New answers tagged meaning-in-context
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Apart from the obvious toll the pandemic has taken on public health, with lives lost and health care facilities stretched to breaking point, there have been alarming ramifications for children in USA.
Here the prepositional phrase with lives lost and health care facilities stretched to breaking point is parenthetical: it is to be understood as explanation ...
1
Almost too means bordering on excessive. Photogenic means looking good when photographed. If you described a person as almost too photogenic it would imply that they look so good in photographs that it might carry negative impacts (for instance, being constantly trailed by the paparazzi, or that they come across as cloying, fake, or plastic).
4
Firstly, the Employer will make a demand on the bank which provided
the PB. For tactical reasons, this demand is often made [so that the
bank has as little time as possible to inform the Contractor], and at
an inconvenient time [so that the Contractor struggles to engage
lawyers to prevent the bank from paying out on the Performance Bond].
Preliminary point:...
0
Since the underpinning theme of the album is Yosif's separation from his girlfriend D'Arbanville. Also he was interviewed at this time noting the simultaneous feeling of looking forward with curiousness and observation of the past with clarity. This defines this album as a transitional piece, helping to define his use of the word tillerman as the ferryman ...
-1
In The Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, "so that" is considered to be a subordinating conjunction, otherwise called a subordinator.
14.11 p. 998
Subordinators
SUBORDINATORS (or more fully SUBORDINATING CONJUNCTIONS) are the most
important formal device of subordination, particularly for finite clauses. Like
prepositions, which they ...
0
"Over" sometimes means "at a distance" as in "over there" or "he lives over in Blanktown." Presumably the point of being dropped off two blocks away was that he could get out and make sure he wasn't being followed before walking to their meeting place.
0
You could also say:
My research in social psychology brought to my attention the
relevance of theoretical physics for behavioral sciences.
bring to attention - to make someone aware of something (M-W)
or
My research in social psychology turned my attention to the
relevance of theoretical physics for behavioral sciences.
turn your attention(s) to sth/sb - ...
1
An "executed purpose" refers to a task you do to accomplish a certain goal.
"..you are wholly concentrated on bringing about a certain result, clearly the quicker and easier it is brought about the better.."
This part not only describes the "executed purpose" at its core, but also explains the concept of the "transaction&...
3
"priced out" implies that a person can afford to live in a town based on normal/historic housing prices for that town.
However, due to external causes i.e. changes in the housing market, the housing costs in that town have risen significantly, and they can no longer afford to live in their own town.
Examples.
Joe lived in the charming town of ...
3
Per Investopedia
Being priced out of the market means that it has become too expensive for you.
Being priced out is commonly used to refer to the real estate market. For example, people in cities with extremely high average home prices, such as Newport Beach, California, would be said to be priced out of the market if they could not afford even an entry-...
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The prices reached by properties in attractive areas exceed what a normal local person can afford because the properties are bought by external people with more money. In consequence, locals cannot compete in the local housing market and are said to be "priced out".
"‘There goes my chance’: house prices rocket as Cornwall locals priced out&...
1
All the references go to the "Little Rascals" and "Our Gang" shorts which ran from 1922 until 1944.
Spanky, Alfalfa, and Buckwheat were all recognizable characters based on certain physical attributes.
Alfalfa's trademark was his freckles and an untameable "cowlick"; hence the 'lock' reference, as in a lock of hair.
He was ...
1
An Elephind search of multiple newspaper databases turns up an instance of "popped a cap" from 1849 that seems to involve shooting live ammunition at a partridge. From "Abe Eaton's Visit to the Celebration," in the [Ebensburg, Pennsylvania] Mountain Sentinel (October 25, 1849), reprinted from the New York Spirit of the Times:
All the ...
8
Since giddy-up commands a horse to get moving, it can be used to mean from the start. A similar phrase would be from the get-go, which M/W has as "from the very beginning". Primordial then is an intensifier, "from the really very beginning, way back when."
1
A little more context would help but I understand this dense and effective prose to refer to the goddamn (=disgusting and deplorable) primordial (=original) brutal reality of black slavery, to the reduction of human relationship to the coarse master-slave ordering to giddy-up (=hurry-up with the work, with progress; giddy-up being a demeaning order usually ...
4
On the one hand, the expression "how dare you?" is clearly a rhetorical question—that is, it isn't a question in search of an answer, like "how hot is it today?" but (in this case) an interrogatively framed expression of anger or outrage in response to an offensive action or statement by "you." In effect, the expression "...
6
The phrase “put a cupcake to my head” mimics the far more common idiom
hold/put a gun to my head
: to force someone to do something by using threats
The cupcake is just the author's innocuous/jocular/sarcastic/twist on a well-known idiom. It is, as far as I know, not used in daily conversation.
1
How about ben trovato?
appropriate and characteristic even if untrue; happily invented or discovered.
[Dictionary.com]
2
Sometimes the preposition of conveys a relationship of agency, means, or cause and effect (see "of, prep." in the Oxford English Dictionary). For instance, in a phrase like
a shiver of excitement,
excitement may be the cause of the shiver or the occasion for the shiver; of helps describe from what state the shiver comes. That usage may be ...
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