put up with

To tolerate or accept something or someone unpleasant without complaining or taking action to stop it. If you put up with something, you continue to deal with it even though it bothers or annoys you.

Type

Inseparable phrasal verb.

Notes

"Put up with" is inseparable, meaning the object must always come after the full three-word phrase — never between the words. You must say "She puts up with a lot" — never "She puts up a lot with" or "She puts a lot up with". When using a pronoun, it also follows the complete phrase: "He puts up with it", not "He puts it up with".

Conjugation

Narrative

Priya had shared a flat with her friend Leila for almost a year. Leila was w and fun, but she never washed her dishes — not once. For months, Priya qu cleaned up and said nothing, not wanting to cause conflict. B one evening, finding the sink overflowing again, she sat down with Leila over tea. "I care about us as friends," Priya said gently, "but I can't keep putting up with this." Leila looked ge surprised — she hadn't re . They ag on a simple rota, a the flat, and the friendship, ran much more smoothly after that. S , Priya finally stopped choosing to puith silence over honesty.

Register

Neutral

In the early 1960s, Rosa Parks was already famous for refusing to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. Less often told is the story of what she endured in the years that followed. After her arrest and the successful 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–1956, Parks and her husband Raymond l their jobs. Employers in Montgomery would not hire them. They received co death threats. By 1957, the harassment had become so re that the couple was fo to leave Alabama entirely and relocate to Detroit, Michigan, where Rosa's brother lived. For years in Detroit, Parks worked as a seamstress to survive, largely unsed outside activist circles, struggling financially well into the 1960s. S , she continued her civil rights work quietly, without public complaint, in conditions far removed from the dignity she deserved. S , her story is a powerful illustration of what it means to refuse, at a crucial moment, to puith injustice any longer — in , the very real personal cost that refusal sometimes demands.

To organize, arrange, or resolve a problem, situation, or misunderstanding so that it is no longer confused or difficult. You sort something out when you bring it from a state of disorder or trouble into a clear, working order.

Type

Separable phrasal verb.

Notes

"Sort out" is a separable phrasal verb, meaning a noun object can be placed either after the full phrasal verb or between the two parts: "She sorted out the problem" and "She sorted the problem out" are both correct. However, when the object is a pronoun, it must go between the verb and the particle: you must say "She sorted it out," never "She sorted out it."

Conjugation

Narrative

Priya arrived at Barcelona Sants station at 7:45 a.m. with a printout of a booking confirmation that showed the wrong departure date — she had booked for the following Tuesday by mistake. The train left in fifteen minutes. Heart hammering, she found the Renfe customer-service window and ex the situation in ha Spanish. The agent checked her screen, sighed once, then st typing. Eight minutes later, Priya had a n ticket for the next available train to Valencia at no extra charge. S , she sat down on a bench, exhaled, a texted her sister: "Crisis so . On my way." E the agent seemed relieved it worked out.

Register

Informal

In the summer of 1815, after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the diplomats of Europe gathered in Vienna had a st administrative challenge on their hands. Decades of Napoleonic reshuffling had left the borders of German states, Italian duchies, and Polish territories in genuine chaos — hundreds of competing claims overlapped on the same maps. Prince Klemens von Metternich of Austria, al Talleyrand of France and Castlereagh of Britain, s months in intensive negotiation through late 1814 and into 1815, working committee by committee, dispute by dispute, to establish who controlled which territory. The resulting Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, signed in June 1815, re the map of Europe with enough clarity and balance to prevent a general European war for nearly a century. It was im and often self-interested, b the sheer organizational achievement — transforming post-Napoleonic chaos into a fuing state system — stands as one of history's most consequential examples of powerful, patient effort to so an almost impossibly tangled situation. Noess , the peace it produced endured for generations.

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.

If you move on, you stop dwelling on a past experience, relationship, or feeling and direct your attention toward the present or the future. It often involves accepting that something is over and choosing to continue with your life.

Type

Inseparable phrasal verb.

Notes

"Move on" is an inseparable phrasal verb, meaning no object can be placed between the two words. You cannot say "move it on" when using the emotional meaning. If an object is introduced, it follows a preposition: "She moved on from the breakup" — the phrase stays intact.

Conjugation

Narrative

When Priya found out she hadn't been chosen for the promotion she'd worked toward for two years, she went home and cried. She let herself feel the dient fully that evening. The next morning, she called her sister and talked through it. Her sister said simply, "You deserved it — b you have to mo now." Priya made a list of things she could do ditly , up her resume, and booked a we trip to clear her head. It wasn't easy, b she stopped checking her work email obsessively and started looking at other opportunities. In , she fo on what came next.

Register

Neutral

In April 1865, with the American Civil War nearly over, Ulysses S. Grant met Confederate General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, to receive Lee's surrender. Grant had every political reason to humiliate the defeated South — the war had killed over 600,000 people and torn the nation apart. In , Grant of remarkably ge terms: Confederate soldiers would be paroled, allowed to keep their horses, and sent home without prosecution. He reportedly silenced his own troops when they began firing celebratory cannon shots, saying there was nothing to celebrate in the defeat of fellow Americans. Grant understood that the country could not heal if it stood petly in the wound. Lee's army stacked its arms on April 12th, and Grant immediately began focusing on reconstruction rather than retribution. His decision was not naivety — it was a ca choice to mo as a nation, trading the satisfaction of punishment for the possibility of reunion. Ev , it remains one of history's clearest examples of what it costs, and what it g , to deliberately move on from catastrophic loss.