| to |
| 1. part. A particle used for marking the following verb as an infinitive. | |
| I want to leave. | |
| He asked me what to do. | |
| I don’t know how to say it. | |
| I have places to go and people to see. | |
| 2. part. As above, with the verb implied. | |
| "Did you visit the museum?" "I wanted to, but it was closed.". | |
| If he hasn't read it yet, he ought to. | |
| 3. part. A particle used to create phrasal verbs. | |
| I have to do laundry today. | |
| 4. prep. Indicating destination: In the direction of, and arriving at. | |
| We are walking to the shop. | |
| 5. prep. Used to indicate purpose. | |
| He devoted himself to education. | |
| They drank to his health. | |
| 6. prep. Used to indicate result of action. | |
| His face was beaten to a pulp. | |
| 7. prep. Used after an adjective to indicate its application. | |
| similar to ..., relevant to ..., pertinent to ..., I was nice to him, he was cruel to her, I am used to walking. | |
| 8. prep. (obsolete,) As a. | |
| With God to friend (with God as a friend); with The Devil to fiend (with the Devil as a foe); lambs slaughtered to lake (lambs slaughtered as a sacrifice); t | |
| 9. prep. (arithmetic) Used to indicate a ratio or comparison. | |
| one to one = 1:1 | |
| ten to one = 10:1. | |
| I have ten dollars to your four. | |
| 10. prep. (arithmetic) Used to indicate that the preceding term is to be raised to the power of the following value; indicates exponentiation. | |
| Three squared or three to the second power is nine. | |
| Three to the power of two is nine. | |
| Three to the second is nine. | |
| 11. prep. Used to indicate the indirect object. | |
| I gave the book to him. | |
| 12. prep. (time) Preceding. | |
| ten to ten = 9:50; We're going to leave at ten to (the hour). | |
| 13. prep. Used to describe what something consists of or contains. | |
| Anyone could do this job; there's nothing to it. | |
| There's a lot of sense to what he says. | |
| 14. prep. (Canada, UK, Newfoundland, West Midlands) At. | |
| Stay where you're to and I'll come find you, b'y. | |
| 15. adv. Toward a closed, touching or engaging position. | |
| Please push the door to. | |
| 16. adv. (nautical) Into the wind. | |
| 17. adv. misspelling of too | |
| blend |
| 1. n. A mixture of two or more things. | |
| Their music has been described as a blend of jazz and heavy metal. | |
| Our department has a good blend of experienced workers and young promise. | |
| 2. n. (linguistics) A word formed by combining two other words; a grammatical contamination, portmanteau word. | |
| The word brunch is a blend of the words breakfast and lunch. | |
| 3. v. To mingle; to mix; to unite intimately; to pass or shade insensibly into each other. | |
| To make hummus you need to blend chickpeas, olive oil, lemon juice and garlic. | |
| 4. v. (intransitive) To be mingled or mixed. | |
| 5. v. (obsolete) To pollute by mixture or association; to spoil or corrupt; to blot; to stain. | |
| gradually |
| 1. adv. In a gradual manner; making slow progress; slowly. | |
| 2. adv. (obsolete) by degrees | |
| into |
| 1. prep. Going inside (of). | |
| Mary danced into the house. | |
| 2. prep. Going to a geographic region. | |
| We left the house and walked into the street. | |
| The plane flew into the open air. | |
| 3. prep. Against, especially with force or violence. | |
| The car crashed into the tree; I wasn't careful, and walked into a wall | |
| 4. prep. Producing, becoming; (indicates transition into another form or substance). | |
| I carved the piece of driftwood into a sculpture of a whale. Right before our eyes, Jake turned into a wolf! | |
| 5. prep. After the start of. | |
| About 20 minutes into the flight, the pilot reported a fire on board. | |
| 6. prep. (colloquial) Interested in or attracted to. | |
| She's really into Shakespeare right now; I'm so into you! | |
| 7. prep. (mathematics) Taking distinct arguments to distinct values. | |
| The exponential function maps the set of real numbers into itself. | |
| 8. prep. (UK, archaic, India, mathematics) Expressing the operation of multiplication.(R:OED Online) | |
| Five into three is fifteen. | |
| 9. prep. (mathematics) Expressing the operation of division, with the denominator given first. Usually with "goes". | |
| Three into two won't go. | |
| 24 goes into 48 how many times? | |
| 10. prep. Investigating the subject (of). | |
| Call for research into pesticides blamed for vanishing bees. | |
| something |
| 1. pron. An uncertain or unspecified thing; one thing. | |
| I must have forgotten to pack something, but I can't think what. | |
| I have something for you in my bag. | |
| I have a feeling something good is going to happen today. | |
| 2. pron. (colloquial, of someone or something) A quality to a moderate degree. | |
| The performance was something of a disappointment. | |
| That child is something of a genius. | |
| 3. pron. (colloquial, of a person) A talent or quality that is difficult to specify. | |
| She has a certain something. | |
| 4. pron. (colloquial, often with really or quite) Somebody or something who is superlative in some way. | |
| He's really something! I've never heard such a great voice. | |
| She's quite something. I can't believe she would do such a mean thing. | |
| 5. adj. Having a characteristic that the speaker cannot specify. | |
| 6. adv. (degree) Somewhat; to a degree. | |
| The baby looks something like his father. | |
| 7. adv. (degree, colloquial) To a high degree. | |
| 8. v. Applied to an action whose name is forgotten by, unknown or unimportant to the user, e.g. from words of a song. | |
| 9. n. An object whose nature is yet to be defined. | |
| 10. n. An object whose name is forgotten by, unknown or unimportant to the user, e.g., from words of a song. Also used to refer to an object earlier indefinitely referred to as 'something' (pronoun sense). | |
| else |
| 1. adj. (postpositive, used only with indefinite or interrogative pronouns) Other; in addition to previously mentioned items. | |
| The instructor is busy. Can anyone else help me? | |
| 2. adv. (follows interrogative adverbs) Otherwise, if not. | |
| How else (=in what other way) can it be done? | |
| I'm busy Friday; when else (=what other time) works for you? | |
| 3. conj. For otherwise; or else. | |
| Then the Wronskian of f and g must be nonzero, else they could not be linearly independent. | |
| 4. conj. (computing, in many programming languages and pseudocode) but if the condition of the previous if clause is false, do the following. | |
