What’s the difference between “heating” and “heating up”?

Someone could probably clarify this more, but I've always felt English has a lot of "directions" Heat up Sit down Put up Put down Clean up There are a lot of verbs that get a direction to them for some reason.

It's a subtle difference and can usually be used interchangeably, but if one were to try to put a rule on it it might be something like the one performing the action is doing the "heating". The thing being heated is "heating up". In your comic the tea is what's "heating up". However you could still say the thing being heated is simply "heating", but you'd probably use "heating up" when the goal is to reach a certain temperature. You can use simply "heating" if it's not specified how much heat is necessary. Here's another couple examples which might be useful (or not): "I don't plan on heating the whole house this winter" "The house is currently heating up" Maybe to put it more simply, "heating" is the process of adding heat. "Heating up" is the state something is in while heat is being added.

"Heating up" brings something up to (or towards) the appropriate temperature. "Heating" *per se* doesn't suggest an end point quite as clearly. In the UK, "heating up" is standard for food and drink, particularly as a quick process in a microwave, for example. "Heating" is more likely to be a longer process (e.g. in an oven, or simmering on the hob). Heating a room is generally a habitual thing, keeping the room heated (at least periodically); heating up a room is a specific activity, bringing it back to a warmer temperature on a particular occasion.

Heating can be by any amount. Heating up can be to restore/bring up to the "correct" temperature. Heating up your tea, I would argue, is to return old, cooled tea to a good, hot temperature because when you heat up the water for tea, it isn't tea yet lol.

it's easier to say "heating up his" rather than "heating his". Or at least it's easier to understand. There's also some minor differences that someone else pointed out about completion.

In the context of the cartoon, heating up would mean re-heating. Like the tea-shop owner made some tea then just warmed it up again. In some countries that's acceptable, but in the UK it's seen as a way of making really awful tea. In a tea shop it could mean the tea had been sitting out for ages and was then warmed up again. But you would just never say "I saw him heating the tea." The joke wouldn't work with "heating the tea," because it would just be seen as an incorrect way of referring to making or brewing the tea. "Heating" isn't used for any foods or drinks, in the UK at least. Cooking, boiling, warming, brewing, stewing, loads of verbs, but not heating.

"Heating up" will usually be something that was once warm, and got cool and now you want it to be warm again. "Heating" is just making a thing warm.

IMO, heating up implies heating something that was once already hot, but became cold. So, reheating or getting it back to the preferred temperature.

I'm not a native English speaker, but it was curiosities like these that made me start loving linguistics, lol This has to do with verb **transitivity** and the degree of **stativity** and **ingressiveness**. Phrasal verbs, for example, are strongly linked to **ingressiveness**. - **Stativity** refers to states or conditions that don’t change quickly, describing a continuous and controlled action. - **Ingressiveness** refers to verbs that describe the beginning of an action or a change of state. For example, with the verb **sit**: - "I sit here every day" describes a habit, a state of being seated. - "I sit down here every day" kinda describes a habit, but it focuses more on the transition from any other position to the seated position, not "being seated"

"up" seems to add a perfective aspect to the verb, as in, doing verb up to a certain and specific point. Not always, but in this case it does. Consider other phrasal verbs like "eat up", "drink up", "write up", "think up", "wait up". All of these imply doing something "up"/until a certain point. It should be noted this won't always be the case with phrasal verbs with "up", but it is a subset of them.

Yoo ATLA cartoon in the English learning sub

As an observation, "heating up" can often be used to mean "reheating". I would say that I'm heating up my tea if it had gone cold.

No difference here. The word "up" is often used to indicate "to completion", but it's now also used for no real reason Warm up Heat up Fill up Eat up Feel up Shoot up Line up

Heating up is heating to reach a target temperature range and then stop.

They mean the same thing, in the comic, the character on the left is accusing the character on the right of heating their tea through supernatural means and the joke is the character on the right just says “it’s a tea shop, of course I heated my tea”

My guess would be to heat it a little more.

I feel like "to heat up" is a subset of "to heat", where there is some appropriate temperature at which we will stop further heating. Consider these 3 different scenarios, like 3 different people heating their tea: 1. The tea gets slightly warm, but is not hot enough to be nice to drink. 2. The tea gets hot, to the perfect temeprature to drink. 3. The tea gets really hot, and keeps boiling endlessly until it all evaproates. Person 1 didn't quite manage to 'heat up' their tea. It was heated, but not by enough. Person 2 was 'heating' their tea, but more specifically, they were 'heating up' their tea. Person 3 was 'heating' their tea, but more than just 'heating it up', they were heating it to the extreme.. \--- This can be complicated by different people thinking a different temperature is appropriate, so what counts as appropriate levels of heat can be vague and subjective.

I would "heat up my tea" in a kettle, on the stove, in the microwave.  Heating up a cup of tea is a domestic, quotidian, normal act. But if I was "heating my tea" it would require special equipment like a Bunson burner, safety goggles, or a laser thermometer or something.