If you have thought of equivalents of the word get, then you are likely to have gotten confused, the best thing to do is to consider how get can be used to relate certain information and that information depends on the type of word used afterwards. There are expressions with get that are worth remembering but with an understanding of certain word uses, those expressions will stick better. For the new English speaker a good approach is to understand the grammar behind the use of get so that one does not have to memorize its uses.

Get can be used to relate movement. So if you are in the habit of having to travel, you can use get after an adjective of location like there. So if somebody gets here on time, I am referring to his arrival. Then get can be used in place of go, to refer to arriving at a location or returning back from one. It then becomes more practical, in the sense that one no longer has to remember go and come to refer to arriving to a destination and then returning from it, just change the word “there” that can occur after get to “back” and you have “get there” and “get back”. Then one has to learn the use of adjectives of location, time and specific prepositions to make get work for you, in different ways.

If I use a demonstrative word like this or that, depending on whether the object being presented is within my reach or not, I get an expression referring to understanding. Get is also being used there to refer to a purchase, so “I got that” also means that I bought a certain item.

When get is used before a past participle adjective, it then acquires the sense of becoming that. So “I get tired when I work a lot” means you are becoming tired and “I got excited to see a close relative after many years” means I became anxious.

When get is followed by the preposition to and then a location or place, it refers to moving to that location. Conversely putting “from” after get refers to moving away from a location to another one. With other prepositions like up, down, in and out, get takes on a definition that is independent of the sense of that preposition alone. In other words, “get up” generally refers to awaking from sleep, or rising from a prone position.

This is simply by the fact that for a person to rise up from a reclined position, he either has to wake or rises from that state. Get up used in association to someone sitting though, would mean that the person has to stand. “Get down” would be a command to move from an elevated position to a lower one. “Get in, please”, would be an invitation to enter a car for example while changing the in to out would mean that the person has been prompted to leave an enclosed space like a car.