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. | |
broadest |
1. adj. superlative form of broad: most broad | |
Test |
1. n. (cricket) (sometimes test) a Test match | |
2. n. A challenge, trial. | |
3. n. A cupel or cupelling hearth in which precious metals are melted for trial and refinement. | |
4. n. (academia) An examination, given often during the academic term. | |
5. n. A session in which a product or piece of equipment is examined under everyday or extreme conditions to evaluate its durability, etc. | |
6. n. (cricket, normally “Test”) A Test match. | |
7. n. (botany) Testa; seed coat. | |
8. n. (obsolete) Judgment; distinction; discrimination. | |
9. v. To challenge. | |
Climbing the mountain tested our stamina. | |
10. v. To refine (gold, silver, etc.) in a test or cupel; to subject to cupellation. | |
11. v. To put to the proof; to prove the truth, genuineness, or quality of by experiment, or by some principle or standard; to try. | |
to test the soundness of a principle; to test the validity of an argument | |
12. v. (academics) To administer or assign an examination, often given during the academic term, to (somebody). | |
13. v. To place a product or piece of equipment under everyday and/or extreme conditions and examine it for its durability, etc. | |
14. v. (copulative) To be shown to be by test. | |
He tested positive for cancer. | |
15. v. (chemistry) To examine or try, as by the use of some reagent. | |
to test a solution by litmus paper | |
16. n. (obsolete) A witness. | |
17. v. (obsolete, transitive) To attest (a document) legally, and date it. | |
18. v. (obsolete, intransitive) To make a testament, or will. | |
19. n. (informal, slang) testosterone | |
of |
1. prep. Expressing distance or motion. | |
2. prep. (now obsolete, or dialectal) From (of distance, direction), "off". | |
3. prep. (obsolete except in phrases) Since, from (a given time, earlier state etc.). | |
4. prep. From, away from (a position, number, distance etc.). | |
There are no shops within twenty miles of the cottage. | |
5. prep. (North America, Scotland, Ireland) Before (the hour); to. | |
What's the time? / Nearly a quarter of three. | |
6. prep. Expressing separation. | |
7. prep. (Indicating removal, absence or separation, with the action indicated by a transitive verb and the quality or substance by a grammatical object.) | |
Finally she was relieved of the burden of caring for her sick husband. | |
8. prep. (Indicating removal, absence or separation, with resulting state indicated by an adjective.) | |
He seemed devoid of human feelings. | |
9. prep. (obsolete) (Indicating removal, absence or separation, construed with an intransitive verb.) | |
10. prep. Expressing origin. | |
11. prep. (Indicating an ancestral source or origin of descent.) | |
The word is believed to be of Japanese origin. | |
12. prep. (Indicating a (non-physical) source of action or emotion; introducing a cause, instigation); from, out of, as an expression of. | |
The invention was born of necessity. | |
13. prep. (following an intransitive verb) (Indicates the source or cause of the verb.) | |
It is said that she died of a broken heart. | |
14. prep. (following an adjective) (Indicates the subject or cause of the adjective.) | |
I am tired of all this nonsense. | |
15. prep. Expressing agency. | |
16. prep. (following a passive verb) (Indicates the agent (for most verbs, now usually expressed with by).) | |
I am not particularly enamoured of this idea. | |
17. prep. (Used to introduce the "subjective genitive"; following a noun to form the head of a postmodifying noun phrase) (see also 'Possession' senses below). | |
The contract can be terminated at any time with the agreement of both parties. | |
18. prep. (following an adjective) (Used to indicate the agent of something described by the adjective.) | |
It was very brave of you to speak out like that. | |
19. prep. Expressing composition, substance. | |
20. prep. (after a verb expressing construction, making etc.) (Used to indicate the material or substance used.) | |
Many 'corks' are now actually made of plastic. | |
21. prep. (directly following a noun) (Used to indicate the material of the just-mentioned object.) | |
She wore a dress of silk. | |
22. prep. (Indicating the composition of a given collective or quantitative noun.) | |
What a lot of nonsense! | |
23. prep. (Used to link a given class of things with a specific example of that class.) | |
Welcome to the historic town of Harwich. | |
24. prep. (Links two nouns in near-apposition, with the first qualifying the second); "which is also". | |
I'm not driving this wreck of a car. | |
25. prep. Introducing subject matter. | |
26. prep. (Links an intransitive verb, or a transitive verb and its subject (especially verbs to do with thinking, feeling, expressing etc.), with its subject-ma | |
I'm always thinking of you. | |
27. prep. (following a noun (now chiefly nouns of knowledge, communication etc.)) (Introduces its subject matter); about, concerning. | |
He told us the story of his journey to India. | |
28. prep. (following an adjective) (Introduces its subject matter.) | |
This behaviour is typical of teenagers. | |
29. prep. Having partitive effect. | |
30. prep. (following a number or other quantitive word) (Introduces the whole for which is indicated only the specified part or segment); "from among". | |
Most of these apples are rotten. | |
31. prep. (following a noun) (Indicates a given part.) | |
32. prep. (now archaic, literary, with preceding partitive word assumed, or as a predicate after to be) Some, an amount of, one of. | |
On the whole, they seem to be of the decent sort. | |
33. prep. (Links to a genitive noun or possessive pronoun, with partitive effect (though now often merged with possessive senses, below).) | |
He is a friend of mine. | |
34. prep. Expressing possession. | |
35. prep. Belonging to, existing in, or taking place in a given location, place or time. Compare "origin" senses, above. | |
He was perhaps the most famous scientist of the twentieth century. | |
36. prep. Belonging to (a place) through having title, ownership or control over it. | |
The owner of the nightclub was arrested. | |
37. prep. Belonging to (someone or something) as something they possess or have as a characteristic; (the "possessive genitive". (With abstract nouns, this inter | |
Keep the handle of the saucepan away from the flames. | |
38. prep. Forming the "objective genitive". | |
39. prep. (Follows an agent noun, verbal noun or noun of action.) | |
She had a profound distrust of the police. | |
40. prep. Expressing qualities or characteristics. | |
41. prep. (now archaic, or literary) (Links an adjective with a noun or noun phrase to form a quasi-adverbial qualifier); in respect to, as regards. | |
My companion seemed affable and easy of manner. | |
42. prep. (Indicates a quality or characteristic); "characterized by". | |
Pooh was said to be a bear of very little brain. | |
43. prep. (Indicates quantity, age, price, etc.) | |
We have been paying interest at a rate of 10%. | |
44. prep. (US, informal considered incorrect by some) (Used to link singular indefinite nouns (preceded by the indefinite article) and attributive adjectives mod | |
It's not that big of a deal. | |
45. prep. Expressing a point in time. | |
46. prep. (chiefly regional) During the course of (a set period of time, day of the week etc.), now specifically with implied repetition or regularity. | |
Of an evening, we would often go for a stroll along the river. | |
47. prep. (UK dialectal, chiefly in negative constructions) For (a given length of time). | |
I've not tekken her out of a goodly long while. | |
48. prep. (after a noun) (Indicates duration of a state, activity etc.) | |
After a delay of three hours, the plane finally took off. | |
doctrine |
1. n. A belief or tenet, especially about philosophical or theological matters. | |
The incarnation is a basic doctrine of classical Christianity. | |
The four noble truths summarise the main doctrines of Buddhism. | |
2. n. The body of teachings of an ideology, most often a religion, or of an ideological or religious leader, organization, group or text. | |
What is the understanding of marriage and family in orthodox Marxist doctrine? | |
Will |
1. n. (American football) A weak-side linebacker. | |
2. v. (rare, transitive) To wish, desire (something). | |
Do what you will. | |
3. v. (rare, intransitive) To wish or desire (that something happen); to intend (that). | |
4. v. (auxiliary) To habitually do (a given action). | |
5. v. (auxiliary) To choose to (do something), used to express intention but without any temporal connotations (+ bare infinitive). | |
6. v. (auxiliary) Used to express the future tense, sometimes with some implication of volition when used in the first person. Compare shall. | |
7. v. (auxiliary) To be able to, to have the capacity to. | |
Unfortunately, only one of these gloves will actually fit over my hand. | |
8. 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. | |
9. n. One's intention or decision; someone's orders or commands. | |
Eventually I submitted to my parents' will. | |
10. n. The act of choosing to do something; a person’s conscious intent or volition. | |
Most creatures have a will to live. | |
11. 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. | |
12. n. (archaic) That which is desired; one's wish. | |
13. n. (archaic) Desire, longing. (Now generally merged with later senses.) | |
He felt a great will to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. | |
14. v. (archaic) To wish, desire. | |
15. v. (transitive, intransitive) To instruct (that something be done) in one's will. | |
16. v. To try to make (something) happen by using one's will (intention). | |
All the fans were willing their team to win the game. | |
17. v. To bequeath (something) to someone in one's will (legal document). | |
He willed his stamp collection to the local museum. | |
come |
1. v. (intransitive) To move from further away to nearer to. | |
She’ll be coming ’round the mountain when she comes... | |
2. v. To move towards the speaker. | |
I called the dog, but she wouldn't come. | |
Stop dawdling and come here! | |
3. v. To move towards the listener. | |
Hold on, I'll come in a second. | |
You should ask the doctor to come to your house. | |
4. v. To move towards the object that is the focus of the sentence. | |
No-one can find Bertie Wooster when his aunts come to visit. | |
Hundreds of thousands of people come to Disneyland every year. | |
5. v. (in subordinate clauses and gerunds) To move towards the agent or subject of the main clause. | |
King Cnut couldn't stop the tide coming. | |
He threw the boomerang, which came right back to him. | |
6. v. To move towards an unstated agent. | |
The butler should come when called. | |
7. v. (intransitive) To arrive. | |
8. v. (intransitive) To appear, to manifest itself. | |
The pain in his leg comes and goes. | |
9. v. (intransitive) To take a position relative to something else in a sequence. | |
Which letter comes before Y? Winter comes after autumn. | |
10. v. (intransitive, vulgar, slang) To achieve orgasm; to cum; to ejaculate. | |
He came after a few minutes. | |
11. v. (copulative figuratively, with close) To approach a state of being or accomplishment. | |
They came very close to leaving on time. His test scores came close to perfect. | |
One of the screws came loose, and the skateboard fell apart. | |
12. v. (figuratively, with to) To take a particular approach or point of view in regard to something. | |
He came to SF literature a confirmed technophile, and nothing made him happier than to read a manuscript thick with imaginary gizmos and whatzits. | |
13. v. (copulative, archaic) To become, to turn out to be. | |
He was a dream come true. | |
14. v. (intransitive) To be supplied, or made available; to exist. | |
He's as tough as they come. Our milkshakes come in vanilla, strawberry and chocolate flavours. | |
15. v. (slang) To carry through; to succeed in. | |
You can't come any tricks here. | |
16. v. (intransitive) Happen. | |
This kind of accident comes when you are careless. | |
17. v. (intransitive, with from or sometimes of) To have as an origin, originate. | |
18. v. To have a certain social background. | |
19. v. To be or have been a resident or native. | |
Where did you come from? | |
20. v. To have been brought up by or employed by. | |
She comes from a good family. | |
He comes from a disreputable legal firm. | |
21. v. To begin (at a certain location); to radiate or stem (from). | |
The river comes from Bear Lake. | |
Where does this road come from? | |
22. v. (intransitive, of grain) To germinate. | |
23. n. (obsolete) Coming, arrival; approach. | |
24. n. (vulgar, slang) Semen | |
25. n. (vulgar, slang) Female ejaculatory discharge. | |
26. prep. Used to indicate an event, period, or change in state occurring after a present time. | |
Leave it to settle for about three months and, come Christmas time, you'll have a delicious concoction to offer your guests. | |
Come retirement, their Social Security may turn out to be a lot less than they counted on. | |
27. interj. An exclamation to express annoyance. | |
Come come! Stop crying. Come now! You must eat it. | |
28. interj. An exclamation to express encouragement, or to precede a request. | |
Come come! You can do it. Come now! It won't bite you. | |
29. n. (typography) alternative form of comma in its medieval use as a middot ⟨·⟩ serving as a form of colon. | |
after |
1. adv. Behind; later in time; following. | |
They lived happily ever after. | |
I left the room, and the dog bounded after. | |
2. prep. Subsequently to; following in time; later than. | |
We had a few beers after the game. | |
The time is quarter after eight. | |
The Cold War began shortly after the Second World War. | |
3. prep. Behind. | |
He will leave a trail of destruction after him. | |
4. prep. In pursuit of, seeking. | |
He's after a job; run after him; inquire after her health. | |
5. prep. In allusion to, in imitation of; following or referencing. | |
We named him after his grandfather; a painting after Leonardo da Vinci. | |
6. prep. Next in importance or rank. | |
The princess is next in line to the throne after the prince. | |
7. prep. As a result of. | |
After your bad behaviour, you will be punished. | |
8. prep. In spite of. | |
After all that has happened, he is still my friend. | |
I can't believe that, after all our advice against gambling, you walked into that casino! | |
9. prep. (Irish usually preceded by a form of be followed by an -ing form of a verb) Used to indicate recent completion of an activity | |
I was after finishing my dinner when there was a knock on the door. | |
10. prep. (dated) According to an author or text. | |
11. prep. Denoting the aim or object; concerning; in relation to. | |
to look after workmen; to enquire after a friend; to thirst after righteousness | |
12. prep. (obsolete) According to the direction and influence of; in proportion to; befitting. | |
13. conj. Signifies that the action of the clause it starts takes place before the action of the other clause. | |
I went home after we had decided to call it a day. | |
14. adj. (dated) Later; second (of two); next, following, subsequent | |
15. adj. (nautical, where the frame of reference is within the ship) At or towards the stern of a ship. | |
The after gun is mounted aft. | |
The after gun is abaft the forward gun. | |
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. | |
war |
1. n. Organized, large-scale, armed conflict between countries or between national, ethnic, or other sizeable groups, usually involving the engagement of military forces. | |
The war was largely between Sunni and Shia militants. | |
2. n. A particular conflict of this kind. | |
3. n. By extension, any conflict, or anything resembling a conflict. | |
You look like you've been through the wars. | |
4. n. (figuratively) A campaign against something. | |
The "war on drugs" is a campaign against the use of narcotic drugs. | |
The "war on terror" is a campaign against terrorist crime. | |
In the US, conservatives rail against the "war on Christmas". | |
5. n. (business) A bout of fierce competition in trade. | |
I reaped the benefit of the car dealerships' price war, getting my car for far less than it's worth. | |
The cellular phone companies were engaged in a freebie war, each offering various services thrown in when one purchased a plan. | |
6. n. (obsolete) Instruments of war. | |
7. n. (obsolete) Armed forces. | |
8. n. A particular card game for two players, notable for having its outcome predetermined by how the cards are dealt. | |
9. v. (intransitive) To engage in conflict (may be followed by "with" to specify the foe). | |
10. v. To carry on, as a contest; to wage. | |