look up to

To admire and respect someone greatly, often because of their achievements, character, or wisdom, and to consider them an example worth following. If you look up to someone, you want to be more like them.

Type

Inseparable phrasal verb.

Notes

"Look up to" is an inseparable phrasal verb, meaning the object must always come after the full three-word verb, never between its parts. You say "She looks up to her teacher" — not "She looks her teacher up to." Even with pronouns, the object follows the complete verb: "She looks up to him," never "She looks him up to."

Conjugation

Narrative

Priya had spent weeks dreading her first day at the new company. Then she was assigned to shadow Delores, a se engineer who had built the team's flagship system from scratch. Delores never talked down to Priya, always ex her reasoning and asking for Priya's opinion in return. By the end of the week, Priya ca herself staying late just to observe how Delores handled a tr client call — firm, warm, and completely unflappable. She te her roommate that night: "I already look up to this woman more than anyone I've ever worked with." S , in just one week, Priya had started to lo someone new. Ev , she still felt nervous every morning.

Register

Neutral

In the winter of 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, setting off a 381-day boycott that helped dismantle legal segregation on public transit in the United States. What is less often told is how Parks herself described her relationship with Claudette Colvin, a fifteen-year-old girl who had done the exact same thing nine months earlier, in March 1955, and was arrested for it. Colvin's act was de and co — she c the Constitution as officers dr her from the bus. Parks, already a trained civil rights organizer with the NAACP, studied Colvin's case carefully and drew inspiration from the teenager's refusal to be moved by fear. Years later, Parks said that young people like Colvin reminded her what ge conviction without calculation looked like. Colvin, me , spent decades saying she looked up to Parks as the person who tu a local act of resistance into a national movement. S , their story is a quiet reminder that admiration between people who inspire each other — across ages, across roles — in is often what gives a cause its momentum, and that to lo someone can run in both directions at once.

If two people grow apart, they slowly become less close and connected to each other over time, usually because their lives, interests, or feelings have changed. This process happens gradually, not because of a single argument or event.

Type

Inseparable phrasal verb.

Notes

"Grow apart" is an inseparable phrasal verb, meaning the two words cannot be separated by an object. You must always say "They grew apart" — you cannot place a word between "grow" and "apart." There is also no direct object with this verb; it describes a mutual, intransitive process between two or more people.

Conjugation

Narrative

Mia and her childhood best friend Diane had been inseparable through school, but after Diane got married and Mia moved abroad for graduate studies, their phone calls became shorter and less frequent. One evening, sc through old photos, Mia felt a q sadness. She typed a l message to Diane, admitting, "I feel like we've grown apart and I miss you." Diane re within minutes: "Me too. Can we do a video call Sunday?" That one honest message didn't fix everything, b it cr open a door they had both been afraid to touch. S , they had grart slowly, a started closing the gap just as slowly.

Register

Neutral

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are celebrated as lifelong intellectual partners, but their relationship was not without strain. After the failed revolutions of 1848 swept Europe, Marx settled in London in poverty, increasingly co by his massive theoretical project that would become Das Kapital. Engels, by contrast, returned to managing his family's textile factory in Manchester — work he found soing but financially necessary to support Marx. Through the 1850s and 1860s, the two men wrote frequently, b their daily realities could not have been more different: Marx in a cr Soho flat, burying himself in British Museum manuscripts; Engels na cotton prices and factory ledgers. Their letters from this period show flashes of irritation, misunderstanding, and em distance. Y unlike many partnerships under similar pressures, they chose to close the gap — Engels eventually moved to London in 1870, and the two re their close collaboration in person. S , their story is a reminder that even the deepest bonds can gr under the quiet pressure of diverging circumstances, and that distance, left unaddressed, has a way of becoming permanent.

To have a serious argument or disagreement with someone that causes damage to your relationship with them. After falling out, people often stop speaking to each other for a period of time.

Type

Inseparable phrasal verb.

Notes

"Fall out" is an inseparable phrasal verb, meaning the verb and particle cannot be split by an object. You say "they fell out over money" — never "they fell the matter out." When used with a preposition indicating the cause, the pattern is "fall out over/about + noun" or "fall out with + person."

Conjugation

Narrative

Priya and her flatmate Jess had lived together for two years without any se problems. Then, last month, they fell out over a simple household bill — Priya felt Jess had been paying less than her fair share for months and finally said so directly. Jess got de , and within minutes they were barely speaking. For two weeks, the flat felt un cold despite the central heating. Ev , Priya kn on Jess's door with two cups of tea and the actual bank statements pr out. Facts on paper, a a cup of tea — it turned out to be enough to begin ma things right. S , they never really needed to fa that badly in the first place.

Register

Neutral

In the early 1840s, Abraham Lincoln and James Shields were both rising political figures in Illinois — but their relationship collapsed dramatically and nearly fatally. In 1842, Lincoln published a series of anonymous satirical letters in the Sangamo Journal mo Shields, then the Illinois State Auditor, as v , incompetent, and dishonest. When Shields discovered Lincoln was the author, he was furious and demanded a formal apology. Lincoln refused to give one he considered ad , and Shields challenged him to a duel. The two men actually traveled to an island on the Missouri River — Sunflower Island — on September 22, 1842, prepared to fight with cavalry broadswords. O last-minute mediation by their seconds pr bloodshed. The affair de embarrassed Lincoln, who rarely spoke of it afterward, and the two men maintained a fr distance for years. In , it is a vivid historical reminder of how thoroughly two people can fa — and how a disagreement, left without genuine repair, can es far beyond its original cause.

To look down on someone means to think that you are better than them or that they are not as good or important as you. It describes an attitude of superiority toward another person.

Type

Inseparable phrasal verb.

Notes

"Look down on" is an inseparable phrasal verb, meaning the object must always come after the full phrase — you cannot split the verb from its particles. For example, you say "She looks down on her neighbors" — never "She looks her neighbors down on." Even with pronouns, the object follows the complete phrase: "He looks down on them," not "He looks them down on."

Conjugation

Narrative

Mei had been working at the law firm for two years, but a n hired associate, James, barely acknowledged her in meetings. He addressed the senior partners warmly but spoke to Mei in cl , dismissive sentences. A colleague quietly warned her: "He looks down on paralegals — thinks they're furniture." Mei decided not to shrink. She began doing her contributions meticulously and pr them directly in team briefings. B the quarterly review, three partners had cr her work by name. James started making eye contact. S , Mei didn't need his approval — b she had made herself impossible for anyone to lo on again.

Register

Informal

In 1847, the Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis was working at the Vienna General Hospital's maternity ward, where death rates from childbed fever ran as high as 18%. Semmelweis noticed that wards staffed by medical doctors had far higher mortality than those run by midwives. After a colleague died from a similar infection following a scalpel wound, Semmelweis concluded that coted particles on doctors' hands — carried straight from autopsies to deliveries — were killing patients. He introduced mandatory handwashing with chlorinated lime solution, and death rates fell to under 2%. Y the established medical community, led by pr figures such as Carl Edvard Mayr and influential journal editors of the time, di and ri him. Senior physicians looked down on his hypothesis as an insult — the suggestion that gentlemen doctors could be agents of death was so intolerable to them. Semmelweis was si , lost his position, and died in 1865 in a mental institution, vindicated only after Pasteur's germ theory gained acceptance. S , the story is a stark reminder of how fatally costly it can be to lo on an idea simply because of who — or what — it challenges.