GET AWAY / GET AT

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Daily Vitamin.

Before we get started, I just wanted to celebrate an anniversary for about 15 seconds. Today, October 23rd, we sent our first Daily Vitamin in 2003... ¡23 years ago! We are thankful for all of our followers. And now back to the lesson. 

Today is the fifth and final Daily Vitamin dedicated to the incredibly versatile English verb to get.

There are dozens of phrasal verbs that are formed with get. Some have meanings that correspond quite closely to their parts (for example get away means to escape), but others must be memorised; for example, get at can mean to discover the true facts about something or to try to suggest something without saying it directly.

Consider the following examples.

Example 1: The prisoner tried to get away, but the guard was able to stop him.

Example 2: There is an attempt to keep the press from getting at the truth about the famous actress's past.

Example 3: What are you getting at? Why don't you just say what you mean directly.

There is no secret to learning phrasal verbs, but it's necessary to clarify their meanings and organise them in your head. Keeping phrasal-verb lists is one option that helps many learners.

⇒ In order to get some writing practice, I encourage you to write your own sentences with today's GET phrasal verbs. You can post your sentences to one of our social media sites (Facebook or Bluesky) and we will give you feedback about your writing as soon as we can. 

I hope you have a good day and an excellent weekend!