what might be called an indefinte expression? No. By indefinite expression I meant, in essence, an indefinite noun phrase. Thus, the following are indefinite expressions. They typically do not refer to any specific instance of anything: money a

a bolt from the blue= an accident happen suddenly Literally it means a bolt of lightning from blue sky. Would you expect lighting to come from a cloudless sky? Of course, it is a figurative expression. It frequently refers to an idea that comes

First, "Paint it black." can only be a sentence as a command. In this case, it is and understood "you." (You) paint it black. I am telling you to do this. As far as I know, this is really an expression from the Rolling Stones

I quote "Oxford's Guide to English Grammar" by Eastwood, J. (2002), OEP, pg 290: -- 1 At and in a At is one-dimensional. We use it when we see something as a point in space. The car was waiting at the lights. There's someone at

Often I see people use a noun construction instead of a gerund, like this: "the addition of X to Y" < > "adding X to Y" "the restoration of a painting" < > "restoring a painting" "the

Raoul schrieb: There are two apparently similar English expressions with very different ... fire with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades". Hope this helps, Leszek. Thanks, that certainly helps, but is my impression correct that "all

The preponderance of usage, by literate writers, of the "-ridden" form has carried the sense of "afflicted with something" ... the other hand, the preponderance of usage carries the sense "containing" or

As I think somebody has already said, it might help us to help you if you let us know why you need the expression. I'm working on a knowledge representation. It is generally a semantic network (a directed graph in which nodes represent

Let me ask a question about the following sentence. They really knocked our radars back with white noise. (p475,Red Rising ... thing back I don't know what movement the thing will get by being knocked back, especially when it is radar. Thanks

What is the meaning and particularly the derivation of the expression "cutup", as in: "She always laughed at her father's jokes; he was a cutup, easy and friendly and open." Seems like quite an ordinary word to me. It's