Which one of the following phrasal verbs may be used in the blank space in the sentence, “He is fond of art and seems ____ (suited) to be an artist”?

Correct — C, (c) cut out.

The word in brackets after the blank is a gloss, not part of the sentence. This booklet uses it throughout the phrasal-verb set: it prints the plain meaning wanted — here ‘(suited)’ — and asks for the phrasal verb that carries it. So the sentence to be completed is ‘He is fond of art and seems ____ to be an artist’, and the sense required is ‘naturally fitted’.

‘Cut out’ is that phrase. To be cut out for something, or cut out to be something, is to be naturally suited to it, and the metaphor is the tailor’s: cloth cut to a pattern is shaped in advance for what it is to become, and a person cut out for a calling is shaped for it in the same way. The idiom is used with both complements — cut out for administrative work, cut out to be a teacher — and it appears very often in the negative, which is a good way to remember it: he is simply not cut out for this job.

The grammar of the sentence confirms the choice. ‘Seems’ is followed here by a participle used adjectivally and then by a to-infinitive, and ‘cut out’ takes exactly that frame: seems cut out to be an artist. Read the sentence with each of the other options in place and the frame breaks or the meaning changes.

The first half of the sentence is doing work too. ‘He is fond of art’ establishes an inclination, and the second half claims that the inclination matches what he is by nature. That is the ground the answer must cover — not what he has been given or what he has produced, but what he is fitted for.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)fit out — ‘Fit out’ is the strongest of the three misses, because ‘fit’ carries the idea of suitability and the option therefore looks like a translation of the gloss. It is not. ‘Fit out’ means to equip or supply with whatever is needed for a purpose — to fit out a ship for a voyage, to fit out an expedition, a workshop fitted out with new machinery — and its object is the thing equipped, while the equipment is what is supplied to it. Being fitted out is something done to a person or a vessel from outside; being cut out for a calling is something true of a person by nature. The sentence is about aptitude, so the outfitting sense cannot serve.
• (b)bring out — ‘Bring out’ has two settled senses and neither is suitability. It means to publish or release — the department brought out a revised manual — and it means to make a quality evident, as in a good supervisor brings out the best in his staff, or the lighting brings out the colour in the painting. The second sense hovers near art, which is what puts the option on this page beside a sentence about an artist. But bringing out a quality is causing it to show, whereas the sentence claims that the man is by nature fitted for the work; the two are different claims, and only one of them answers the gloss.
• (d)suit out — ‘Suit out’ is not a phrasal verb of standard English at all. ‘Suit’ does the work alone in every sense the sentence might want: the work suits him, he is suited to the work, the arrangement suits everybody. Attaching ‘out’ to it produces something no dictionary carries. The option is built by taking the bracketed gloss, ‘suited’, and hanging a particle on it, which is a shape worth recognising because it recurs: an option that simply repeats the glossed word with a particle attached has been manufactured for candidates who are matching letters rather than meanings.

Q14 to Q17 form the phrasal-verb set of this paper, and they are all built the same way — a sentence with a blank, a one-word gloss of the meaning wanted, and four combinations of a common verb with a particle. The task is to know which combination the language actually uses for that meaning.

A phrasal verb is idiomatic by definition: its meaning cannot be assembled from the verb and the particle. ‘Cut out’ illustrates this well, since the same two words carry several unrelated senses — to be naturally suited (he is cut out for it), to remove by cutting (cut out the advertisement), to stop doing something (cut out sugar), and of an engine, to stop suddenly (the motor cut out). Only context tells them apart, and a candidate who has learnt the phrase in one sense may not recognise it in another.

The way to prepare is by families rather than by lists of unrelated idioms. The ‘cut’ family runs cut out, cut off, cut down, cut back, cut in, cut across and cut up. The ‘fit’ family is small: fit in, fit out, fit up. The ‘bring’ family is large and is tested elsewhere in this paper. Learning a family together makes the particle the unit of meaning, which is what it is.

And where a paper prints a gloss, use it as the test: substitute the gloss into the sentence, then substitute each option, and keep the one that leaves the sentence saying the same thing.

Key facts

• To be ‘cut out for’ something, or ‘cut out to be’ something, is to be naturally suited to it; the metaphor is cloth cut to a pattern and shaped in advance for what it will become.
• The idiom takes either complement — cut out for the work, cut out to be an artist — and is very often used in the negative.
• ‘Fit out’ means to equip with what is needed, as a ship is fitted out for a voyage; it describes something supplied from outside, not an aptitude.
• ‘Bring out’ means to publish or release, and also to make a quality evident, as in bringing out the best in someone.
• ‘Suit out’ is not a standard English phrasal verb; ‘suit’ carries the meaning alone, as in ‘he is suited to the work’.
• In this booklet’s phrasal-verb set the word in round brackets after the blank is a gloss of the meaning wanted and is not part of the printed sentence.

Common traps

• Choosing the option whose verb resembles the gloss. ‘Fit out’ shares the idea of fitness and means equipping, which is a different thing altogether.
• Taking the manufactured option — the gloss word with a particle attached — as though a phrasal verb existed simply because it can be written down.
• Reading the bracketed gloss as part of the sentence instead of as the meaning to be matched.
• Learning a phrasal verb in one sense and failing to recognise it in another; ‘cut out’ has at least four unrelated uses.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following phrasal verbs may be used in the blank space in the sentence, “The vessel was ____ (equipped) for a voyage of six months”?

  • (a)cut out
  • (b)fitted out
  • (c)brought out
  • (d)made out

  Answer(b) fitted out — to fit out is to supply with the equipment needed for a purpose, which is what is done to a ship before a voyage. ‘Cut out’ is about natural aptitude, ‘brought out’ about publishing or revealing, and ‘made out’ about discerning or claiming.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following phrasal verbs may be used in the blank space in the sentence, “A good supervisor ____ (reveals) the best in his team”?

  • (a)brings out
  • (b)brings up
  • (c)brings about
  • (d)brings round

  Answer(a) brings out — to bring out a quality is to make it evident. ‘Bring up’ is to rear a child or raise a subject, ‘bring about’ is to cause something to happen, and ‘bring round’ is to persuade someone to a view.