this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2026
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I'm not positive, but wouldn't "back" be the verb and "up" be an adverb?
It’s what happens to phrasal verbs when they become nouns and adjectives. I couldn’t find a great source other than this writing tip, but “back up” altogether makes up a phrasal verb.
English is rather notorious for having these phrases that when translated directly don’t make any sense: the words on their own are rather meaningless and have to be taken together to derive the meaning:
For example, I can’t translate “speak up” to “hablar arriba” in Spanish, that makes absolutely no sense.
English is essentially just a whole bunch of corner cases that its speakers agree on. Mostly.
Implies that we're missing "speakups" and "pissoffs".