I find this sentence in number 12 out of 4.1 exercise in a book named Advanced GRAMMAR IN USE published by Cambridge university press.
She pushed open the door and ran into the room.
I looked up the dictionary and think that the word 'open' must be an adjective. But I don't understand why the word 'open' is put in that place instead of putting it between the word 'the' and the word 'door'.
The pattern 'push sth + adj. ' is found in Oxford English dictionary for advanced learners and there is an example sentence: I pushed the door open. So can I think that 'open' in this sentence is an adjective?
Besides, almost any dictionaries do not consider 'open' as an adverb including non-ESL dictionaries such as webster's new world college dictionary and merriam webster's collegiate dictionary, which suprises me a lot !!!
Best Answer
The writer maybe sees push open as a phrasal verb, like put on. Phrasal verbs can be used in two ways:
Your sentence matches form 2). I cannot find any dictionary evidence to confirm that it is normal to use push open as a phrasal verb, but this NGram indicates that quite a few writers use this form.
Here are a couple of examples: