Name: 15 PHRASAL VERBS for Business and the Office
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T11:25:27.000Z
Duration: 11 min 29 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In today's video, I'm going to talk to you about some phrasal verbs, but the phrasal verbs we're going to look at are actually very useful for business situations.

Whether you work in an office or for some big company, you're going to probably hear or even use a lot of these phrasal verbs.

So, again, just to review, a phrasal verb is a verb in connection, in conjunction with a preposition, and together, the two words mean something other than the individual words, in most cases.

Again, remember that phrasal verbs often have more than one meaning, but I'm just going to give you the business context meanings for each of these phrasal verbs.

So, we're going to look at deal with, get ahead, bring up, think through, point out, chip in or pitch in, they actually mean the same thing, put off, count on, do something over.

I left a blank here because you're usually going to put a word noun in between.

End up, sort out, go up against, ask around, and spell out.

When you deal with something, you basically have to face it and manage it, whatever it is.

It could be a situation, it could be a problem, it could be a schedule, etc.

So, managers and CEOs of companies have to deal with many problems throughout their work day and the work week.

So, when you deal with something, you're able to handle it, there's another word for it, handle is deal with.

You can make sure that you do what is necessary to do to accomplish your goal or fix whatever problem you have, okay?

Get ahead, in terms of promotion and advancement, that's when we use this.

So, if you work for a company, you don't want to stay in the same position for many years.

You work really hard, that way you can get ahead.

Get ahead means get a higher position or get more money or be transferred to a different location where you can do more work.

So, get ahead, in terms of business, get a promotion, advance, progress, etc.

So, when you bring something up, you're introducing it into the conversation, okay?

So, while I'm making my presentation, if you have any ideas you'd like to bring up, please do so, right?

Introduce it into the conversation and then we can discuss it a little bit more.

And again, all of these are just the business context.

There are other meanings to these phrasal verbs.

Usually, think something through or think through a problem, for example.

So, you can have something in between or something after this phrasal verb.

So, when you think through something or you think something through, you consider it, you work through it very, very carefully.

It's very similar to what the actual words mean, but again, the main idea here is that you're looking at something very carefully before you make a decision, before you take an action, etc.

So, for example, think through your options before you decide where to invest your money, okay?

Think through the proposition very carefully before you sign the contract, etc.

Lots of different examples you can use it for.

So, if somebody points out something or points something out, they are calling attention to it.

So, somebody's giving a speech and you put up your hand and you say, yeah, I'd like to point out that something, something, right?

So, you're bringing attention or you're...

You can say it's a little similar to bring up.

Point out, you're pointing to something specifically.

You're introducing something specific into the conversation, okay?

If somebody's speaking or if somebody wrote something and they made a mistake, maybe you can point out that mistake to the person, right?

You can draw attention, call attention to it.

This is a very important phrasal verb because if you're going to be working in a company and you're going to have a team, your team members will expect you to chip in or to pitch in.

Basically, this means contribute, add something, be helpful.

Now, in a lot of situations, another very business context you can use this expression in is when, let's say, somebody in the office has a birthday and all the staff want to put money together to buy this person a birthday present.

So, everybody needs to chip in $5 or pitch in $5.

You can contribute ideas, you can contribute money, you can contribute time, effort, etc.

I'm sure a lot of you already know it, but put off means to delay or postpone something.

I said postpone just so you know the word, but we don't generally pronounce the T. Postpone is the correct pronunciation.

You can't make the meeting, like, let's say I have a meeting scheduled for 12 o'clock and I'm stuck in traffic and it's 11.45 and I know that I won't be able to make it.

I call the office and I say, I'm not coming.

Can you put off the meeting till 1 o'clock or till tomorrow?

Means delay it, postpone it to another time.

Hopefully, your manager, your boss, your co-workers, etc. can count on you.

If you can count on someone, that someone is very dependable.

So, for example, I give my employee some task and I know that I can count on him or her to complete the task.

If I can't count on this person, if I can't trust this person to complete the task, this is not a person that should be working for me.

I should fire him or her, hire somebody who is more dependable, someone I can count on.

You could say do over as its own expression.

You can have a do over, but I'll talk about that in a second.

Do something over, basically do means do, over means again.

So, if you did something and it wasn't the best quality or you made a mistake or you just didn't like the way it came out, you can do it over.

Now, a very common thing people say is can I have a do over?

A do over is a noun, means can I have the opportunity to do it over, to do it over.

The again is redundant, you don't need it.

You'll hear it a lot, technically not correct.

This one is very useful and it's not only business.

You can have it in any situation, but when you end up with something, and it's often with, you can add the with, I know some capital, some small, but that's okay.

When you end up with something means this is the final result that you reach.

So, if you work hard, you will end up as the manager of the company.

If you try real hard, you will end up with a successful project, etc.

So, with, with, or without, with are okay.