Pick up

Phrasal Verbs | B1

Listening exercises with “Pick up”

The phrasal verb to pick someone/something up is extremely common and useful, and means to collect someone or something.

This could be a person (for example, you might ask a taxi driver to pick you up on the corner of your street, or you might offer to pick up your friend from the train station) or a thing (for example, maybe your car has been repaired, and you need to go and pick it up from the mechanic).

Note that this is a type 2 (separable) phrasal verb. This means that the object (someone or something) can go in the middle of the phrasal verb or at the end unless it is a pronoun (e.g. him, her, them) – then it must go in the middle.

For example, you can say:

I have to pick up the children.

I have to pick the children up.

I have to pick them up.

But you can’t say I have to pick up them.

Have a go at these micro-dictation exercises to hear this expression being used in context – how much can you understand?

Accent: Scotland