YOUR PROGRESS
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😔 Emotions
bottle up
fall apart

What you keep inside will always find its way out.

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bottle up
To suppress feelings and emotions without expressing them; to keep everything locked inside over a long period of time.
💡 He bottled up his grief for months, never letting anyone see how much he was struggling.
INFORMAL
fall apart
To lose emotional or psychological control completely; to break down under the weight of stress or pain that has built up for too long.
💡 After weeks of pretending everything was fine, she finally fell apart alone in her car.
INFORMAL

Test your knowledge — read the sentence and choose the right phrasal verb. Click to answer.

QUESTION 1 OF 3

Shadowing is one of the most powerful techniques for improving your English pronunciation and fluency. Listen → speak out loud → record yourself → compare.

Shadowing practice
Use your phone to record yourself repeating each sentence. Play it back and compare your pronunciation with the audio.
BOTTLE UP
1 of 6
1
Listen to the audio
2
Repeat out loud — record yourself if you can
3
Write what you heard, then click Check to compare
🎙 RECORD YOUR PRONUNCIATION

One exercise for each verb — type your answer and click Check.

BOTTLE UP ▶ FILL THE BLANK
He had been his anxiety for months, convincing himself it would pass on its own.
Hint: present participle (-ing form) of the verb meaning 'to suppress emotions and keep them inside'.
FALL APART ▶ FILL THE BLANK
She had kept herself together through everything β€” until the moment her daughter hugged her and she finally .
Hint: past tense of the phrasal verb that means 'to break down emotionally after holding everything in'.
STORY 1 OF 2 · BOTTLE UP
bottle up

Daniel had been going to work every day for two years after his mother died. He answered emails. He attended meetings. He laughed at the right moments. His colleagues said he was handling it remarkably well. He told himself the same thing. So he bottled up the grief, the anger, the exhaustion β€” and each time it tried to surface, he pushed it back down. He got very good at it. So good that he stopped noticing the weight.

Alessandra Fernandes Nóbrega
Alessandra Fernandes Nóbrega
History teacher and educational content creator. M.A. in History of Education (UFPB). Creator of WeeklyCross, FlipVerbs and Flowglish — a connected ecosystem for learning English through context, not memorisation.