I was told years ago that the use of phrases involving a preposition at their end is largely an assimilation of Black American slang from the early part of the 20th Century. Bombs detonate or explode, they don't "go off." Likewise, buildings don't "burn up" or "burn down:" they simply burn, or they may burn completely, or they may be razed by fire. Alarms are armed or disarmed, activated or deactivated, or simply set.

This is preposterous. The use of verbal particles (prepositions, preverbs, what have you) has been a part of English for at least a 1000 years. In fact most of the Germanic languages have them.

An example from Middle English cited in the OED2: "c1305 in E.E.P. (1862) 4 že fire sal berne vp sinful man žat haž misdo."

Ceci n'est pas un seing.