New answers tagged phrases
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Faltered
Faltered means to ‘fail in walking’ or lose your step, it is traditionally also used to describe ‘sinners who have lost their path’ or gone wrong.
To lose strength or purpose, to begin to fail or stop.
I started to work out four times a week last spring, I was doing great, but I faltered lately.
I was learning the violin but then I faltered.
...
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I'd say, "I've slackened off lately." From Merriam-Webster:
Definition of slack off
1 : to do something with less effort or energy than before I was
exercising regularly last summer, but I've been slacking off recently.
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I'd use tail off.
From [CED]:
tail off — phrasal verb with tail verb: to reduce in amount or become
lower in level
M-W adds the 'gradually', probably connected with the tapering of a tail, though doesn't give a wide enough definition:
tail off phrasal verb: to become smaller or quieter in a gradual way
ditto for Farlex:
tail off: to dwindle, ...
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Give up
to stop doing something that you do regularly
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Since the Crown is a fictional account of the reigning Monarch Queen Elizabeth, and since the exact phrase "Never trust a Cecil" from the accounts above was first used in 1998, and since the episode in which it was used in the Crown was 1954ish, then my take is that there was possible sufficient Cecil mistrust with William Cecil 1548, Cecil Rhodes, etc. for ...
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It is the correct usage.
proverbial
adjective
used in a proverb or other phrase:
The players pointed the proverbial finger at themselves as the ones
needing to improve.
Proverbial
Examples:
A place where you can let your proverbial hair down and party like an
animal, the Ice House has something for everyone
So this is when you let ...
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Cambridge tells us that let your hair down means:
to allow yourself to behave much more freely than usual and enjoy yourself
It's quite a well-known phrase, originating from around the 17th century:
Letting one's hair down was a commonplace part of womens' daily activities in the 17th century. The hair was normally pinned up and was let down for ...
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I occurs frequently, as in Into Thin Air google books
He nodded. “That's great! That means Amanda is alive.” Or at least she
was at some recent point.
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"A recent point" can be interpreted as "a recent point in time".
If this phrase were to be written using a single word, the word would be "recently".
So you can imagine what it literally means.
Therefore, the answer is yes. It does occur in English. By using "recently", you are actually referring to a recent point in time, and vice versa.
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Here's the context of your quotation:
These Articles of War had their origin in a period of the history of Britain when the Puritan Republic had yielded to a monarchy restored; when a hangman Judge Jeffreys sentenced a world's champion like Algernon Sidney to the block; when one of a race by some deemed accursed of God — even a Stuart, was on the throne; ...
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Two options are yoked and entwined.
From Merriam-Webster:
entwined: To become twisted together or around
Example: Now a new documentary will look at the history of this genre, in which the pastoral is routinely entwined with the painful.
yoked: to join as if by a yoke
Example using the place/river:
The place is yoked to the river.
The place is ...
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Rise to the occasion
If you say that someone rose to the occasion, you mean that they did
what was necessary to successfully overcome a difficultsituation.
Or
Necessity is the mother of invention
PROVERB
when the need for something becomes essential, you are forced to find
ways of getting or achieving it.
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I see nothing wrong with (appropriately enough) opportunistic:
[Merriam-Webster]
1 : taking advantage of opportunities as they arise: such as
b : feeding on whatever food is available
// opportunistic feeders
// opportunistic bears
// On defense, South Carolina must become more opportunistic a season after forcing just 16 turnovers, more ...
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but OED A limiting a word or phrase.
no more than
As in:
"One need to no more than read the depressing accounts of how people lived in London ...
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It means "One only needs to read". However 'One' used like this is a third person singular pronoun like 'he', 'she' or 'it' so the sentence should read "One needs but read..." rather than "One need but read...".
The Merriam Webster dictionary has a number of definitions for but, the most relevant of which in this context is 2c
with the exception of — ...
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take the opportunity TFD an idiom
to make practical and worthwhile use of a particular event, situation,
happening, or occasion in order to accomplish something.
As in:
They took the opportunity to explore ...
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(I've just realized it's a single word request, so the last suggestion here is the only valid one. I'll leave in the rest just in case)
A little bit stronger than 'make the most of' would be
to turn it (the situation) to their advantage/benefit.
To deal with something in a way that lead's to one's ultimate benefit
or advantage. The personal pronoun ...
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You could consider a compound with 'broad', e.g broad-spectrum solution or broad-stroke/broad-brush approach.
From Yourdictionary
broad-spectrum is something that is effective in a wide variety of
ways.
An example of broad-spectrum is an antibiotic such as penicillin.
From a book entitled Nannoinovation
There was no broad-spectrum solution that ...
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Three of the four answers currently posted say that you can call it either a prepositional phrase (PP) or an "adverbial" phase or even an adverb. Only one answer by @rajah9 correctly implies that only the PP is the correct label for 'in the river', although even that answer fails to clearly express that the term 'adverbial' is neither here nor there, which ...
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There are different systems for describing grammar, so many concepts can be described with various terms depending on which system of terminology you're using. Sometimes it is more useful to refer to the components of a phrase, and sometimes it is more useful to refer to its function, so systems tend to have labels for both composition and function.
"In the ...
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The answer is both.
Phrases are called after the head of their constituent elements.
In such an analysis your sample is clearly a prepositional phrase (definition below).
When discussing the meaningful units within the clause -- the sentence phrases -- the terminology used is noun phrases, verb phrases, and their component parts -- where, for instance, in ...
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This is an issue of the label for what something is vs the label for what it does.
'In the river' is a prepositional phrase. That's what you call it. Whatever its function, there's the preposition so you call it a prepositional phrase. To call it anything else is weird.
But you've noticed what it is used for. It seems to modify the verb or sentence (and ...
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In the sentence,
They swam in the river.
the bolded phrase is a prepositional phrase. It does not change its phrasal type if it modifies a verb.
This Wikipedia entry for Head (linguistics) says:
In linguistics, the head or nucleus of a phrase is the word that determines the syntactic category of that phrase. For example, the head of the noun phrase ...
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I've not heard of "woolgathering" before.
For a expression with possibly negative undertones, there is head in the clouds.
e.g. He was not listening, he had his head in the clouds.
For thinking in a positive sense, the verbs to deliberate or to ponder could be used.
e.g. She deliberated before purchasing her ticket.
The young man pondered over ...
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Dwayne Johnson was given a more dynamic part in the movie than Jason Statham.
Dwayne Johnson's part was better tailored to show off his talents than that of Jason Statham.
Dwayne Johnson's character stole the show.
Take your pick.
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This is a sardine can/tin:
Before the advent of tin cans folks apparently used "boxes" made of ceramic. But the term "box" is still used by some people to describe the above.
You can see how the metaphor might be used to describe people jammed tightly together.
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Sardine can:
(US) a small car.
(1920) Eve. Capital News (Boise, ID) 4 Jan. 33/1: ‘Some sardine can you’re driving, Jeff’.
(GDoS)
The idea is that of a small space stacked with things or people like in:
be packed (in) like sardines:
To be very tightly or snugly packed together, especially in a small space.
We didn't want to take ...
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"Full steam ahead." would apply strictly to locomotives. The reason is that the engineers in the cab are essentially "driving" the train by operating the engine throttle as well as controlling how much fuel is being fed into the boiler and thus how much steam is being produced. They observe operational conditions and that is what dictates their actions.
...
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as an Italian I feel the sentence “what it is (that) they do”? as a calque of the Italian "cosa è che fanno".. probably introduced in the English language in the USA by Italian immigrants.. In Italian it sounds fine and understandable.. in English it sounds horrible, and probably "what they do" is sufficient...
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What is the meaning of the phrase “what it is they do”?
Of course it could be that this phrase is related to a text and is just asking what the people in the text do, albeit in bad English.
Example Jim and Harry are drinking coffee at a street stall. Jim & Harry are taxi drivers they are on their lunch break.
Answer the following questions
1. “what ...
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They do something.
That something is what they do.
It is what they do.
I don't know what it is (that) they do.
The last sentence means the same as:
I don't know what they do
Except there is a strong implication in the first sentence that there is something that they do.
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All of me is of course the title of a song ("Why not take all of me?") in which the singer says, metaphorically, that the loved one has stolen their heart so might as well take all the rest.
This is being used like an uncountable noun. I don't know the context, but it probably means this sort of thing or this situation. Me and him, similarly, are probably ...
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The phrase is being parsed incorrectly.
It's not an example of look at, but is as follows:
It is amazing that his first product does not look at all rudimentary.
Here, at all is an adverb, modifying the adjective rudimentary:
[Merriam-Webster]
: in any way or respect : to the least extent or degree : under any circumstances
// doesn't smoke at ...
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Which phrase is correct: “hell lord”, or “lord of hell”?
I wondering which phrase is correct, or maybe I can use both of them?
This is not exactly a yes no situation Yes you can use both of them. However the pivotal point is How. Lord of hell is descriptive. He was the Lord of Hell. Or a name
Were as, Hell Lord could be a name, a book title or similar. ...
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Person 1: Curiosity killed the cat.
Person 2: Satisfaction brought him back.
Person 1: To be hung as he rightfully deserved.
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How did that what sneak in there? What is it doing?
How did that what sneak in there?
It is idiomatic and is common in two forms what with and what with (something)
Examples idioms The Free Dictionary
1990 Rosamund Clay Only Angels Forget She's had a difficult life, what with my father skiving off when I was three and leaving her without a penny.
...
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A more idiomatic tweak would be:
The workers have been trained on how to continue the construction, and, in time, man the structure.
Definition of 'In time'
phrase of time
(2). eventually.
"there is the danger that he might, in time, not be able to withstand temptation"
Source: Oxford Dictionary Online, via Google
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Ideally I would just write a comment and vote to close, instead of writing an answer, but what I have to say won't fit well in a comment box (in terms of both space and formatting), and furthermore there is an existing answer that is problematic, so here goes.
No. "Compromise the existing differences" doesn't work in the way that "compromise my principles" ...
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I stand with the tweak. "When time" feels incomplete because it is, but we understand it because "when time" is barely ever used without "comes".
"when time comes" is more correct, and IMO a little bit more readable, but this is down to the reader's preference.
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What with has been a turn of phrase for a very long time in English. For instance, Erasmus Almer's book The alcaron of the barefote friers (1550) has this sentence:
And in his meditaci∣on of Christes passiō he would so beate him selfe, that what with teares and blood yt semed that ther ranne Ryuers of blood out of his body.
And in his meditation ...
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Yes, it's fine.
Your usage of compromise corresponds to definition 2 in the Oxford Learner's Dictionary:
[transitive, intransitive] to do something that is against your principles or does not reach standards that you have set
compromise something | I refuse to compromise my principles.
You can add a prepositional phrase headed by for to specify ...
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The actual phrase is:
'If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain',
...and it comes from Francis Bacon (Essays, 1665).
Mahomet cald the Hill to come to him. And when the Hill stood still, he was neuer a whit abashed, but said; If the Hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet wil go to the hil.
-Phrasefinder
It is ...
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The point of the sentence is that the 'irreverent West' doesn't respect great authors, or high religious figures, or great scientists, or real royalty, but only acting celebrities. So the respect that Karain gets can only be compared to that.
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Both could be correct depending on the scenario.
Scenario 1: Your birthday. You got a car from your father, and a laptop from your mother. You could say- this is my father's gift, and that's my mother's gift. Though, a better way to say this would be- this is the gift from my father, and that's from my mother.
Scenario 2: Your father's birthday. You bought ...
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There is a proper way to express this situation at that moment. You could say:
"It's going to fall!"
(instead of, "It will fall!")
After it has fallen, you might say:
"My water bottle turned over." (which implies that it stayed on the desk, and that it somehow became inverted)
"My water bottle fell." (which is appropriate if the bottle fell off the ...
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There is no contradiction here.
Critical is the definition of disappoint. From Google’s dictionary using New Oxford American Dictionary:
disappoint
fail to fulfill the hopes or expectations of (someone).
"I have no wish to disappoint everyone by postponing the visit"
The article tells the story of making a cheese grater from material similar to ...
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From article:
the performance of the Mac Pro as a cheese grater is unsurprisingly disappointing.
Expectations aren't necessarily predictions.
MW has three relevant definitions:
1a : to consider probable or certain
expect to be forgiven
expect that things will improve
1b : to consider reasonable, due, or necessary
...
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There is nothing particularly wrong with 'unsurprisingly disappointing', and disappointing is not automatically the same as bad.
In my job I edit translations, and there are translators who continue to disappoint. I never give up hope that they will improve, but I am continually unsurprisingly disappointed.
It is always worth remembering that language is ...
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How about "throw a fit" as in?
"if X knew about this, he would throw a fit."
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