30 Phrasal Verbs to Help You With Technology

Welcome back to Everyday Grammar from VOA Learning English.

This is our third episode on phrasal verbs. As you know, a phrasal verb is a phrase with two or more words: a verb and a preposition or adverb, or both.

Today we look at very current phrasal verbs: ones used with technology. The digital age has created many new words and phrases in English.

The world of technology is fast-changing, and it has broken many traditions. It is natural that the language of computers would also change and be informal.

Not only is the language of technology full of phrasal verbs, it is also full of new nouns. Many of those nouns grew out of phrasal verbs, as you will learn in this episode.

Getting started

Let’s go back to 1969, when the first verb sent over the Internet was a phrasal verb: log in. To log in is to enter a code, key or password to gain access to the computer’s abilities. We have been logging in ever since then. Sometimes we say we have to sign in to a web page.

Like now, we started a computer by hooking up wire cables and then powering it up or turning it on. Some computers took a long time to boot up, or get ready to run programs.

Now, we do not have to wait as long. To install new applications on the computer, users run a set up program. Then we click on the icon, or image, for a program to run it.

After opening a program, you choose commands from a menu. These menus are stored in a pull down or drop down bar near the top of the screen.

A click of the mouse – the hand-held device that guides the cursor around the computer screen – shows more commands on the bar. That bar is often called the navigation bar or nav bar.

This leads us to our first noun from a phrasal verb, pulldown. When we give instructions to a friend about using a web page, we can say, “Look in the nav bar for the pulldown and choose a command.”

Another verb that describes up-and-down movement on the screen is scroll up or scroll down. A wheel on the mouse allows you to scroll up or scroll down to read a web page. We can click on an arrow to move to the next screen, too.

Storage and other problems

Installing upgrades can sometimes damage files. So, users should always back up their files. That is, copy files and folders to another location, like an external disk drive. A user who stores many large files will soon run out of room on the computer, so keeping files on an extra hard drive is a good idea.

This phrasal verb became a noun, too. Experts tell us, “Put your backups in a safe place.”

My parents used to print out their emails because they wanted to keep a permanent copy, and here is another new noun: a printout.

The phrasal verb print out is a separable phrasal verb, like the ones we talked about in a previous episode. That means you can put a pronoun between the verb and preposition, as in “Let me print it out for you.”

Even when we use passwords, criminals have learned to enter a computer or a network without permission. They are hacking into the network. Hacking can make computer systems go down, or stop working.

A disaster could happen if the hacker wiped out, or erased, all the information on a computer system. That is why you back up your system.

Annoying advertising

Internet advertisements, or ads, pop up on the screen over a web page. This created a new noun from the phrasal verb, popup. People said they needed a tool to block those annoying ads, so the “popup blocker” was born. This feature is part of the browser software.

Speaking of browsers, another phrasal verb that became a noun is plug in. You know that you can plug a wire into the wall. Now, we add small programs to perform specific tasks in the computer, and call them plugins.

Companies often will ask for your email address. They create a large list of users from their email addresses. When we sign up to use a website, we key in our name and email address.

The organization running an online service usually asks us to opt in, or choose to receive email messages. Usually those messages are asking us to buy products. There are so many of these emails now that many people try to filter out all messages from advertisers – otherwise known as spam.

Getting off the grid

If you think that the Internet is full of too many advertisements, and your email is nothing but spam, just click on the menu to shut down and turn off your devices for the day. Get off what we called “the information superhighway” and take a walk outside. Wait! There is one final phrasal verb to describe that: go offline.

For Learning English Everyday Grammar, I’m Jill Robbins.

And I’m John Russell.

Dr. Jill Robbins wrote this story for Learning English.

Now it’s your turn. Does your language borrow English phrasal verbs for computer terms? Do you know any new expressions to talk about our digital life? Write to us about them in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

Words in This Story

preposition – grammar. a word or group of words that is used with a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to show direction, location, or time, or to introduce an object

adverb – grammar. a word that describes a verb, an adjective, another adverb, or a sentence and that is often used to show time, manner, place, or degree

informal – adj. (of language) relaxed in tone; not suited for serious or official speech and writing

cable – n. a group of wires, glass fibers, etc., covered in plastic or rubber and used to carry electricity or electrical signal

upgrade – n. an occurrence in which one thing is replaced by something better, newer, more valuable, etc.

browser – n. a computer program that is used to find and look at information on the Internet

specific – adj. having a particular function or effect

opt – v. to choose to do or be involved in something

filter – v. to remove (something unwanted) by using a filter

spam – n. e-mail that is not wanted or e-mail that is sent to large numbers of people and that consists mostly of advertising