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. | |
Black |
1. adj. alternative case form of black (of or relating to any of various ethnic groups having dark pigmentation of the skin) | |
2. adj. (of an object) Absorbing all light and reflecting none; dark and hueless. | |
3. adj. (of a place, etc) Without light. | |
4. adj. (sometimes capitalized) Of or relating to any of various ethnic groups having dark pigmentation of the skin. | |
5. adj. (chiefly historical) Designated for use by those ethnic groups which have dark pigmentation of the skin. | |
black drinking fountain; black hospital | |
6. adj. (card games, of a card) Of the spades or clubs suits. Compare red | |
I got two red queens, he got one of the black queens. | |
7. adj. Bad; evil; ill-omened. | |
8. adj. Expressing menace, or discontent; threatening; sullen. | |
He shot her a black look. | |
9. adj. Illegitimate, illegal or disgraced. | |
10. adj. (Ireland, informal) Overcrowded. | |
11. adj. (of coffee or tea) Without any cream, milk or creamer. | |
Jim drinks his coffee black, but Ellen prefers it with creamer. | |
12. adj. (board games, chess) Of or relating to the playing pieces of a board game deemed to belong to the "black" set (in chess the set used by the player who moves second) (often regardless of the pieces' ac | |
The black pieces in this chess set are made of dark blue glass. | |
13. adj. (typography) Said of a symbol or character that is solid, filled with color. Compare white. | |
Compare two Unicode symbols: , ☞ = "WHITE RIGHT POINTING INDEX"; , ☛ = BLACK RIGHT POINTING INDEX | |
14. adj. (politics) Related to the Christian Democratic Union of Germany. | |
After the election, the parties united in a black-yellow alliance. | |
15. adj. Relating to an initiative whose existence or exact nature must remain withheld from the general public. | |
5 percent of the Defense Department funding will go to black projects. | |
16. adj. (Ireland, now pejorative) Protestant, often with the implication of being militantly pro-British or anti-Catholic | |
Originally "the Black North" meant west Ulster | |
17. adj. 1812, Edward Wakefield, "There is a district, comprehending Donegal, the interior of the county of Derry, and the western side of Tyrone, which is emphatically called by the people "the Black North," | |
18. adj. then Protestant east Ulster.1841 March 20 Catholic Herald (Bengal) Vol. 2 No. 1 p. 27 'Even in the "black North"—in " Protestant Ulster"—Catholicity is progessing at a rate that must strike terror in | |
19. adj. Used in the vernacular name of a species to indicate that it has one or more features that is black or dark, especially in comparison to another species with the same base name. | |
black birch, black locust, black rhino | |
20. n. The colour/color perceived in the absence of light, but also when no light is reflected, but rather absorbed. | |
(colour panel, 000) | |
21. n. A black dye or pigment. | |
22. n. A pen, pencil, crayon, etc., made of black pigment. | |
23. n. (in the plural) Black cloth hung up at funerals. | |
24. n. (sometimes capitalised) A person of African, Aborigine, or Maori descent; a dark-skinned person. | |
25. n. (billiards, snooker, pool, with the) The black ball. | |
26. n. (baseball) The edge of home plate | |
27. n. (British) A type of firecracker that is really more dark brown in colour. | |
28. n. (informal) Blackcurrant syrup (in mixed drinks, e.g. snakebite and black, cider and black). | |
29. n. (in chess and similar games) The person playing with the black set of pieces. | |
At this point black makes a disastrous move. | |
30. n. Part of a thing which is distinguished from the rest by being black. | |
31. n. (obsolete) A stain; a spot. | |
32. v. To make black, to blacken. | |
33. v. To apply blacking to something. | |
34. v. (British) To boycott something or someone, usually as part of an industrial dispute. | |
market |
1. n. City square or other fairly spacious site where traders set up stalls and buyers browse the merchandise. | |
2. n. An organised, often periodic, trading event at such site. | |
The privilege to hold a weekly market was invaluable for any feudal era burgh. | |
3. n. Flea market | |
4. n. A group of potential customers for one's product. | |
We believe that the market for the new widget is the older homeowner. | |
5. n. A geographical area where a certain commercial demand exists. | |
Foreign markets were lost as our currency rose versus their valuta. | |
6. n. A formally organized, sometimes monopolistic, system of trading in specified goods or effects. | |
The stock market ceased to be monopolized by the paper-shuffling national stock exchanges with the advent of Internet markets. | |
7. n. The sum total traded in a process of individuals trading for certain commodities. | |
8. n. (obsolete) The price for which a thing is sold in a market; hence, value; worth. | |
9. v. To make (products or services) available for sale and promote them. | |
We plan to market an ecology model by next quarter. | |
10. v. To sell | |
We marketed more this quarter already then all last year! | |
11. v. (intransitive) To deal in a market; to buy or sell; to make bargains for provisions or goods. | |
had |
1. v. simple past tense and past participle of have. | |
2. v. (auxiliary) Used to form the pluperfect tense, expressing a completed action in the past (with a past participle). | |
3. v. (auxiliary, now rare) As past subjunctive: would have. | |
4. adj. (obsolete) Available. | |
have |
Additional archaic forms are second-person singular present tense hast, third-person singular present tense hath, present participle haveing, and second-person singular past tense hadst. | |
1. v. To possess, own, hold. | |
I have a house and a car. | |
Look what I have here — a frog I found on the street! | |
2. v. To be related in some way to (with the object identifying the relationship). | |
I have two sisters. | |
I have a lot of work to do. | |
3. v. To partake of a particular substance (especially a food or drink) or action. | |
I have breakfast at six o'clock. | |
Can I have a look at that? | |
I'm going to have some pizza and a beer right now. | |
4. v. To be scheduled to attend or participate in. | |
What class do you have right now? I have English. | |
Fred won't be able to come to the party; he has a meeting that day. | |
5. v. (auxiliary verb, taking a past participle) (Used in forming the perfect aspect and the past perfect aspect.) | |
I have already eaten today. | |
I had already eaten. | |
6. v. (auxiliary verb, taking a to-infinitive) See have to. | |
I have to go. | |
7. v. To give birth to. | |
The couple always wanted to have children. | |
My wife is having the baby right now! | |
My mother had me when she was 25. | |
8. v. To engage in sexual intercourse with. | |
He's always bragging about how many women he's had. | |
9. v. To accept as a romantic partner. | |
Despite my protestations of love, she would not have me. | |
10. v. (transitive with bare infinitive) To cause to, by a command, request or invitation. | |
They had me feed their dog while they were out of town. | |
11. v. (transitive with adjective or adjective-phrase complement) To cause to be. | |
He had him arrested for trespassing. | |
The lecture's ending had the entire audience in tears. | |
12. v. (transitive with bare infinitive) To be affected by an occurrence. (Used in supplying a topic that is not a verb argument.) | |
The hospital had several patients contract pneumonia last week. | |
I've had three people today tell me my hair looks nice. | |
13. v. (transitive with adjective or adjective-phrase complement) To depict as being. | |
Their stories differed; he said he'd been at work when the incident occurred, but her statement had him at home that entire evening. | |
14. v. (Used as interrogative auxiliary verb with a following pronoun to form tag questions. (For further discussion, see "Usage notes" below.)) | |
We haven't eaten dinner yet, have we? | |
Your wife hasn't been reading that nonsense, has she? | |
(UK usage) He has some money, hasn't he? | |
15. v. (UK, slang) To defeat in a fight; take. | |
I could have him! | |
I'm gonna have you! | |
16. v. (dated) To be able to speak a language. | |
I have no German. | |
17. v. To feel or be (especially painfully) aware of. | |
Dan certainly has arms today, probably from scraping paint off four columns the day before. | |
18. v. To be afflicted with, suffer from. | |
He had a cold last week. | |
19. v. To experience, go through, undergo. | |
We had a hard year last year, with the locust swarms and all that. | |
He had surgery on his hip yesterday. | |
I'm having the time of my life! | |
20. v. To trick, to deceive. | |
You had me alright! I never would have thought that was just a joke. | |
21. v. (transitive, often with present participle) To allow; to tolerate. | |
The child screamed incessantly for his mother to buy him a toy, but she wasn't having any of it. | |
I asked my dad if I could go to the concert this Thursday, but he wouldn't have it since it's a school night. | |
22. v. (transitive, often used in the negative) To believe, buy, be taken in by. | |
I made up an excuse as to why I was out so late, but my wife wasn't having any of it. | |
23. v. To host someone; to take in as a guest. | |
Thank you for having me! | |
24. v. To get a reading, measurement, or result from an instrument or calculation. | |
What do you have for problem two? | |
I have two contacts on my scope. | |
25. v. (transitive, of a jury) To consider a court proceeding that has been completed; to begin deliberations on a case. | |
We'll schedule closing arguments for Thursday, and the jury will have the case by that afternoon. | |
26. n. A wealthy or privileged person. | |
27. n. (uncommon) One who has some (contextually specified) thing. | |
28. n. (AU, NZ, informal) A fraud or deception; something misleading. | |
They advertise it as a great deal, but I think it's a bit of a have. | |
become |
1. v. (intransitive, obsolete) To arrive, come (to a place). | |
2. v. (copulative) To come about; happen; come into being; arise. | |
What became of him after he was let go? | |
It hath becomen so that many a man had to sterve. | |
3. v. (copulative) begin to be; turn into. | |
She became a doctor when she was 25. | |
The weather will become cold after the sun goes down. | |
4. v. To be proper for; to beseem. | |
5. v. Of an adornment, piece of clothing etc.: to look attractive on (someone). | |
That dress really becomes you. | |
more |
1. det. comparative degree of many, : in greater number. (Used for a discrete quantity.) | |
More people are arriving. | |
There are more ways to do this than I can count. | |
2. det. comparative degree of much, : in greater quantity, amount, or proportion. (Used for a continuous quantity.) | |
I want more soup; I need more time | |
There's more caffeine in my coffee than in the coffee you get in most places. | |
3. adv. To a greater degree or extent. | |
He walks more in the morning these days. | |
4. adv. (now poetic) In negative constructions: any further, any longer; any more. | |
5. adv. Used alone to form the comparative form of adjectives and adverbs. | |
You're more beautiful than I ever imagined. | |
6. adv. (now dialectal, or humorous) Used in addition to an inflected comparative form. (Standard until the 18thc.) | |
I was more better at English than you. | |
7. adv. rather | |
He is more clever than wise. | |
8. n. An extra amount or extent. | |
9. n. (obsolete) a carrot; a parsnip. | |
10. n. (dialectal) a root; stock. | |
11. n. A plant. | |
12. v. To root up. | |
13. pron. a greater amount of people or things | |
visible |
1. adj. Able to be seen. | |
When the sun rises, the world becomes visible. | |
and |
1. conj. As a coordinating conjunction; expressing two elements to be taken together or in addition to each other. | |
2. conj. Used simply to connect two noun phrases, adjectives or adverbs. | |
3. conj. Simply connecting two clauses or sentences. | |
4. conj. Introducing a clause or sentence which follows on in time or consequence from the first. | |
5. conj. (obsolete) Yet; but. | |
6. conj. Used to connect certain numbers: connecting units when they precede tens (not dated); connecting tens and units to hundreds, thousands etc. (now often | |
7. conj. (now colloquial, or literary) Used to connect more than two elements together in a chain, sometimes to stress the number of elements. | |
8. conj. Connecting two identical elements, with implications of continued or infinite repetition. | |
9. conj. Introducing a parenthetical or explanatory clause. | |
10. conj. Introducing the continuation of narration from a previous understood point; also used alone as a question: ‘and so what?’. | |
11. conj. (now regional or somewhat colloquial) Used to connect two verbs where the second is dependent on the first: ‘to’. Used especially after come, | |
12. conj. Introducing a qualitative difference between things having the same name; "as well as other". | |
13. conj. Used to combine numbers in addition; plus (with singular or plural verb). | |
14. conj. Expressing a condition.: | |
15. conj. (now US dialect) If; provided that. | |
16. conj. (obsolete) As if, as though. | |
17. n. (enm, music, often informal) In rhythm, the second half of a divided beat. | |
18. n. (UK dialectal) Breath. | |
19. n. (UK dialectal) Sea smoke; steam fog. | |
20. v. (UK dialectal, intransitive) To breathe; whisper; devise; imagine. | |
goods |
1. n. plural of good | |
2. n. (business, economics) That which is produced, then traded, bought or sold, then finally consumed. | |
3. n. (informal, often preceded by the) Something authentic, important, or revealing. | |
4. n. (transport) freight (not passengers) | |
were |
1. v. Second-person singular simple past tense indicative of be. | |
John, you were the only person to see him. | |
2. v. First-person plural simple past tense indicative of be. | |
We were about to leave. | |
3. v. Second-person plural simple past tense indicative of be. | |
Mary and John, you were right. | |
4. v. Third-person plural simple past tense indicative of be. | |
They were a fine group. | |
They were to be the best of friends from that day on. | |
5. v. Simple imperfect subjunctive in all persons of be. | |
I wish that it were Sunday. | |
I wish that I were with you. | |
* with "if" omitted, put first in an "if" clause: | |
*: Were it simply that she wore a hat, I would not be upset at all. (= If it were simply...) | |
*: Were father a king, we would have war. (= If father were a king,...) | |
6. v. (Northern England) was. | |
7. n. (obsolete) A fine for slaying a man; weregild. | |
8. n. (fandom) (The collective name for any kind of person that changes into another form under certain conditions, including the werewolf.) | |
be |
1. v. (intransitive, now literary) To exist; to have real existence. | |
2. v. (with there, or dialectally it, as dummy subject) To exist. | |
There is just one woman in town who can help us. (or, dialectally:) It is just one woman in town who can help us. | |
3. v. (intransitive) To occupy a place. | |
The cup is on the table. | |
4. v. (intransitive) To occur, to take place. | |
When will the meeting be? | |
5. v. (intransitive, in perfect tenses, without predicate) Elliptical form of "be here", "go to and return from" or similar. | |
The postman has been today, but my tickets have still not yet come. | |
I have been to Spain many times. | |
Moscow, huh? I've never been, but it sounds fascinating. | |
6. v. (transitive, copulative) Used to indicate that the subject and object are the same. | |
Knowledge is bliss. | |
Hi, I’m Jim. | |
7. v. (transitive, copulative, mathematics) Used to indicate that the values on either side of an equation are the same. | |
3 times 5 is fifteen. | |
8. v. (transitive, copulative) Used to indicate that the subject plays the role of the predicate nominal. | |
François Mitterrand was president of France from 1981 to 1995. | |
9. v. (transitive, copulative) Used to connect a noun to an adjective that describes it. | |
The sky is blue. | |
10. v. (transitive, copulative) Used to indicate that the subject has the qualities described by a noun or noun phrase. | |
The sky is a deep blue today. | |
11. v. (transitive, auxiliary) Used to form the passive voice. | |
The dog was drowned by the boy. | |
12. v. (transitive, auxiliary) Used to form the continuous forms of various tenses. | |
The woman is walking. | |
I shall be writing to you soon. | |
We liked to chat while we were eating. | |
13. v. (archaic, auxiliary) Used to form the perfect aspect with certain intransitive verbs, most of which indicate motion. Often still used for "to go". | |
14. v. (transitive, auxiliary) Used to form future tenses, especially the future periphrastic. | |
I am to leave tomorrow. | |
I would drive you, were I to obtain a car. | |
15. v. (transitive, copulative) Used to link a subject to a measurement. | |
This building is three hundred years old. | |
I am 75 kilograms. | |
He’s about 6 feet tall. | |
16. v. (transitive, copulative, with a cardinal numeral) Used to state the age of a subject in years. | |
I’m 20. (= I am 20 years old.) | |
17. v. (with a dummy subject) it Used to indicate the time of day. | |
It is almost eight. (= It is almost eight o’clock.) | |
It’s 8:30 read eight-thirty in Tokyo. | |
What time is it there? It’s night. | |
18. v. (With since) Used to indicate passage of time since the occurrence of an event. | |
It has been three years since my grandmother died. (similar to My grandmother died three years ago, but emphasizes the intervening period) | |
It had been six days since his departure, when I received a letter from him. | |
19. v. (often, impersonal, with it as a dummy subject) Used to indicate weather, air quality, or the like. | |
It is hot in Arizona, but it is not usually humid. | |
Why is it so dark in here? | |
20. v. (dynamic/lexical "be", especially in progressive tenses, conjugated non-suppletively in the present tense, see usage notes) To exist or behave in a certain way. | |
"What do we do?" "We be ourselves.". | |
Why is he being nice to me? | |
becoming |
1. v. present participle of become | |
2. n. (chiefly philosophy) The act or process by which something becomes. | |
3. adj. pleasingly suitable; fit; congruous | |
4. adj. decent, respectable | |
become |
1. v. (intransitive, obsolete) To arrive, come (to a place). | |
2. v. (copulative) To come about; happen; come into being; arise. | |
What became of him after he was let go? | |
It hath becomen so that many a man had to sterve. | |
3. v. (copulative) begin to be; turn into. | |
She became a doctor when she was 25. | |
The weather will become cold after the sun goes down. | |
4. v. To be proper for; to beseem. | |
5. v. Of an adornment, piece of clothing etc.: to look attractive on (someone). | |
That dress really becomes you. | |
scarcer |
1. adj. comparative form of scarce: more scarce | |