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The idea that including the article or not has any bearing on whether the intended sense is figurative or not is completely misplaced. The idiomatic passed by, disappeared usage has been around since …

Only OP's second example (with the definite article the) is idiomatically valid in this exact sentence. But it would (just about) be possible to say There is an under-mirror washbasin. That particula …

Including the article in OP's context more strongly implies all [of the] wetlands were drained. Without it, we might well suppose the optional but unspecified "determiner" here could have been, for ex …

Personally, I think phloem, xylem are usually better treated as mass nouns, which don't use the definite article. But the cited usage is at least "acceptable" either way. I'm more familiar with skin t …

With sand and coral, it's simply a matter of whether you're talking about the substance in general, or some specific example of it that has already been mentioned (or is contextually obvious). With t …

The cited context is inherently "flawed, awkward", since it's using the copula form [cannot] be to link singular our country and plural [the] victims. But we could resolve that with, say,... We ca …

There's nothing remotely "ungrammatical" about the cited usage (with or without a leading article). Google Books offers some support for OP's idea that the article "should" be present... 1: [Somet …

I've no research to back this up, but my guess is that for most of the history of the English language, most native speakers lived in places where there was only one road/street in the local area anyw …

Interestingly, the cited example is one where usage has changed significantly over the last century... (It's the same when restricted to AmE or BrE corpus, so it looks like a global phenomenon.) …

Both forms are in common use... It's normally entirely a stylistic choice whether to include the article or not. If a specific "protocol" has been previously mentioned, I'd say the article is more li …

This is a standard "nickname/epithet" construction, well-known in forms like... Æthelred the Unready Scotland the Brave Hägar the Horrible etc., etc. Because they're bestowed titles, su …

Question 1 in these contexts is effectively a "proper noun" (it identifies one specific thing). For the same reason why we don't refer to the1 OP as the Riko, we don't use a definite article when ref …

Idiomatically, including the in such constructions is far more common. From Google Books... ...felt cold/rough to the touch (11,200/1070 instances) ...felt cold to the touch (120/7 instances; b …

Most has two closely-related meanings. 1 the largest in number or amount 2 more than half / almost all of somebody/something As that OALD link says, the most is often used for the first meani …

All three versions occur... ...and for the exact context as specified1, it doesn't really make any difference which you choose. They all mean the same, they're about equally common, and they're all t …