squirm |
1. v. To twist one’s body with snakelike motions. | |
The prisoner managed to squirm out of the straitjacket. | |
2. v. To twist in discomfort, especially from shame or embarrassment. | |
I recounted the embarrassing story in detail just to watch him squirm. | |
3. v. (figuratively) To move with a slow, irregular motion. | |
4. n. A twisting, snakelike movement of the body. | |
all |
1. adv. (degree) intensifier. | |
It suddenly went all quiet. | |
She was all, “Whatever.” | |
2. adv. (poetic) Entirely. | |
3. adv. Apiece; each. | |
The score was 30 all when the rain delay started. | |
4. adv. (degree) So much. | |
Don't want to go? All the better since I lost the tickets. | |
5. adv. (obsolete, poetic) even; just | |
6. det. Every individual or anything of the given class, with no exceptions (the noun or noun phrase denoting the class must be plural or un). | |
All contestants must register at the scorer’s table. All flesh is originally grass. All my friends like classical music. | |
7. det. Throughout the whole of (a stated period of time; generally used with units of a day or longer). | |
The store is open all day and all night. (= through the whole of the day and the whole of the night.) | |
I’ve been working on this all year. (= from the beginning of the year until now.) | |
8. det. (obsolete) Any. | |
9. det. Only; alone; nothing but. | |
He's all talk; he never puts his ideas into practice. | |
10. pron. Everything. | |
some gave all they had; she knows all and sees all; Those who think they know it all are annoying to those of us who do. | |
11. pron. Everyone. | |
A good time was had by all. | |
12. n. (with a possessive pronoun) Everything that one is capable of. | |
She gave her all, and collapsed at the finish line. | |
13. n. The totality of one's possessions. | |
14. conj. (obsolete) although | |
15. adj. (dialect, Pennsylvania) All gone; dead. | |
The butter is all. | |
you |
1. pron. (object pronoun) The people spoken, or written to, as an object. | |
2. pron. (reflexive pronoun, now US colloquial) (To) yourselves, (to) yourself. | |
3. pron. (object pronoun) The person spoken to or written to, as an object. (Replacing thee; originally as a mark of respect.) | |
4. pron. (subject pronoun) The people spoken to or written to, as a subject. (Replacing ye.) | |
Both of you should get ready now. | |
You are all supposed to do as I tell you. | |
5. pron. (subject pronoun) The person spoken to or written to, as a subject. (Originally as a mark of respect.) | |
6. pron. (indefinite personal pronoun) Anyone, one; an unspecified individual or group of individuals (as subject or object). | |
7. det. The individual or group spoken or written to. | |
Have you gentlemen come to see the lady who fell backwards off a bus? | |
8. det. Used before epithets for emphasis. | |
You idiot! | |
9. v. To address (a person) using the pronoun you, rather than thou, especially historically when you was more formal. | |
want |
1. v. To wish for or to desire (something). | |
What do you want to eat? I want you to leave. I never wanted to go back to live with my mother. I want to be an astronaut when I'm older. I don't want him | |
2. v. (intransitive, now dated) To be lacking or deficient; not to exist. | |
There was something wanting in the play. | |
3. v. To lack, not to have (something). | |
4. v. (transitive, colloquially with verbal noun as object) To be in need of; to require (something). | |
That chair wants fixing. | |
5. v. (intransitive, dated) To be in a state of destitution; to be needy; to lack. | |
6. n. A desire, wish, longing. | |
7. n. (often, followed by of) Lack, absence. | |
8. n. Poverty. | |
9. n. Something needed or desired; a thing of which the loss is felt. | |
10. n. (mining) A depression in coal strata, hollowed out before the subsequent deposition took place. | |
you |
1. pron. (object pronoun) The people spoken, or written to, as an object. | |
2. pron. (reflexive pronoun, now US colloquial) (To) yourselves, (to) yourself. | |
3. pron. (object pronoun) The person spoken to or written to, as an object. (Replacing thee; originally as a mark of respect.) | |
4. pron. (subject pronoun) The people spoken to or written to, as a subject. (Replacing ye.) | |
Both of you should get ready now. | |
You are all supposed to do as I tell you. | |
5. pron. (subject pronoun) The person spoken to or written to, as a subject. (Originally as a mark of respect.) | |
6. pron. (indefinite personal pronoun) Anyone, one; an unspecified individual or group of individuals (as subject or object). | |
7. det. The individual or group spoken or written to. | |
Have you gentlemen come to see the lady who fell backwards off a bus? | |
8. det. Used before epithets for emphasis. | |
You idiot! | |
9. v. To address (a person) using the pronoun you, rather than thou, especially historically when you was more formal. | |
won't |
1. v. will not (negative auxiliaryArnold M. Zwicky and Geoffrey K. Pullum, , Language 59 (3), 1983, pp. 502-513); used to indicate a future non-occurring action. | |
Sam won't be doing any work this afternoon. | |
will |
1. v. (rare, transitive) To wish, desire (something). | |
Do what you will. | |
2. v. (rare, intransitive) To wish or desire (that something happen); to intend (that). | |
3. v. (auxiliary) To habitually do (a given action). | |
4. v. (auxiliary) To choose to (do something), used to express intention but without any temporal connotations (+ bare infinitive). | |
5. v. (auxiliary) Used to express the future tense, sometimes with some implication of volition when used in the first person. Compare shall. | |
6. v. (auxiliary) To be able to, to have the capacity to. | |
Unfortunately, only one of these gloves will actually fit over my hand. | |
7. n. One's independent faculty of choice; the ability to be able to exercise one's choice or intention. | |
Of course, man's will is often regulated by his reason. | |
8. n. One's intention or decision; someone's orders or commands. | |
Eventually I submitted to my parents' will. | |
9. n. The act of choosing to do something; a person’s conscious intent or volition. | |
Most creatures have a will to live. | |
10. n. (law) A formal declaration of one's intent concerning the disposal of one's property and holdings after death; the legal document stating such wishes. | |
11. n. (archaic) That which is desired; one's wish. | |
12. n. (archaic) Desire, longing. (Now generally merged with later senses.) | |
He felt a great will to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. | |
13. v. (archaic) To wish, desire. | |
14. v. (transitive, intransitive) To instruct (that something be done) in one's will. | |
15. v. To try to make (something) happen by using one's will (intention). | |
All the fans were willing their team to win the game. | |
16. v. To bequeath (something) to someone in one's will (legal document). | |
He willed his stamp collection to the local museum. | |
not |
1. adv. Negates the meaning of the modified verb. | |
Did you take out the trash? No, I did not. | |
Not knowing any better, I went ahead. | |
2. adv. To no degree. | |
That is not red; it's orange. | |
3. conj. And not. | |
I wanted a plate of shrimp, not a bucket of chicken. | |
He painted the car blue and black, not solid purple. | |
4. interj. (slang) Used to indicate that the previous phrase was meant sarcastically or ironically. | |
I really like hanging out with my little brother watching Barney... not! | |
Sure, you're perfect the way you are... not! | |
5. n. Unary logical function NOT, true if input is false, or a gate implementing that negation function. | |
You need a not there to conform with the negative logic of the memory chip. | |
6. contraction. (obsolete) Contraction of ne wot, wot not; know not; knows not. | |
escape |
1. v. (intransitive) To get free; to free oneself. | |
The prisoners escaped by jumping over a wall. | |
The factory was evacuated after toxic gases escaped from a pipe. | |
2. v. To avoid (any unpleasant person or thing); to elude, get away from. | |
He only got a fine and so escaped going to jail. | |
The children climbed out of the window to escape the fire. | |
3. v. (intransitive) To avoid capture; to get away with something, avoid punishment. | |
Luckily, I escaped with only a fine. | |
4. v. To elude the observation or notice of; to not be seen or remembered by. | |
The name of the hotel escapes me at present. | |
5. v. (transitive, computing) To cause (a single character, or all such characters in a string) to be interpreted literally, instead of with any special meaning it would usually have in the same context, of | |
When using the "bash" shell, you can escape the ampersand character with a backslash. | |
Brion escaped the double quote character on Windows by adding a second double quote within the literal. | |
6. v. (computing) To halt a program or command by pressing a key (such as the "Esc" key) or combination of keys. | |
7. n. The act of leaving a dangerous or unpleasant situation. | |
The prisoners made their escape by digging a tunnel. | |
8. n. Leakage or outflow, as of steam or a liquid, or an electric current through defective insulation. | |
9. n. (computing) escape key | |
10. n. (programming) The text character represented by 27 (decimal) or 1B (hexadecimal). | |
You forgot to insert an escape in the datastream. | |
11. n. (snooker) A successful shot from a snooker position. | |
12. n. (manufacturing) A defective product that is allowed to leave a manufacturing facility. | |
13. n. (obsolete) That which escapes attention or restraint; a mistake, oversight, or transgression. | |
14. n. (obsolete) A sally. | |
15. n. (architecture) An apophyge. | |
the |
1. art. Definite grammatical article that implies necessarily that an entity it articulates is presupposed; something already mentioned, or completely specified later in that same sentence, or assumed already | |
I’m reading the book. (Compare I’m reading a book.) | |
The street in front of your house. (Compare A street in Paris.) | |
The men and women watched the man give the birdseed to the bird. | |
2. art. Used before a noun modified by a restrictive relative clause, indicating that the noun refers to a single referent defined by the relative clause. | |
The street that runs through my hometown. | |
3. art. Used before an object considered to be unique, or of which there is only one at a time. | |
No one knows how many galaxies there are in the universe. | |
God save the Queen! | |
4. art. Used before a superlative or an ordinal number modifying a noun, to indicate that the noun refers to a single item. | |
That was the best apple pie ever. | |
5. art. Added to a superlative or an ordinal number to make it into a substantive. | |
That apple pie was the best. | |
6. art. Introducing a singular term to be taken generically: preceding a name of something standing for a whole class. | |
7. art. Used before an adjective, indicating all things (especially persons) described by that adjective. | |
Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. | |
8. art. Used to indicate a certain example of (a noun) which is usually of most concern or most common or familiar. | |
No one in the whole country had seen it before. | |
I don't think I'll get to it until the morning. | |
9. art. Used before a body part (especially of someone previously mentioned), as an alternative to a possessive pronoun. | |
A stone hit him on the head. (= “A stone hit him on his head.”) | |
10. art. When stressed, indicates that it describes an object which is considered to be best or exclusively worthy of attention. | |
That is the hospital to go to for heart surgery. | |
11. adv. 1=With a comparative ormore and a verb phrase, establishes a parallel with one or more other such comparatives. | |
The hotter the better. | |
The more I think about it, the weaker it looks. | |
The more money donated, the more books purchased, and the more happy children. | |
It looks weaker and weaker, the more I think about it. | |
12. adv. 1=With a comparative, and often withfor it, indicates a result more like said comparative. This can be negated withnone. | |
It was a difficult time, but I’m the wiser for it. | |
It was a difficult time, and I’m none the wiser for it. | |
I'm much the wiser for having had a difficult time like that. | |
law |
1. n. The body of binding rules and regulations, customs and standards established in a community by its legislative and judicial authorities. | |
the courts interpret the law; entrapment is against the law | |
2. n. The body of such rules that pertain to a particular topic. | |
property law; commercial hunting and fishing law | |
3. n. Common law, as contrasted with equity. | |
4. n. A binding regulation or custom established in a community in this way. | |
There is a law against importing wallabies. A new law forbids driving on that road. The court ruled that the executive order was not law and nullified it. | |
5. n. (more generally) (A rule, such as:) | |
6. n. Any rule that must or should be obeyed, concerning behaviours and their consequences. (Compare mores). | |
"Do unto others as you wish them to do unto you" is a good law to follow. the law of self-preservation | |
7. n. A rule or principle regarding the construction of language or art. | |
the laws of playwriting and poetry | |
8. n. A statement (in physics, etc) of an (observed, established) order or sequence or relationship of phenomena which is invariable under certain conditions | |
the laws of thermodynamics | |
Newton's third law of motion states that to every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction. This is one of several laws derived from | |
9. n. (mathematics, logic) A statement (of relation) that is true under specified conditions; a mathematical or logical rule. | |
Mathematical laws can be proved purely through mathematics, without scientific experimentation. | |
10. n. Any statement of the relation of acts and conditions to their consequences. | |
the law of scarcity; the law of supply and demand | |
11. n. (cricket) One of the official rules of cricket as codified by the its (former) governing body, the MCC. | |
12. n. The control and order brought about by the observance of such rules. | |
They worked to maintain law and order. It was a territory without law, marked by violence. | |
13. n. (informal) A person or group that act(s) with authority to uphold such rules and order (for example, one or more police officers). | |
Here comes the law — run! | |
14. n. The profession that deals with such rules (as lawyers, judges, police officers, etc). | |
He is studying for a career in law. She has practiced law in New York for twenty years. | |
15. n. Jurisprudence, the field of knowledge which encompasses these rules. | |
She went to university to study law. | |
16. n. Litigation, legal action (as a means of maintaining or restoring order, redressing wrongs, etc). | |
They were quick to go to law. | |
17. n. (now uncommon) An allowance of distance or time (a head start) given to a weaker (human or animal) competitor in a race, to make the race more fair. | |
18. n. (fantasy) One of two metaphysical forces ruling the world in some fantasy settings, also called order, and opposed to chaos. | |
19. n. (legal, chiefly historical) An oath sworn before a court, especially disclaiming a debt. (Chiefly in the phrases "wager of law)", "(m", "perform one's law", "lose one's law".) | |
20. v. (obsolete) To work as a lawyer; to practice law. | |
21. v. (ambitransitive, chiefly dialectal) To prosecute or sue (someone), to litigate. | |
22. v. (nonstandard) To rule over (with a certain effect) by law; govern. | |
23. v. (informal) To enforce the law. | |
24. v. To subject to legal restrictions. | |
25. n. (obsolete) A tumulus of stones. | |
26. n. (Scottish, and Northern England, archaic) A hill. | |
27. interj. (dated) An exclamation of mild surprise; lawks. | |