By American English, Phrasal verbs

American English has many phrasal verbs or verbs with preposition. Therefore, we have slice with, attend to, and break into. Slice with is not a true phrasal verb since “with” is an optional preposition. We use the knife to slice the bread => We use the knife to slice the bread with => is...

turn (SWITCH) verb to start or stop (a device powered by electricity) She switched the light off.Switch on the video camera, please. From Cambridge Dictionaries - American English

Tearsofjoy wrote: I agree. the sentence you have mentioned is, indeed long-winded. It would be much better to replace it with a simple, but elegant "hemmed in". I think that writing clearly, wittily and concisely is much more important than using huge, clumsy phrases. According to rumours,...

hanuman, If you want to learn British English you should follow the advice in British dictionaries. I'm sorry if my American English confused you! My American dictionary, which shows onto as a single word, has this note: To indicate motion to a position the prepositions on and onto...

The BBI is my Favourite (capital F). It doesn't list all the prepositions but it is extremely useful for ESL speakers because it tells you how to combine nouns with adjectives and how verbs are used (it gives 19 valency categories of verbs). It also gives the most common word combinations, as...

Here is some advice on the use of got and gotten. Got is the past tense and past participle of get. You use have got to say that someone has a particular thing, or to mention a quality or characteristic that someone or something has. I’ve got a coat just like this. She hasn’t got a work...