The article proposes to consider English phrasal verbs such as tell off as instances of syntactic ellipsis. The syntactically bound position of the prepositional adverb in such phrases is not related to their idiomaticity. A series of contexts demonstrate a link between tell off as a phrasal verb and a construction combining tell and an infinitive phrase with and optional position for the adverb off, which is recognized as a separate sense of tell in dictionaries.