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There are some words with figurative meaning like to evaporate means to fly away from the scene. Consider these sentences.

The Police evaporated from the crime scene without giving any details to the media.

The personal matters of celebrities are tossed away in public for increasing publicity.

Am I using these words corrects in these sentences?

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  • Every word can be used figuratively. There is no way that you can describe figurative use as "correct" or "incorrect"
    – James K
    Commented Oct 23, 2020 at 20:02
  • There are some figurative uses a native speaker would not use. That's why, when I literally translate an Italian sentence in American, I could not be understood.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Oct 24, 2020 at 11:47

1 Answer 1

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Evaporate can be used figuratively to mean disappear, cease to exist, but usually of something abstract like hope or confidence. It sounds very fanciful to speak of the police evaporating from a crime scene!

Toss away usually implies discarding something.

I'm not aware of any list of verbs that can be used in this way; you just have to check all the definitions of each one that you are interested in.

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