The Phrasal Verb 'Follow Up' Explained
- Phrasal Verbs Explained
- 3 days ago
- 8 min read
An explanation of the different meanings of the English phrasal verb 'follow up' from a native speaker, with lots of examples in context
Hello and welcome to my website for English learners all about phrasal verbs where I explain their different meanings to help you understand, learn and use them.
The phrasal verb that we are looking at in this post is 'follow up', which is one that is used frequently by people in business English and by people in their daily working lives. In the post, I will explain the two main ways that it is used by English speakers and provide you with lots of example sentences to show you the kinds of contexts in which we use it. So, without further ado, let's get started....
TABLE OF CONTENTS (Click to jump to each one)
The Basics: Key information and the individual words 'follow' and 'up'
Meaning 1: To learn more about something
Meaning 2: To do something additional
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THE BASICS
FOLLOW UP: KEY INFORMATION
Usage | Common |
Number of meanings | 2 |
Past tense forms | Followed up / Followed up |
Separable? | Yes |
In order to get the best understanding of the ways that we use 'follow up' in English, let's first consider the individual words 'follow' and 'up' and what they mean on their own.
I am sure that you are all familiar with 'to follow' but if you need a reminder, it is a verb that means 'to move or travel behind someone / something, taking the same path or route'. We can also use it in a temporal sense to mean 'to come next after something at a future point in time'. It has some less frequently used meanings too, which include 'to obey orders and instructions' and 'to watch something closely over a period of time'. In fact, I'm sure many of you follow people and accounts on social media in this way. Unlike many of the base verbs in phrasal verbs, 'to follow' is regular.
Please follow me to the interview room.
The jealous husband followed his wife in his car to see where she was going.
My cat follows me every time I leave the house.
King Charles III followed Queen Elizabeth II as the monarch of the United Kingdom.
Which book follows this one in the series?
Soldiers in the army are trained to follow orders.
I've been following this story on the news for the past few days.
Next, we have the prepositional particle 'up', which is perhaps the most commonly used particle in phrasal verb constructions and in its purest sense is used to add ideas of an upward movement or increase to the base verb. Additionally, 'up' can be used to add less obvious ideas to phrasal verbs, which include completion (eat up), creation (set up), unexpected events (turn up) and improvement (cheer up).
So, now that we have covered the basics, let's take a look at the two ways that we use 'follow up' in English....
MEANING 1: To learn more about something
CEFR Language Level | B2 - Upper intermediate |
Usage | Common |
Where is it used? | Everywhere |
Potential synonyms | To find out |
Separable? | Rarely |
The first of the applications of 'follow up' that we are going to consider in the post is 'to take action in order to learn more about something'.
Nouns commonly used with this application....
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At it's core, this application of 'follow up' is one that is just the simple act of seeking more information about something. This is typically when you receive some news or information about a subject or situation and you then contact the people involved in order to obtain more information about it.
Most of the time however, we use follow up when we need to take further action in order to gather extra information on a subject or matter, as outlined below.
Some typical situations in which this can be demonstrated include the following....
When the police contact people from whom they have received tips and information about crimes that have been committed.
When companies collect sales leads at trade shows and exhibitions and contact the potential new customers afterwards.
When journalists receive information about news stories and need to contact the people involved in order to gain more information for their articles.
Often, with this application we add the extra preposition 'on' to specify the thing that we are learning more about. It is also possible to use the additional preposition 'with' to state the person who you need to contact to ask questions and get information from.
I'll follow up on that sales lead and see what more information I can find out.
We need to follow up on this report with some deeper research.
Don't pay that bill, you should follow it up with the company first and question why it is so high.
He promised to follow up with the client to clarify their requirements.
The team followed up on the complaint to ensure it was properly resolved.
With this first application, although it can be used separably, I would say that 9 times out of 10 we use it in an inseparable way. As I mentioned before, this application is one that is used a lot in the world of work and tends not to be used so much in informal everyday English apart from perhaps to talk about issues or problems that people are experiencing with companies, businesses or services that they pay for.
Christine called the customer to follow up on the service request.
We need to follow up on that missed deadline and find out what went wrong.
The doctor scheduled an appointment to follow up on the patient’s test results.
Please follow up on that issue and let me know what happens.
MEANING 2: To do something additional
CEFR Language Level | C1 - Advanced |
Usage | Medium |
Where is it used? | Everywhere |
Potential synonyms | To add |
Separable? | Yes |
The second of our two meanings of 'follow up' has some overlap with the first and means 'to do something additional to what we have already done'.
To clarify this usage, instead of trying to learn more information, in this application our main objective is rather to continue something that has already started by doing something else that will increase the first action's effect or help it succeed in some way.
For example, if you work in an office and you speak to customers on the phone, you may sometimes need to follow up a phone call by sending an email to confirm the details that were discussed during the call. In this example, the communication was started with the phone call and now you add to it by sending an email to clarify, confirm or prompt the other person to act in some way.
Another example is when you are applying for a job. Firstly, you send the job application to the company and then you may follow it up with an email to the hiring manager to say thank you or to give additional information about your application.
You should note that this application is frequently used in a separable way. The direct object of the 'following up' action is the original first action, which typically goes between 'follow' and 'up'. In order to state the second action, we use the additional preposition 'with'.
I sent the customer an email last week and I plan to follow it up with a phone call tomorrow.
The manager asked us to follow our initial report up with a more detailed analysis.
The company launched a successful campaign last year and are now following up with a nationwide rollout.
George followed up his presentation by sending a summary document to all attendees.
We should follow our conversation up with a formal proposal.
Lucy followed her application up with a thank-you email to the hiring manager.
To ensure nothing was missed, I followed up the meeting with a checklist.
This application of 'follow up' is not just heard in the business world however and you may often hear it in reference to your favourite singers and authors or to anyone who publishes things for people. If a writer publishes a book and then sometime later puts out a sequel, it is possible to say that they followed the first book up with the second. It is often used in this way when the first published item is famous, renowned or notable in some way.
In 1987, Michael Jackson followed his album Thriller up with the album Bad.
In a shock move, the romance author followed up her last book with a horror novel about vampires.
Lastly, we can use 'follow up' in this way to talk about a situation when you perform one action directly after another or in a series of actions, usually to maximise its impact. When used this way, it can often be heard in reference to sport and competitions.
The boxer followed up his sidestep with a series of undercuts.
The chef followed up the starter of chicken and lentil kebabs with a main course of satay chicken.
'FOLLOW-UP' AS AN ADJECTIVE AND A NOUN
If you have ever heard 'follow up' being used in either of the applications that we have already discussed, it is possible that it was as either an adjective or a noun as both of these are used equally as much as their phrasal verb cousin.
AS AN ADJECTIVE....
When we use the adjective 'follow-up', it is usually placed before a noun such as 'phone call' or 'meeting' to describe a further action that is connected to a previous one. For example, you might make a follow-up phone call to a customer after you send them an email, or perhaps you have a follow-up meeting with a customer to discuss if all of the actions in your first meeting have been completed and the customer is satisfied.
The doctor scheduled a follow-up appointment for the next week.
Jill sent a follow-up email to clarify her earlier message.
We conducted a follow-up survey to assess customer satisfaction.
The follow-up interview provided more detailed information.
AS A NOUN....
We tend to use the noun 'follow-up' for a further action that we take linked to a previous action, much like the phrasal verb usages that we have already considered. We typically use this in the same way as the adjective form but as we already know the context, we drop the noun and the word 'follow-up' becomes the noun instead.
The manager called me in for a follow-up after our initial meeting.
Did you receive a follow-up to the application you submitted?
The doctor said I’ll need a follow-up in three months.
Jo's presentation was impressive, and the follow-up was even better.
We have now reached the end of this post and I just want to say thank you for clicking on my post and reading it. I hope that you've enjoyed it and have been able to learn something new about the phrasal verb 'follow up'. If you enjoyed this post, please go ahead and check out some of my other posts.
Now it is YOUR turn. Can you think of a sentence yourself using 'follow up'. Write it in the comments section below if you can, or alternatively any comments, suggestions or feedback that you may have....don't be shy!!!
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THE END
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