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Today’s post looks at phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs relating to studying, learning, and taking exams.
Let’s start with some useful verbs for reading.
Continue reading “Skimming through and writing up (Studying phrasal verbs)”
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by Liz Walter
My last post was about hiding things, and today I am writing about finding or discovering them.
Find is a very general word, used both for when you look for something deliberately or when you find it by accident. It is usually used to talk about an object or something you can see. For information, we are more likely to use the phrasal verb find out. Discover is used for objects and information, and tends to be used more when we find something by accident or for the first time:
I found my keys under a cushion.
How did you find out my address?
We discovered a secret door that led to a tunnel. Continue reading “Searching out and tracking down: talking about finding or discovering things”
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by Liz Walter
The other day, I read a report about someone whose crimes were hidden in plain sight. In other words, they should have been easy to spot, but in fact were so obvious that nobody noticed them. We can also say that someone hides (or hides something) in plain sight:
Clues to his feelings were hidden in plain sight in his poems.
The hijackers hid in plain sight, taking flying lessons at private schools. Continue reading “Hidden in plain sight: words and phrases connected with hiding”
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by Liz Walter
In my last post, I wrote about verbs that describe circular movements. I’m staying with the theme of movement today and looking at shaking movements and movements from side to side. Continue reading “Juddering, quivering and wobbling: more verbs to describe movement”
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by Liz Walter
This post is one of an occasional series on alternatives for very common words (see, for example, my post on different ways of saying ‘get’). Continue reading “I’d give my right arm for it: ways of saying ‘want’”
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by Liz Walter
My last post looked at replacing the common verb ‘say’ with more interesting verbs that can convey information about a speaker’s emotions or personality. This post continues that theme, this time concentrating on verbs that are used for animal noises. Continue reading “Growling, hissing and croaking: using animal noises to show human emotions”
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by Liz Walter
This post looks at ways of conveying personality or emotions by choosing a more interesting verb than ‘say’ when you report someone’s speech. Anyone who has been on a creative writing course will be familiar with the maxim ‘Show, don’t tell,’ and choosing a specific synonym for ‘say’ can help you to do this. Continue reading “Spluttering, cackling and drawling: verbs to use instead of ‘say’”
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by Liz Walter
One way to improve your English is to find more interesting vocabulary to use instead of very common words. This post looks at five verbs you can use instead of ‘get’. Regular readers of my posts will know that I often talk about collocation, or words that commonly go together. I’ll be focusing on this particularly today because although the words I’m covering are basically synonyms, some of them tend to collocate strongly with particular groups of nouns. Note that they are all a little more formal than ‘get’ but still commonly used, especially in writing. Continue reading “Obtaining information and deriving satisfaction: 5 different ways of saying ‘get’”
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This post is for anyone who feels they use the words ‘surprised’ and ‘shocked’ too much and is looking for more interesting alternatives. It will include both single words and phrases. Continue reading “Stunned and thunderstruck (Words for being surprised or shocked)”
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by Liz Walter
I have recently written two posts on the topic of importance, so this one looks at the opposite: how to say that something isn’t important. Continue reading “There’s bigger fish to fry: talking about things that are not important”