Questions tagged [phrase-usage]
This tag is for questions about how to use a particular phrase. If your question is a request for a phrase to use, you should use the "phrase-request" tag.
3,626
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It is not like/that she hit him very badly yesterday. - are they the same in meaning?
Example 1
It is not like/that I didn't want to talk to her.
Example 2
It is not like/that she hit him very badly yesterday.
Are they the same in meaning?
Do they have to be followed by "It is ...
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arrived to a pair of unexpected discoveries
I'm wondering if "arrive to a discovery" is okay in the following extract from a CNN story. Did the author of the following passage mean to say "arrived at a pair of ... discoveries&...
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Keep is as as is?
I saw a sentence on an app, AnkiPro, and was not sure about something. The sentence went like "Should we give a big hand to each beauty contestant is as she is introduced, or should we wait until ...
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Have a history with someone vs have a history with something
I am reading the novel The Elephant on Karlův Bridge by Thomas Trofimuk. In this book, there is passage describing a dancer talking to her therapist about a song that is haunting her.
The therapist ...
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In which situations do we say "Bob flirts with Mary"?
The Britanica Dictionary defines flirt as
to behave in a way that shows a sexual attraction for someone but is not meant to be taken seriously.
In which of the following situations can we say “Bob ...
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Does the phrase "Tom has been seeing Mary for a while" always imply they have a romantic relationship?
According to the Oxford learner's dictionary, "see somebody" mean "to spend time with somebody". It does not say the 2 have a romantic relationship or not, so I reckon the 2 could ...
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Can we say "Mike has a date with Mary tonight" when they have been a romantic couple for years?
Do we just use "A has a date with B" only when A and B are not yet a girlfriend and boyfriend yet and they are trying to have a meeting to see if they like each other?
Or can "A has a ...
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Does "play nice" mean "pretend to be nice"?
People say "play innocent" or "play dead" to mean "pretend to be innocent" or "pretend to be dead" respectively.
Can we apply that way of saying to the ...
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High-functioning workplace?
Employers may hire empathetic or compassionate employees to create a positive, high-functioning workplace.
How can a workplace be high-functioning?
Is high-functioning idiomatic?
The adjective is ...
- 1,307
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658
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Tone and meaning of phrases that start with "I thought I said"
I have heard this phrase often when people are irritated if not upset about what had happened despite them making it clearer that they don't wish for it.
Eg:
I thought I said NO.
I thought I said no ...
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Can we use "from head to toe" to express the direction rather than "completely"?
"from head to foot/toe" is an idiom and it means "completely"
They were covered from head to foot/toe in mud.
Can we use "from head to foot/toe" literally to express the ...
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Is it correct to say "I have to pick the spinach before cooking them" in this situation?
After I buy a bunch of spinach (which has many strands of spinach) like this, I have to check each single strand of spinach (see the picture below, is it correct to say a strand of spinach?) to remove ...
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Do we say "I will tattle on you to the teacher"?
When I look up verbs in the dictionary, I sometimes see them marked as "disapproving".
My question is that:
Do we say "I" or "We" with disapproving verbs?
For example, in ...
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Meaning of got out of something
is it correct to say I just got out of an interview after being interviewed? Does got out has the meaning of finished?
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Can we have adjectives before objective personal pronouns, for example, "I have some photos of baby him"?
THis is a part of the script in the social network film
Erica Albright : Well, why don't you just concentrate on being the
best you you can be.
Mark Zuckerberg : Did you really just say that?
Erica ...
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Rule for using which
The first signs in six months of a pickup in consumer spending are emerging, which reduces the chances that the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates when it meets next month.
Should it be which ...
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Do egg-laying female animals give birth to/bear young?
I know fishes, birds, lizards, etc. lay and hatch from eggs (mostly), but apparently, they can also be born (out of eggs):
Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.
Alejandro Jodorowsky
There ...
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After that, we got to talk/got talking/got to talking
...when the woman seated next to me asked me if she could borrow my phone as hers had run out of battery. She just needed to make a call. So I lent her my phone. Got it back. After that, we got to ...
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Can we use "gift" for non-material thing, e.g. "My dad took me to the amusement park as a gift"?
Dictionaries say "a gift: a thing that you give to somebody, especially on a special occasion or to say thank you"
I am not sure if "a thing" here can be a non-material thing.
For ...
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2
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Is it ambiguous to say "the fly flew from the left to the right of his face"? [closed]
When we say "the fly flew from the left to the right of his face", does that mean?:
1- the fly at first was flying in a space near 1 side of his face and then it flew to another space that ...
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4
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Do we say "she is sitting on the shore of the pond" or "the bank of the pond"?
This is what I learn from dictionaries
We use "bank" for "river/stream" or "canal" and "shore" for "ocean/sea" or "lake".
But, it seems like ...
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"fly on one engine" VS "fly with one engine."
This is from CNN Can planes fly on one engine
"Basically, these planes are built to fly as well on one engine as they can on two."
The verb "fly on" has drawn my attention. Maybe ...
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Meaning of "Do you read me? Lima Charlie!"
In the movie Avatar: The Way of the Water, a pair of phrases occurs that I seek clarification:
Father: [... rebukes son, along the lines "I expect you to behave
well"]... Do you read me?
...
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There are 2 rooms and "the smaller of which is red" or "the smaller of them is red"?
I came across this question from Grade 10 English test in a Vietnam High School
Question 14. There were two small rooms in the beach house, _______.
A. the smaller of which served as a kitchen
B. the ...
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40
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In 'X not to mention Y', is X a bigger benefit or Y is?
I dreamed up the two sentences. I don't know that in 'X not to mention Y', whether X is a bigger benefit or Y is. Let's assume that increasing job prospects is a bigger benefit than building social ...
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Can we use "since" in future tenses, for example, "I will be free since 6pm today. Now is 3pm"?
We normally use "since" to mean "from a time in the past until a later past time, or until now".
Can we use "since" in future tenses, for example, "I will be free ...
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How to understand "than was possible by either phone or mail"?
College professors were depending on ARPAnet to send messages to each
other, and share information faster and more economically than was
possible by either phone or mail.
Can i rewrite the phrase to
...
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40
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"I'm making good progress, I think." vs "I think, I'm making good progress."
Is there the difference in their meaning? Is the first one is more uncertain than the second?
I'm making good progress, I think.
I think, I'm making good progress.
- 2,316
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"loop someone in" and "loop someone into chatting"?
I learned from this tutorial that there are three forms of phrasal verbs:
verb + adverb
verb + preposition
verb + adverb + preposition
And I find two phrases online, namely "loop someone in&...
- 3,141
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How to use the phrase "let alone" in this situation?
Context: X is a superior fighter to Y. X didn't beat Z in a boxing match.
I want to make a statement meaning Y is even less likely to beat Z, using the phrase "let alone". How can I do it?
...
- 321
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"it's understood" as phrase
After I heard it twice in song lyrics ("Californication","The Adultress"): Is this a standing phrase? And while I have an approximate feeling what it means (almost "it's an ...
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Why isn't there "the" before "New Year" sometimes? [duplicate]
From an article "At, on and in (time)" by Cambridge Dictionary:
At the New Year, millions of people travel home to be with their families.
From an entry for new year on Oxford Learner's ...
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When do we say "I change the bed" and "I change the bedding"? [closed]
According to my study, "change the bedding" seems bigger than "change the bed".
So, I asked Chatgpt
Chatgpt says
When you say "I change the bed every week," you are ...
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at present or in the present?
In the following, which phrase is okay? If both are okay, what's the difference? Somehow I suspect "at present" suggests the situation is not how things generally are. For example, "He ...
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"was getting ready to go out"
How do you understand "was getting ready to go out"? Does it mean that something happened and defeated their schedule or they went out as it was planned? In what context can be used that ...
- 2,316
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1
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What is the "actual verb phrase" in the sentence?
My family loves going to the beach each summer.
I think "loves",but someone said "loves going to beach" is the verb phrase.
So what's correct and how???
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When do we say "I cycle to work", "I bike to work" and "I ride a bike to work"?
These are my study:
It seems like the verb "cycle" refers to "go by bicycle" is often used in British English more.
And the verb "bike" can be used for both "bicycle&...
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How to describe the chosen time period in a scientific paper?
Example:
I want to say that the well abstracted groundwater in the period, let's say, 2010 - 2020.
Should I say "...in the years 2010-2020..."? Or "...during 2010-2020..."?
Another ...
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Should I write "two rows of wells" or "two lanes of wells" or maybe something different?
I am working on a scientific paper in hydrogeology; English is not my 1st language.
The site I am working on consists of two rows (I would say) of wells in the N-S direction.
When describing the ...
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Can we use a relative clause in this sentence "Tom received an email from the computer store that told him to post his computer to them"?
Schools in Vietnam often focus on teaching students grammar, not common English expressions.
That is why Vietnamese students know a lot about relative clauses, reported speech, conditional sentences, ...
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What does this question is really asking about: " What do you sleep in at night?"
This is from a native speaker's show ellen and victoria (see:1:10-1:15)
Ellen: What do you sleep in at night?
Victoria: Heels.
I could not quite understand what she meant by her question. It just did ...
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Is it correct to say "She cut her hair off the wheels"?
A girl with long hair got her hair tangled in the wheel of a toy car and she used scissors to cut her hair at the point where the hair contacts with the wheel to make it free.
Is it correct to say &...
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Does "I went to school at 7 am" mean I started going to school at 7 am or I arrived school at 7 am?
I feel like "I went to school at 7 am" means I started waking out of my house at 7 am and then was on my way to school. Maybe, I would arrive at school in 15 minutes at 7:15 am.
However, ...
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Precise meaning of 'as long as'
Which function suites more appropriately for the construction as long as? Is that expression used to, forgive the redundancy, express a necessary (not sufficient) condition? Or it is a material ...
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Difference between "available services" and "services available"
Both phrases are grammatically correct, but I would like to know when I should use one or the other. I couldn't find relevant information on the Internet.
For context, I am currently taking some notes ...
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What do you call someone who puts his name on something that is not his own?
Like I make a drawing with my name and you go and display it as a picture on your website with your logo on it.
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When to use 'of' vs. 'for' in constructions like "It is (adjective) of/for you to do X"? [closed]
Consider the following type of sentence:
It is kind/nice/cruel/considerate of you to do X.
I understand that the preposition used there should always be 'of,' not 'for.'
Now how would we extend that ...
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Do we often use the present continuous tense with "fall asleep" and "drift off", for example, "he is falling asleep" and "he is drifting off"?
Do we often use the present continuous tense with "fall asleep" and "drift off", for example, "he is falling asleep" and "he is drifting off"?
Ngram says that &...
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What range of time can I use when saying "It's morning already, please get up" and "It's night already, please go to bed"?
What range of time can I use when saying "It's morning already, please get up" and "It's night already, please go to bed"?
Chatgpt says
When you say "It's morning already, ...
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Is "I typed out the text" the same as "typed up the text"?
According to Cambridge Dictionary, "type out" and "type up" are the same
type something out/up phrasal verb with type verb [ I or T ]
to make a typed copy of a piece of text that ...
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