💬 IT Phrasal Verbs — Reference
64 phrasal verbs used daily by developers, DevOps engineers, and IT teams — grouped by domain, with example sentences from real IT contexts.
- Browse by domain — Git, DevOps, Communication, User Actions, Debugging
- Each verb shows: base form, past tense form, example sentence, and meaning
- Copy any example to use as a template in your own emails, tickets, and messages
- Practise them in context: Phrasal Verb Exercises →
Git & Version Control 12 verbs
Switch to a branch, tag, or commit; also: examine something
"Let me check out the feature branch and review the changes."
Fetch and merge remote changes into your local branch
"I'll pull in the latest changes from main before starting."
Send local committed changes to a remote repository
"Can you push up your branch so I can review it?"
Combine one branch's changes into another
"Once the PR is approved, we'll merge in the changes."
Create a new branch starting from the current commit
"Branch off from main before you start the refactor."
Revert to a previous state in version history
"We rolled back to the last stable commit."
Temporarily save uncommitted changes without committing them
"Stash away your WIP changes before switching branches."
Apply a specific commit from one branch to another
"I'll cherry-pick that hotfix commit into the release branch."
Combine multiple commits into a single commit
"Squash down those 8 commits before merging."
Create a new commit that undoes a previous commit's changes
"We reverted to the previous version after the bugs were found."
Mark a specific commit with a named label (usually a version)
"Tag this commit as v2.4.0 before the release."
Reference or indicate a specific commit, branch, or file
"HEAD now points to the new release branch."
DevOps & Deployment 15 verbs
Create, initialise, and start a new compute resource or service
"Spin up a new container for the integration tests."
Destroy and remove infrastructure or a running environment cleanly
"The CI pipeline tears down the test environment after the build."
Gradually deploy a release to production (often incrementally)
"We're rolling out the new feature to 10% of users first."
Revert a deployment to a previous working version
"The error rate spiked — roll back the deployment immediately."
Switch all traffic or load from old system to new system at once
"We'll cut over to the new infrastructure this Saturday."
Increase the capacity or number of instances of a service
"Scale up the cluster ahead of the product launch."
Reduce the capacity or number of instances of a service
"Scale down after peak traffic subsides to save costs."
Transfer ownership or responsibility to another person or team
"The on-call engineer handed off the incident at 08:00."
Gradually retire or remove a system, service, or feature
"We're phasing out the legacy API over the next two quarters."
Use a backup or alternative when the primary option fails
"If the new service fails, fall back to the cached response."
Start a service or set of services
"Run docker compose up to bring up all services."
Stop a running service or set of services
"Bring down the staging environment during the migration."
Connect and configure components so they work together
"I've wired up the new auth service to the API gateway."
Start a process, pipeline, or automated workflow
"Merging to main automatically kicks off the CI pipeline."
Monitor and wait for a specific event or condition
"Set an alert to watch for error rates above 1%."
Meetings & Communication 15 verbs
Start a meeting, project, or sprint
"Let's kick off the sprint planning at 10:00."
Finish or conclude a meeting, task, or discussion
"We're running out of time — let's wrap up the retro."
Send a reminder or continuation message about a previous topic
"I'll follow up on the blocker after standup."
Give final approval or confirmation
"Can you sign off on the architecture diagram before we build?"
Transfer responsibility for a task or project to someone else
"I'm handing over the project to the Berlin team next week."
Accept responsibility for a task or assignment
"I'll take on the database migration ticket this sprint."
Investigate a problem or question
"Can someone look into why the tests are flaky?"
Generate or produce an idea, solution, or plan
"The team came up with a cleaner solution during the design session."
Quickly review or go over a list, document, or plan
"Let me quickly run through the release checklist."
Add someone to a conversation, email thread, or decision
"Loop in the security team before you deploy that change."
Return to a topic later in the same or a future meeting
"Let's circle back to the API design discussion after lunch."
Continue a detailed discussion outside the current meeting
"This is getting complex — let's take it offline after the standup."
Introduce a topic or issue for discussion
"Can you bring up the latency issue in the next sprint retro?"
Contact someone, often proactively
"Reach out to the DevOps team if you need help with the pipeline."
Focus attention on a specific detail or area
"Let's zoom in on the authentication flow — that's where the bug is."
User & System Actions 12 verbs
Register for a service or account for the first time
"Users sign up with their email and a password."
Authenticate and start a session (also: sign in)
"You'll need to log in before you can access the dashboard."
End an authenticated session (also: sign out)
"For security, users are logged out after 30 minutes of inactivity."
Actively choose to participate or receive something
"Users must explicitly opt in to marketing emails."
Choose not to participate or to stop receiving something
"The unsubscribe link lets users opt out of all notifications."
Configure and prepare an account, environment, or system
"The onboarding flow guides users to set up their profile."
Complete a form by entering information in each field
"Fill in the form fields and click Submit."
Complete the purchase process on an e-commerce platform
"The user added items to the cart and proceeded to check out."
Create a copy of data for recovery purposes
"Back up your data before running the migration script."
Synchronise data between two systems or devices
"The app syncs up with the server every 5 minutes."
Prevent access to an account due to failed authentication
"After 5 failed attempts, the account is locked out."
Return something to its original or default state
"Click Restore Defaults to reset to factory settings."
Debugging & Problem-Solving 10 verbs
Reduce a set of possibilities to a smaller, more focused set
"We've narrowed down the bug to the payment service."
Find the source of a problem after a thorough search
"It took two hours to track down the memory leak."
Investigate something deeply and thoroughly
"Let me dig into the logs and see what happened at 14:00."
Eliminate a possibility as the cause
"We can rule out a network issue — packet loss is zero."
Make a reported bug occur again in a controlled environment
"I can't reproduce the error on staging — can you share your exact steps?"
Analyse something by separating it into component parts
"Break down the request trace to find which service is slow."
Encounter an error, problem, or obstacle unexpectedly
"I ran into a race condition when running the tests in parallel."
Identify or determine something precisely
"We still haven't pinned down the exact cause of the crash."
Find an alternative approach to avoid a problem or limitation
"We're working around the upstream bug with a local patch."
Indicate or suggest a particular cause or location
"The stack trace points to a null reference in the auth module."
Practise these phrasal verbs
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