Questions tagged [collocation]
Collocation refers to the appearance or occurrence of groups or pairs of words, particularly when more frequent than random chance would suggest.
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Is "voracious for books" correct in terms of collocation/ fixed phrase?
I know "voracious" usually precedes the noun and is used in the phrase "have a voracious appetite for ....". However, can I say "sb is voracious for books" instead of &...
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How can I find words that frequently appear with a word (collocations)? [migrated]
Many words are often used in combination with certain other words. For example, beautiful is more often applied to woman than man, while handsome is more often used with man than woman:
Is there a ...
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Making small talk: Which verbs most commonly accept “small talk” as their direct object?
I know that you can use make because you can say (to) make small talk.
But is it also acceptable and reasonably common to say either of these two?
(to) hold small talk (meaning to hold a conversation)...
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Is it "on the world's stage" or "on the world stage"? [duplicate]
I'm writing some lyrics and I want them to be correct, when we talk about someone being in the media around the world, especially a politician, are they "on the world's stage" or "on ...
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Words describe American dream lifestyle [closed]
It’s a two words term: xxxtter-xxtter, used to describe an affluent, perfect American dream type of lifestyle.
Context: everyone wants to live a xxxtter-xxxtter life, but it’s not realistic.
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What's so profound about deafness?
I can describe someone as profoundly deaf, but I don't seem to see the same adverb used to describe other conditions. This observation is supported by Google Books data.
Why is deafness specifically ...
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Is the phrase "very delighted" ever "wrong"?
I was just browsing the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and stumbled on this peculiar note under the entry for delighted:
Delighted is not used with ‘very’. You say:
I’m absolutely ...
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Can a train or a railway line "enter operation"?
I have come across the article Learning from Las Vegas: what the Strip can teach us about urban planning and saw this sentence, "the Las Vegas monorail that entered operation in 2004 has had to ...
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Who "died peacefully" first and when?
The question came to my mind when I read the recent news of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, first appeared in the official Twitter account of The Royal Family as:
The Queen died peacefully at ...
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Can the predeterminer "half" comfortably occur before plural nouns without determiners?
So "half" belongs to a special class of words known as "predeterminers", those that can occur before determiners:
Half a century
Half the people in this company can't speak a ...
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Does "chagrin" mean embarrassment or annoyance?
I originally learned this word studying for the GRE:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/magoosh.resources/magoosh-gre-1000-words_oct01.pdf
chagrin (noun): strong feelings of embarrassment
Much to the the timid ...
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Onboard into/onto/to
I'm trying to figure out which is the right preposition to use after "onboard" (in the meaning of "integrate someone into an organization or familiarize him with one's products or ...
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Is it "increase" or "expand" when talking about vocabulary?
When my son said he doesn't recognise all the words in Wordle I commented that he is thus increasing his vocabulary.
He then contended that the correct word should be expanding.
Who is correct?
What ...
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Why is “learning hard” wrong yet “studying hard” is right?
Why does saying learning hard sound so terribly wrong and unnatural, given that working hard, exercising hard,
listening hard, thinking hard, and even it rains hard sound perfectly natural and get ...
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"Starting from version" vs "Starting with version" vs "Beginning with version"
When you write about software it is quite common to read that a certain version has introduced a new feature. Usually the new feature also will be available in later releases. I found three different ...
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