Business Phrasal Verbs — Unit 10, Upper-intermediate English
High-frequency phrasal verbs in professional contexts — with partners, nuance, and pushed formal upgrades.
Reading: All-Hands — Launch Plan
**Product all-hands · talking points**
Next Monday we **kick off** the EMEA beta. Engineering will **roll out** SSO in waves so we can **iron out** edge cases before peak traffic. Support plans to **scale up** weekend coverage while we **phase in** the new billing engine.
The legacy SMS gateway will **wind down** in December; messaging **ties in with** our WhatsApp roadmap. Analytics will **zero in on** activation drop-offs in week two and **pick up on** patterns in support tags.
We **carried out** a security review last month. Customer success will **follow up** with at-risk accounts after beta day three and **reach out to** enterprise sponsors before go-live. This programme **branches out** from core CRM only where it **ties in with** enterprise deals.
Finance asked us to **draw up** a hiring plan before we **scale up** onboarding coaches. We will **hold off on** international marketing until billing **sorts out** tax edge cases. Product must **think through** rollback paths before we **go ahead with** full promotion.
Engineering will **build on** last quarter's perf wins and **move forward with** canary deploys. Leadership will **sign off on** scope Tuesday. Teams should **cut back on** optional refactors that **fall behind on** reliability targets. If integrations **fall short**, we **follow up** with vendors before we **roll out** wave two.
**Carry out** game days in July. **Kick off** comms planning Friday.
**Questions taken from the floor**
*"We said we'd **wind down** the SMS gateway last December too. What's different?"*
Fair challenge. Last year we **put off** the decommission because two enterprise accounts had not **moved over**. Both have now migrated, and the remaining traffic is internal alerting, which Platform will **take on** in October. If either of those slips, we **hold off** again — but we will say so in November rather than in January.
*"Support is being asked to **scale up** weekend cover while Finance asks everyone to **cut back on** spend. Which is it?"*
Both, and the tension is real rather than a misunderstanding. The weekend cover is funded from the launch contingency and **runs out** at the end of Q4. If beta volumes hold, we **draw up** a permanent case in January; if they do not, cover **winds down** automatically and nobody has to make an awkward decision.
*"What actually happens if we **fall behind on** the billing engine?"*
We **go ahead with** wave one on the legacy engine and **push back** wave two. That is the whole contingency. It costs us three weeks and it is not a disaster.
*"Who **signs off on** stopping the launch?"*
The incident commander on the day, without escalation. **This is deliberate.** In March we **carried on** through a degraded launch for four hours because nobody believed they had the authority to stop it, and the cost of that delay exceeded anything a premature stop would have cost.
*"Are we going to **take on** more coaches before onboarding volumes justify it?"*
No. Hiring **kicks off** only when two consecutive weeks exceed the threshold in the plan. I would rather **fall behind** for a fortnight than **carry** headcount into a quarter that does not materialise.
Vocabulary from this unit
| Phrasal verb | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| roll out | launch gradually | Roll out v2 in EMEA first. |
| scale up | grow capacity | Scale up onboarding staff. |
| wind down | end gradually | Wind down hosted SMS. |
| phase in | introduce stepwise | Phase in new pricing. |
| kick off | start | Kick off discovery Monday. |
| Phrasal verb | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| follow up | contact again | Follow up on open actions. |
| iron out | fix details | Iron out contract wording. |
| tie in with | connect to | Ties in with Q3 OKRs. |
| zero in on | focus on | Zero in on churn drivers. |
| carry out | do/perform | Carry out penetration tests. |
| Phrasal verb | Example |
|---|---|
| branch out | Branched out into logistics software. |
| buy out | Bought out the founding team. |
| scale up / wind down | Scale up winners; wind down experiments. |
1 more vocabulary section in the full unit.
This is the free sample from this unit. The full unit adds 1 more reading passage, comprehension questions with an answer key, the listening exercises, flashcards for the vocabulary above, and a speaking task — with your progress tracked so the next unit unlocks when you are ready for it.
Common questions
What level is this unit?
Upper-intermediate — roughly CEFR B2. If you are not sure of your level, the course places you with a short diagnostic before you start rather than making you guess.
Do I need to pay to use this?
The reading passage and vocabulary on this page are free to read. The rest of the unit — the remaining passages, the exercises, the listening, the answer key and the progress tracking — is part of the paid General English course.
Is this British or American English?
British English spelling and vocabulary, which is what most learners in Azerbaijan are taught and what IELTS expects, though both are accepted in the exam.