Italy runs on drama, food, and trains — and so does the verb GET. Master the 12 most essential get phrasal verbs and you’ll find them everywhere, from boarding a Frecciarossa to navigating Italian bureaucracy.
Why phrasal verbs with GET are so important
GET is one of the most versatile verbs in English. On its own it means receive or obtain. But pair it with a preposition or adverb — a particle — and it transforms into something completely different. Get away is not the same as get + away; it is a new verb with its own meaning.
At B2 level you need to stop translating phrasal verbs word by word and start treating them as units. Today we’ll anchor the 12 most useful get phrasal verbs in Italian life: its trains, its families, its working culture, and its legendary summer holidays.
Key idea: The meaning of the phrasal verb is often not predictable from GET alone. Learn each one as a complete unit.
The 12 essential phrasal verbs with GET
| Phrasal verb | Meaning | Italian context example |
|---|---|---|
| get around | travel around a place; find a way past an obstacle | The fastest way to get around northern Italy is by high-speed train. |
| get away | escape; go on a short holiday | Every August, millions of Italians get away from the cities during Ferragosto. |
| get back | return to a place; recover something | After the holiday, workers get back to Rome in the first week of September. |
| get by | manage with limited resources | With real wages still below 2021 levels, many young Italians struggle to get by. |
| get ahead | make progress, especially in a career | It can be difficult to get ahead in regions where youth unemployment is high. |
| get along (with) | have a friendly relationship with someone | Italian colleagues generally get along well — long lunch breaks help. |
| get together | meet socially as a group | Italian families get together every Sunday for a long, unhurried lunch. |
| get on (with) | make progress with a task; have a good relationship (UK) | Let’s get on with ordering — the waiter has come three times already. |
| get down to | start doing something seriously | After the espresso, it was time to get down to the contract negotiations. |
| get over | recover from an illness, shock, or disappointment | It took Italy years to get over the economic shock of the 2010s. |
| get through | survive a difficult period; finish; reach someone by phone | You’ll need patience to get through Italian customs paperwork. |
| get across | communicate an idea clearly to others | The tour guide got her point across despite the noisy crowd at the Colosseum. |
Italy in motion: GET in real context
In 2025, Italy welcomed around 185 million tourists — a 7.1% rise on the previous year. Most of them faced the same first question: how do you get around a country this long and varied? The answer, increasingly, is the train. Italy’s high-speed Frecciarossa services reach 300 km/h and link Turin, Milan, Florence, Rome, Naples, and beyond. Book in advance and you can get from Rome to Florence for as little as €19.90 — a bargain for a 90-minute journey through the Apennines.
But the most culturally interesting use of get in Italy may be get away. Ferragosto — the national holiday centred on 15 August — is when Italy essentially empties. Shops close, cities grow quiet, and families pack into cars and trains to get away to the coast, the mountains, or their ancestral town. It is less a holiday and more a migration. Then, in early September, they all get back at once — which is the best time to observe the Italian art of the controlled chaos.
Italy’s working culture also gives us get by and get ahead in vivid relief. Real wages in Italy have fallen by around 7.5% since early 2021, the largest drop of any major OECD economy. Youth unemployment stood at 18.7% in January 2025, well above the eurozone average. For many under-30s, especially in the south, the daily challenge is not advancement but survival: just managing to get by. Those who do get ahead often migrate north — to Milan or Turin — or abroad, creating the “brain drain” phenomenon Italians call fuga dei cervelli.
And then there is Sunday. Italian families get together every Sunday with an almost ceremonial regularity. The meal is not rushed; it is the point. Grandparents, parents, children, uncles, cousins — everyone around one table. If the pasta takes three hours and the conversation takes four, nobody minds. It is the get together that counts, not the schedule.
Common mistakes for Spanish speakers
Watch out for these errors
❌ I need to get around this problem inventing a new solution.
✅ I need to get around this problem by inventing a new solution.
Why: When get around means “find a way past an obstacle”, the method is expressed with by + gerund, not with a bare infinitive. Spanish speakers sometimes drop the preposition.
❌ We must get together us this weekend.
✅ We must get together this weekend.
Why: Get together is intransitive — you don’t get someone together, you all get together. Spanish speakers often insert a reflexive pronoun by analogy with reunirse.
❌ She didn’t get over the news since two weeks.
✅ She hasn’t got over the news in two weeks.
Why: Since marks a starting point in time, not a duration. Use in for duration with a negative, or for with a continuing state. The present perfect is also needed here — the recovery is ongoing.
❌ It’s hard to get on in this country. (meaning manage financially)
✅ It’s hard to get by in this country.
Why: Get on (UK English) means to make progress or have a relationship — it does NOT mean to manage with little money. That is get by. Confusing these two is very common.
❌ Can you get your idea across to me? (when asking someone to explain in a first conversation)
✅ Can you explain your idea to me? / Did you get your idea across?
Why: Get across implies the idea has already been attempted but you’re checking it was understood. It focuses on successful communication, not on explaining from scratch. Use it after the fact, not to request an explanation.
Example bank (Italy context)
- The quickest way to get around Rome is by metro — lines A and B cover the main sights.
- Tourists who book ahead can often get around the long queues at the Vatican by using timed entry tickets.
- We decided to get away for a long weekend in Sicily before the summer crowds arrived.
- After Ferragosto, it takes the whole country about a week to get back into its working rhythm.
- She got back her lost wallet at the train station lost-property office in Florence.
- On a starting salary of €1,200 a month in Milan, it’s genuinely hard to get by.
- Many graduates move to Germany or the UK because they feel they can get ahead more easily there.
- I get along really well with my Italian flatmates — they taught me to make a proper ragù.
- The whole extended family got together at the grandparents’ farmhouse outside Siena every August.
- Right — we’ve had the coffee and the small talk. Let’s get down to business.
- The economy took years to get over the damage of the financial crisis.
- Are you getting on with your Italian lessons? You’ll need it in the smaller towns.
- It was difficult to get through the bureaucracy to register an apartment rental in Naples.
- The presenter managed to get her message across even to the audience members who spoke no English.
- We got on the high-speed train at Milan Centrale and were in Rome in under three hours.
- I tried to call the rental agency, but I couldn’t get through — the line was permanently engaged.
Past tense note: irregular or regular?
In British English, the past tense and past participle of get can be got or (in some cases) gotten. In standard British English, got is the norm for both: I got through / I have got through. American English uses gotten for the past participle in most contexts. Neither is wrong globally, but be consistent — and note that your Italian students will need to know got for B2 exams set in British English.
If you want to cement the difference between past simple and present perfect with verbs like get, our earlier post on the present perfect vs past simple walks through the logic step by step with examples from Japan.
Quick practice: five questions
Choose the correct phrasal verb to complete each sentence.
- After the flight delay, we finally _____ to our hotel in Rome at midnight. (got / got around / got through)
- Young professionals in Milan often say it’s hard to _____ without a second income. (get along / get by / get over)
- The children _____ the disappointment of the cancelled trip much faster than the adults did. (got through / got over / got together)
- Every Sunday the whole family _____ at the grandparents’ house for lunch. (gets ahead / gets together / gets around)
- She couldn’t _____ her idea _____ in the meeting because the connection kept dropping. (get…through / get…over / get…across)
Show answer key
- got (simple arrival / reach a place — get to)
- get by (manage financially)
- got over (recover from disappointment)
- gets together (meet as a group)
- get…across (communicate an idea successfully)
vocabulary
phrasal verbs
Italy
CLIL
Practising at B1 level? Our B1 guide to phrasal verbs with GET using Palestine is the perfect stepping stone before this B2 lesson.
Italy tourism 2025 figures: Tourist Italy — Travel Trends 2025–2026
Trenitalia high-speed fares and speeds: The Man in Seat 61 — Train Travel in Italy 2026
Italy real wage data and youth unemployment: OECD Employment Outlook 2025: Italy
Italian family culture and Ferragosto: Cultural Atlas — Italian Family; Britannica — Italy: Daily Life and Social Customs