25 Phrasal Verbs for Work | 職場英文片語動詞完整指南

Native English speakers almost never say “cancel the meeting.” They say “call it off.” They don’t “submit the report” — they “hand it in.” And when a project takes longer than expected, they don’t “delay the deadline” — they “push it back.” This gap between formal textbook English and the phrasal-verb-heavy English of real offices is one of the main reasons fluent speakers still feel lost in their first international workplace. According to research published by Nhà xuất bản Đại học Cambridge, phrasal verbs account for a significant percentage of all verb usage in spoken English — yet they receive only a fraction of the classroom time that grammar tables and formal vocabulary get. The result is exactly what you’d expect: learners who write excellent essays but freeze up in Monday morning meetings.

This guide covers 25 phrasal verbs across five work situations — meetings, emails, tasks and deadlines, career growth, and colleague relationships. Every phrase comes with an example sentence pulled from realistic work contexts, so you can start using them immediately rather than waiting until you’ve memorized a list.

In a real meeting, you’ll hear phrasal verbs constantly — “let’s go over the agenda,” “wrap up by noon,” “bring up your concerns.” These are not optional vocabulary.

What Are Phrasal Verbs? [片語動詞的基本概念]

A phrasal verb pairs a base verb with a particle — either a preposition or an adverb — to create a completely new meaning. That new meaning is almost never predictable from the two individual words. “Give up” doesn’t mean to present something in an upward direction. “Run into” doesn’t describe a physical collision. This is what makes phrasal verbs harder than regular vocabulary: you can’t decode them from the grammar alone. You need exposure, and lots of it.

There are two grammatical types that matter for professional English. Separable phrasal verbs allow you to place the object between the verb and particle: “hand in the report” or “hand the report in” both work. Inseparable phrasal verbs keep the verb and particle together no matter what: “look into the problem” is correct; “look the problem into” is not. For a full explanation with examples, our guide on Separable vs Inseparable Phrasal Verbs | 英文片語動詞語序規則完整指南 covers every rule you need.

Now, the 25 phrases you actually need at work — grouped by the situation where you’ll use them most.

Phrasal Verbs for Meetings [開會英文片語動詞]

Meetings are the highest-pressure environment for phrasal verbs because they’re spoken in real time. You can’t pause a video and look something up. These seven are the ones you’ll hear in virtually every team meeting or client call:

• Call off [取消] — “The client called off the presentation at the last minute.” Means to cancel something that was scheduled. Always separable: “call it off.”
• Set up [安排、設定] — “Can you set up a video call with the Tokyo team for Thursday afternoon?” Used for arranging meetings, equipment, or systems.
• Go over [審視、複習] — “Let’s go over the Q2 numbers before we open it up to questions.” Means to review or examine something in detail. Inseparable — you can’t “go the numbers over.”
• Bring up [提出、提起] — “David brought up a concern about the timeline that the whole team needed to hear.” Used when someone introduces a topic or issue for discussion.
• Wrap up [結束] — “We’re ten minutes over — let’s wrap up and I’ll send a summary by end of day.” This phrase ends hundreds of meetings a day in English-speaking offices.
• Kick off [開始、啟動] — “The new quarter kicks off with a company-wide town hall on Monday.” Used specifically for starting something significant — a project, campaign, or season.
• Put off [延後] — “The board meeting got put off until next month because two members are traveling.” Means to postpone. Different from “push back” (see Deadlines section) — “put off” sounds more indefinite.

在英文會議中，「bring it up」比「mention it」更常見；「wrap up」比「conclude」更自然。

Phrasal Verbs for Email and Written Communication [電子郵件英文片語動詞]

Most ESL learners write professional emails that read like translated Chinese — grammatically correct, but oddly formal. Three phrasal verbs fix more of that stiffness than any grammar correction: follow up, get back to, Và send over. These carry the workload of most professional correspondence.

• Follow up [追蹤後續] — “I’m writing to follow up on the proposal I sent last Tuesday — please let me know if you have any questions.” The single most important phrase for professional emails in English.
• Get back to [回覆] — “I don’t have the figures in front of me — I’ll get back to you before 4 p.m.” Used to promise a future reply. Much more natural than “I will reply to you.”
• Send over [傳送、轉寄] — “I’ve sent over the revised contract — let me know once you’ve had a chance to review it.” More casual than “attach” — signals the email relationship is established.
• Look into [調查、研究] — “Thanks for flagging this — I’ll look into it and circle back by the end of the week.” Inseparable. Signals you’re going to investigate, not just acknowledge.
• Put together [整理、製作] — “I’ll put together a one-page summary and send it over this afternoon.” Means to create or compile something. Casual but professional.
• Fill in [填寫、代替] — “Could you fill in the expense form and send it to accounting by Friday?” Also used as “fill in for someone” — see the Colleagues section.

One well-placed “I’ll follow up by Thursday” signals competence in a way that formal alternatives simply don’t.

Phrasal Verbs for Tasks and Deadlines [截止日期任務英文片語]

Deadline conversations reveal how much English is built on phrasal verbs. Almost every project status update relies on these six phrases. If you can use them accurately, your project management English will immediately sound more credible.

• Hand in [繳交、提交] — “The first draft needs to be handed in by noon on Friday — not end of day.” Common in both academic and professional settings. The formal equivalent, “submit,” is rarely used in speech.
• Catch up [趕上] — “We fell behind in the first quarter, but the team worked weekends and managed to catch up.” Describes closing a gap in progress or schedule.
• Run out of [用完、耗盡] — “We’re running out of budget for this phase — the next milestone has to come in under $8,000.” Used for time, money, ideas, or any finite resource.
• Push back [延後、推遲] — “The launch date got pushed back to November after the QA team found three critical bugs.” More specific than “put off” — usually implies a new date was set.
• Take on [承擔、接受] — “She took on the project management role without being asked — that’s the kind of initiative that gets noticed.”
• Fall behind [落後] — “The development team has fallen behind, so the PM called an emergency sync.” The natural counterpart to “catch up.”

When the deadline moves, it doesn’t “get delayed” — it gets “pushed back.” When the team is behind, they don’t “lack progress” — they’ve “fallen behind.” Know the phrasal verbs or you’ll sound like a translation.

Phrasal Verbs for Career Growth [職涯成長英文片語動詞]

Performance reviews, promotion conversations, and job interviews are exactly where most ESL speakers freeze — partly because the emotional stakes are high, but also because the vocabulary is different from daily task language. These five phrases appear constantly in career conversations:

• Move up [晉升] — “She’s been with the company three years and is ready to move up to a senior analyst role.” The natural way to describe a promotion in casual professional speech.
• Stand out [脫穎而出] — “To stand out in this hiring pool, your portfolio needs to show real business results, not just technical skills.”
• Take over [接手、接管] — “When the director went on parental leave, Marcus took over and handled the client relationship seamlessly.”
• Step down [卸任、辭去職位] — “After twelve years as department head, she stepped down to join a startup advisory board.”
• Put forward [提出、推薦] — “I’d like to put forward a different approach to the onboarding process — one that cuts the time-to-productivity by two weeks.”

職涯英文能力直接影響你被看見的機會——「move up」、「stand out」、「put forward」是升遷對話中最關鍵的三個片語動詞。

Phrasal Verbs for Working with Colleagues [與同事相處英文片語]

The day-to-day language between coworkers is informal, fast, and saturated with phrasal verbs. These five phrases are the ones that build relationships — not just get tasks done. Getting them right signals social fluency, which matters as much as technical English once you’re inside an international team.

• Get along with [與…相處融洽] — “He gets along with pretty much everyone — that’s one reason he was moved into the client-facing role.” Inseparable. You can’t “get the team along with.”
• Fill in for [代替某人] — “I have a dentist appointment Monday morning — could you fill in for me on the 9 a.m. call?”
• Back up [支持、備份] — “When the client pushed back on the timeline, my manager backed me up and held firm.” In a professional context, “backing someone up” means supporting their position, not agreeing with everything they say.
• Touch base [聯繫、確認] — “Let’s touch base on Monday morning before the week kicks off.” Casual meeting language — implies a brief, informal check-in rather than a formal meeting.
• Check in on [關心、確認進度] — “The new hire seemed overwhelmed in week two, so I checked in on her a few times that week.”

“I’ll touch base with you Monday” conveys the same information as “I will contact you on Monday” but sounds like a real colleague, not a formal letter.

How to Actually Learn These Phrasal Verbs [如何真正學會職場英文片語]

Flashcard drills don’t work well for phrasal verbs, and there’s a structural reason why. Phrasal verbs carry social and situational meaning — they signal register (formal vs casual), relationship (close colleague vs new client), and urgency. Memorizing “push back = 延後” in isolation strips away everything that makes the phrase usable. What works instead is collecting phrasal verbs from real contexts you encounter at work — which is faster than it sounds, because the same 25–30 phrases appear again and again.

Three approaches that actually produce results:

• Keep a live notebook. For two weeks, write down every phrasal verb you encounter in English emails, calls, or meetings — with the full sentence, not just the phrase. After two weeks, you’ll have noticed most of the ones in this article plus a few specific to your industry.
• Use the BBC. Cái BBC Learning English “English at Work” series is short audio episodes (5–8 minutes each) set in a fictional office with exaggerated, easy-to-follow English. It’s free, searchable by topic, and specifically designed for professional contexts.
• Learn particles, not just phrases. Understanding why “up” in “wrap up” signals completion — and why “back” in “get back to” signals return — lets you decode new phrasal verbs on the fly. Our guide on Phrasal Verb Particle Logic | 英文片語動詞粒子邏輯 walks through this system in detail. It changes how you approach every new phrasal verb you encounter.

Collecting phrases from real work contexts — not flashcard apps — is the fastest route to phrasal verb fluency.

The final piece of the puzzle is knowing how phrasal verbs cluster around base verbs. Once you know “set up,” you’re close to “set back,” “set out,” and “set aside.” They share the same base verb, so learning one reduces the memorization load for the others. Our guide on Phrasal Verb Fluency: The Verb-Family Method | 常用英文片語動詞 maps these clusters explicitly. Instead of learning 25 separate phrases, you learn 6 verb families — and you end up with 30–40 usable phrases in the same time.

Pick five phrases from this list — one from each section — and use them in real English contexts this week. Write an email using “follow up” and “get back to.” Say “let’s wrap up” at the end of your next meeting. Ask a colleague to “fill in for” you. The first five times feel awkward. The sixth time, they start to feel natural. That is how phrasal verbs actually enter your working vocabulary.

Nguồn

1. Cambridge University Press — Phrasal Verbs in EFL Classrooms — Research on the frequency and underrepresentation of phrasal verbs in ESL curricula
2. BBC Learning English — English at Work — Free audio series for professional English learners; recommended for learning phrasal verbs in realistic workplace context
3. Cambridge Dictionary — Phrasal Verbs: Meaning and Use — Reference for definitions and grammatical classification of phrasal verbs in professional contexts