New answers tagged phrasal-verbs
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Difference between crash into, slam into, ran into, smash into
He accidentally and clumsily ran into the wall with a lot of force. or he was driving a car and he accidentally drove into a wall, maybe because he was focusing on the police and not the road ahead of ...
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Must phrasal verbs be idiomatic in order to be "real" phrasal verbs
What is the definition of "phrasal verb"? From wiktionary:
(linguistics) A two-word verb, consisting of a verb and a "small" adverb or particle, that has an idiomatic meaning not ...
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'Rescuers had to wade waist-deep in floodwater.' Why not 'Rescuers had to wade in waist-deep floodwater.'?
In addition to the points raised by others I think there is also the nuance that waist-deep in floodwater describes the level of water in relation to whoever is wading. Obviously we would get a ...
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'Rescuers had to wade waist-deep in floodwater.' Why not 'Rescuers had to wade in waist-deep floodwater.'?
The meanings of those two sentences are largely the same, but there's a slight difference: these two sentences say different things about how deep the water could be.
waist-deep in floodwater
The ...
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'Rescuers had to wade waist-deep in floodwater.' Why not 'Rescuers had to wade in waist-deep floodwater.'?
To wade waist-deep ("Somebody waded waist-deep in water ...") refers to the wader wading in water up to their waist, whereas waist-deep water refers to the depth of the water using the ...
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'Rescuers had to wade waist-deep in floodwater.' Why not 'Rescuers had to wade in waist-deep floodwater.'?
Rescuers had to wade in waist-deep floodwater is perfectly acceptable English. It tells us that there was water about three feet deep where the rescuers had to go.
There is a very slight difference in ...
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Accepted
'Rescuers had to wade waist-deep in floodwater.' Why not 'Rescuers had to wade in waist-deep floodwater.'?
The dictionary is explaining an idiomatic phrase of the word "wade". That is you can adverbially modify "wade" with an expression "knee-deep". You can do this without ...
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Understanding phrasal verbs
I have found a connection between the verbs be and get when used in phrasal verbs. When using be the action has already been done, while when using get the action is yet to have happened for example &...
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Understanding phrasal verbs
A useful resource for understanding and learning phrasal verbs is the Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs. As well as an alphabetical list of the most common phrasal verbs, it also has a "...
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Encountering new phrasal verbs
A native speaker would probably learn the phrasal verb told on as a child.
Johnny told on Mikey at school.
From there it's just a short hop from "told on" to "informed on". The ...
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Encountering new phrasal verbs
In your example I, a native speaker, encounter the expression for the first time, say in Bill informed on John. Though I have never before come across inform on, I do know that an informant is someone ...
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Why does work out mean physical work or physical training?
As with many English words, "work out" has two meanings that don't relate to each other at all.
This is often the case when one version of a phrasal verb is intransitive and the other is ...
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Why does work out mean physical work or physical training?
The use of the phrase in the sense of physical training or finding a solution is quite well established. The definitions can be found in Collins Dictionary.
PHRASAL VERB B1+
If you work out, you do ...
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Does it sound ok to use "Feedback" as a verb?
Here are some uses of feedback as a verb:
Someone + feedback + someone + something: To provide informational feedback to
His employees feedbacked him a lot more than he wanted.
Someone + feedback + ...
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