by Liz Walter
My last two posts looked at phrasal verbs to describe a range of specific emotions, so I thought it would be nice to round the topic off by covering some phrasal verbs for talking about emotions in a more general way.
If someone shows a very strong negative emotion such as fear or anger, we can say informally that they freak out.
He freaked out when he saw the size of the waves
We sometimes say that a negative emotion eats away at someone, meaning that they think about it a lot and it continues to upset them, and if someone rakes up things that cause negative feelings, they make you remember bad things that happened in the past:
I could tell that his failure to get any acting jobs was eating away at him.
She couldn’t deal with the newspapers raking up stories of her divorce.
If you bottle up your feelings, you do not show them, and often do not acknowledge them even to yourself. If you fight down a feeling such as panic or fear, or fight down tears or laughter, you try very hard not to show them:
She had spent years bottling up her feelings of anger and grief.
He fought down a sudden urge to scream.
There are several phrasal verbs connected with stopping bad emotions. If you get over an experience that has made you unhappy, you start to feel happy again:
It took her years to get over the trauma of the fire.
Some phrasal verbs connected with stopping bad feelings are often used as commands. For instance, you might tell someone you think is too upset, excited etc to calm down. If you tell someone to pull themselves together or snap out of it, you mean that they should stop feeling sad or upset. These commands both sound very unsympathetic, and show that you are angry with the person showing the emotion:
Calm down! There’s no need to get so upset.
You need to pull yourself together and do something useful.
Come on, snap out of it! You’re spoiling the day for everyone.
If you shrug something off, you don’t let it upset you at all and if you dust yourself down after a bad experience, you act in a positive way and do not let it affect you badly:
They simply shrugged off all the criticism and carried on with their project.
He suffered many setbacks, but each time he picked himself up, dusted himself down, and carried on as cheerfully as ever.
I hope these posts on emotion phrasal verbs have been useful. Don’t let phrasal verbs freak you out, and if you make a mistake, just dust yourself down and try again!
Thank you so much for detailed explanation and examples.
Really useful and helpful piece of learning
Very nicely explained
Useful and very well explained. Thanks so much
Great presentation sir thank u
Thank you! I’m not a ‘sir’ though, I’m a ‘madam’, but ‘Liz’ is fine too 😉
Thanks for letting me know those useful expressions. It will be really helpful to communicate with people around me.
Very helpful! Thank you
Very nice and helpful for lovers of beautiful language
In Canada, we don’t say someone “dusts themselves down. ” Rather, he “dusts himself off.”
That’s interesting. I think we Brits could say ‘off’ too, but ‘down’ is more common for us.
Goog
I really appreciate your help.
Really useful thanks
Amazing! Thanks for giving so good explanation about the subject! <3
Thank you. Very helpful.
Thank you so much. It would be really really useful in conversation and improving communication skill
Nicely explained! Thank you Ma’am
Thank for deeper knowledge of the word
Thank you for the phase, is very helpful.
Dear Liz !
Thank you for your help !
Explanations are always with enough details. Hardly would anyone need further clarity to understand the words/phrases. Whenever I see your posts, I read it completely as the examples used are given extra focus to make them easily retrievable.
Its very useful Madam…. thank You
nice post; but I think it’s more common to say “fight back the tears” rather than “fight down”
Thanks . You broaden my horizon.
Thank you very much for this excellent set of phrasal verbs. Xx
Very important for me. Thanks you.
Hi , My English is not so well i often understood but not able to hold a conversation in English plz help me figure it out.