carry on

To continue doing something without stopping, especially after a problem, interruption, or setback. It suggests persistence and the determination to keep going despite difficulties.

Type

Inseparable phrasal verb.

Notes

"Carry on" is an inseparable phrasal verb, meaning the verb and particle cannot be split by an object. You must say "carry on with the journey," never "carry the journey on." When a pronoun or noun follows, it is introduced with the preposition "with": for example, "She carried on with her work" rather than placing the object between the two words.

Conjugation

Narrative

Marco had been cycling across Spain for eleven days when his rear derailleur snapped outside a small village near Burgos. He pushed his bike to a roadside café, or a coffee, and sat staring at the map. A local mechanic patched it together with a spare part that wasn't quite right — the gears skipped on every hill. Marco knew the fix wouldn't last. B Santiago de Compostela was only four days away. He tightened his w helmet, paid for the coffee, and decided to ca , taking the s hills slowly, st on the pedals where he had to. Ev , he never once considered turning back.

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In August 1914, Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition set sail from London aboard the Endurance. By January 1915, the ship was tr in pack ice in the Weddell Sea. For ten months the crew drifted, locked in ice, watching the ship slowly being crushed. When the Endurance finally sank in November 1915, Shackleton and his twenty-seven men were stranded on the ice with three lifeboats and dwindling supplies. Rahan surrender to despair, Shackleton organized daily routines, maintained morale, and led the men on a ha 800-mile open-sea voyage to South Georgia Island — na by sextant, enduring hurce winds — to reach a whaling station and summon rescue. Every si crew member survived. What made the difference was Shackleton's refusal to stop: when each plan failed, he fo a new one. S , the expedition became one of history's most extraordinary examples of what it means to ca in the face of total, sustained catastrophe.

To use all of something so that there is none left; to have no more of something available. When you run out of something, you have used or consumed the last of it.

Type

Inseparable phrasal verb.

Notes

"Run out" is inseparable when used in its core meaning. The object always follows the preposition "of": say "We ran out of water" — never "We ran water out." The phrase "run out" cannot be split by placing the object between "run" and "out."

Conjugation

Narrative

Marta was two hours into her solo road trip across rural Portugal when her phone buzzed a low-battery warning. She'd forgotten her car charger. Worse, she suddenly realised she'd also ru of cash — the last village had no ATM. She pulled over near an olive grove and th calmly: the next town was thirty kilometres ahead. She fl down a passing driver, explained in br Portuguese, and borrowed a pen to write down directions to a petrol station with a money exchange. S crisis, small solution. S , she was back on the road in twenty minutes, th still a little shaken. Ev , she laughed about it later.

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In August 1914, the British Expeditionary Force re from Mons, Belgium, after holding against oving German forces. By the time units reached Le Cateau, many soldiers had run critically low on ammunition — some battalions had fired over 400 rounds per man in a single day. At the Battle of Le Cateau on August 26th, General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien made the coial decision to turn and fight rather than continue retreating, partly because exhausted troops could not outrun the enemy, and partly because supply lines had broken down so severely that some units had effectively exhausted their reserves. The battle cost the British nearly 8,000 casualties b bo precious time for the main retreat to continue. Military historians point to this episode as a s example of how running out of essential supplies — ammunition, food, rest — forces commanders into decisions they would never otherwise make. Th a resource ru in the field, options collapse rapidly.

To break down means either (1) to stop working properly, as a machine or system does when it fails, or (2) to suddenly lose control of your emotions and start crying. Both senses share the idea of something — a machine or a person — reaching a point where it can no longer hold itself together.

Type

Inseparable phrasal verb.

Notes

In its primary senses — stopping functioning or losing emotional control — 'break down' is inseparable: you cannot place an object between the two parts. You say 'she broke down' or 'the engine broke down,' not 'she broke her emotions down.' However, when 'break down' means to divide something into smaller parts or categories, it becomes separable: 'Can you break the report down into sections?' or 'Can you break down the report into sections?' are both correct.

Conjugation

Narrative

Priya had held herself together for three weeks after her father's diagnosis — ma appointments, calling relatives, updating insurance forms. She told herself there was no time to feel anything yet. T one Tuesday afternoon, she was washing dishes and a song her father used to hum came on the radio. She turned off the tap, sat down on the kitchen floor, and completely br . Her roommate found her there twenty minutes later and simply sat beside her, saying nothing. So , Priya thought, you don't ch when the walls come down — they choose for you. It was, in its own q way, a ne collapse.

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On the night of June 4, 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill stood before the House of Commons and de one of the most coial speeches of the twentieth century — the 'We shall fight on the beaches' address. What many people do not know is what happened immediately afterward. Churchill walked off the floor of the House, turned to a colleague, and reportedly mu , 'And we'll fight them with the butt ends of broken bottles, because that's bloody well all we've got.' According to close aides, in pr moments during those first desperate months of the war — with France collapsing, Dunkirk barely survived, and invasion seemingly imminent — Churchill did, on at least one occasion, break down in private, weeping openly. He had built a public image of granite-like resolve, b the weight of responsibility for millions of lives took its toll in rooms where no cameras watched. That pr fracture, those moments of breaking down, may have made his public composure more genuine, not less. E the strongest systems — human or mechanical — can reach a point where they simply br .

To become completely exhausted and lose all energy or motivation, usually because of working too hard or being under too much stress for a long time. When someone burns out, they often feel unable to continue doing their job effectively.

Type

Inseparable phrasal verb.

Notes

When 'burn out' is used as an intransitive phrasal verb — meaning a person becomes exhausted — it is inseparable: no object comes between the two parts. You say 'She burned out after months of overwork,' never 'She burned herself out' in this intransitive sense. Note, however, that the related transitive form (where something exhausts another person, as in 'The job burned him out') does allow an object, but the most common self-directed use remains inseparable.

Conjugation

Narrative

Priya had been a software developer at the same fintech startup for three years. In the final push before the product launch, she was ro sending emails at midnight and skipping lunch to fix bugs. One Tuesday morning, she sat at her desk, op her laptop, and simply could not type a single line of code. Her manager no she'd gone quiet and asked her into a one-on-one. 'I think I'm bu ,' Priya admitted, her voice st but tired. Her manager closed his notebook. 'Then we fix the workload, not you,' he said, a they b a real schedule together that afternoon. S , the exhaustion, once named, finally had somewhere to go. Ev , it took weeks to feel normal again.

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In the early 1940s, the British mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing was at the center of one of history's most consequential intellectual efforts — breaking Nazi Germany's Enigma cipher at Bletchley Park. Turing worked at a pace that was extraordinary even among his brilliant peers, often going days with little sleep, ob over logical problems that others had abandoned. By 1942 and into 1943, colleagues noted that he had become increasingly wi , cycling compulsively between his billet and the hut, eating erratically, and struggling to engage with the institutional politics that were consuming Bletchley. He eventually stack from direct operational codebreaking leadership and moved toward more theoretical work on computing. Historians have noted that the sheer gr intensity of the war years — the stakes, the secrecy, the re pressure — took a measurable toll on e his extraordinary capacity. S , the documented shift in Turing's role and demeanor during this period is one of history's clearest examples of what happens when sustained, high-pressure intellectual work is carried beyond what any person can maintain: in , even the most brilliant minds can bu .