “arrived here from somewhere.” And we “call to” someone, not “call by” them. Folks from India tend to say “revert back” when they mean “reply back.” (And “reply” all by itself is sufficient.)

I had a conversation with a student from a few decades ago, and we both remembered the day I taught that you’re not supposed to say “Try and.” It’s “try to.” I remembered that conversation when I saw this comic, Pearls Before Swine. The guy in the last cell with his baseball cap on backwards is how Stephan Pastis draws himself.

I think this one is a battle we’re going to lose. It’s too easy to say “try and.” But maybe you can think of a few more bad verb-preposition combinations. I invite you to put them in the comments.