I am so often thankful that English is my native language. I am very grateful for everyone who, as an adult, has taken it upon themselves to learn our crazy system of phrasal verbs. I would really hate to have to try to remember all the differences in meaning that come from appending a different preposition to the same verb.
"The bully, looking for someone to pick on, picked out a boy who he saw picking at his face; the bully knocked down the boy's books that he was using to pick up lock picking and made him pick them up. Perhaps he thought this was a good way to pick up girls?"
(Note that "pick up" is used with 3 different senses in this paragraph).
"Usually I go with the flow, but this time I decided to go for it, so I will go down to the office and tell my boss that I want to go up for promotion. If he doesn't go along with it, I won't just go away, I won't go down without a fight even if I have to go ahead and go around him and go over his head. It might be a lot to go through, but I don't want to let my life go by unlived! Sorry to go on for so long, going into so much detail. Say, you seem like a good listener, do you want to go out sometime? Then we wouldn't have to go it alone."
