Figure out

My phrasal verb for the week is figure out. It means to understand something or someone, or find the answer to a question or problem after thinking carefully. For example, "I've known Bob for a long time, but I can't figure him out." This means that I've tried, but I don't understand Bob. For example, "We have to figure out how to do the project with half the money." This means that we have to solve this problem.

Looking at the examples above, you can see that when we have a person or thing, we can put this in the middle, between figure and out. If we have a question word, like how, what or why, we put it after. For example, "I can't figure out what the problem is with my phone."