Learn English – What function does ‘open’ have in ‘She pushed open the door’

syntaxword-order

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:

1) She put the dress on
2) She put on the dress.

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:

When you've finished putting beads on all the pins, open the big (#3) safety pin and use the nail file to push open the little loop-the-loop at the end of it My best friends and me

Silence promises danger not peace, for always the sounds that push open my door or your door, are remembered as coming out of nothing. In the shadow of sharpeville

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