In Nouns^x, Idioms^x, Phrasal verbs^x

I don't know where you are from so you may or may not have this feature in your own language: Because French has noun genders (masculine and feminine), French schoolchildren learn all their nouns with the article, for example "le nez", "la bouche", so they always know what gender the word has....

Sorry; I misspoke in my earlier post. Take care of is not a phrasal verb, it is just a verb phrase, a verbal idiom. Phrasal verbs consist of a verb + particle (adverb, preposition) which behave as a syntactic unit Make up (= invent) is a phrasal verb, and cannot take an internal adverb: Make...

Zerox wrote: Marius Hancu wrote: You may want to buy the Merriam Webster Dictionary of Synonyms. Talking of dictionaries, is Cambridge's advanced learner's dictionary a good dictionary? It depends on your taste. At home, I have the Cobuild advanced learner's dictionary and I think it's...

Grammar Geek wrote: So "to lay by" is a phrasal verb meaning "to store away"? New vocabulary for me! But anyway, when you have a phrasal verb like that (or like "look up" (as a word in a dictionary) or "write down") - do the prepositions act like normal prepositions, or because they are...

40-dollar job. Note the hyphen. Nouns as adjectives are singular: 10-minute break, ten-dollar bill, seven-year itch fall into the wrong hands-- this is the idiomatic phrasal verb, which cannot be manipulated. none that I know of = None (of the e.g. players) that I know of . Not that I know...

I think your question will be better answered if you can give us some examples in context so that we have a sense of what you don't understand. From reading your question, I have no idea. Phrasel verbs, prepositions and idioms are completely different animal from each other. Based on my...

Hey, you forgot about all the other things "do" could stand for, like: do. abbreviation for ditto. .do abbreviation: Dominican Republic (in Internet addresses). n. Music The first tone of the diatonic scale in solfeggio. n. Slang pl. dos A hairdo. v. did, (dd)...

The BBI is my Favourite (capital F). It doesn't list all the prepositions but it is extremely useful for ESL speakers because it tells you how to combine nouns with adjectives and how verbs are used (it gives 19 valency categories of verbs). It also gives the most common word combinations, as...