5 exercises — practise choosing the correct particle in near-synonym IT phrasal verbs.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
A release manager wants to revert a broken deployment to the previous version. Which phrasal verb correctly expresses this?
"roll back the deployment" is correct: "roll back" specifically means to revert to a previous, known-good state. Option A, "roll out", means the opposite — to release a new deployment forward, not revert it. Option C, "roll over", is used for renewing or extending something (like a loan or a log file), not reverting a deployment. Option D, "roll in", is not a standard phrasal verb for deployment actions and would confuse readers about the intended action.
2 / 5
An architect wants to increase capacity by adding more machine instances rather than making a single machine more powerful. Which phrasal verb correctly expresses this?
"scale out" is correct: it specifically means adding more instances (horizontal scaling), distinct from "scale up" which means making an existing instance more powerful (vertical scaling). Option A, "scale up", is the opposite approach — increasing the resources of a single machine. Option B, "scale down", means reducing capacity, not increasing it. Option D, "scale off", is not a standard phrasal verb in this domain and has no established meaning.
3 / 5
A user needs to end their authenticated session on a web application. Which phrasal verb correctly expresses this?
"log out" is the standard modern phrasal verb for ending a session. Option B, "log off the account", is an older or less standard variant that is understood but less precise in modern web application contexts ("log off" is more associated with operating systems than web sessions), and phrasing it as "log off the account" is unnatural — the more precise convention is "log out of the account". Option C, "log in reverse", is not a real phrasal verb. Option D, "log down", does not exist as a standard phrasal verb and would be unclear to readers.
4 / 5
A developer needs to temporarily disable a broken feature without a full deployment. Which phrasal verb correctly expresses this using a feature flag?
"turn off the feature flag" is correct: "turn off" precisely means to deactivate or disable something. Option B, "turn out", means to produce a result or to attend an event, not to disable a flag. Option C, "turn over", means to hand over responsibility or to reach a certain state, not to disable something. Option D, "turn in", means to submit or hand something in, which makes no sense with a feature flag.
5 / 5
An SRE wants to describe a service that stops responding entirely under heavy load. Which phrasal verb correctly expresses this failure?
"the service fell over" is correct: "fall over" is the established idiom in IT for a system or service crashing or becoming completely unresponsive. Option B, "fell out", typically describes a disagreement between people ("they fell out over the design decision"), not a system failure. Option C, "fell in", is not an established phrasal verb for this context and has no relevant technical meaning. Option D, "fell through", means a plan failed to happen ("the deal fell through"), which does not describe a running service crashing.