Helping English language learners
To understand the difference between unperturbed and imperturbable, let’s start with the meaning of “perturbed”, which is something like upset or troubled. We say that someone is “unperturbed” when they are not perturbed –...
“Auxiliary” is an adjective meaning “helping” or “supporting”. So, an auxiliary verb is one that helps or supports other verbs. We use auxiliary verbs to help other verbs form the various tenses, moods, and...
We use collective nouns to refer to a collection of individual people, creatures or objects. Examples: In British English, we can treat a collective noun as either singular or plural, depending on the context....
You would normally say “I crave an apple pie”, and not “I crave for an apple pie”. One definition of the verb “to crave” is “to have a great desire for”. If you were...
“To cherish” is a verb meaning to value greatly or to hold in great affection. We can use it in the present, past and future tenses. Here are some examples. Present tense: She was...
We often use verbs and prepositions together. Usually this results in a “prepositional verb”. Some prepositional verbs are: • To agree withExamples:o I agree with everything they sayo They usually agree with each other...
The person of a verb depends on its subject. There are six persons: three singular and three plural. In many languages, verbs ‘conjugate’ or make an ‘inflection’ according to the person. In modern English...
“To bowl over” is a phrasal verb with two main meanings. The first meaning of “to bowl over” is to knock someone or something to the ground. Examples: Because she wasn’t looking where she...
We form compound nouns by joining together two words. Sometimes we keep these words separate. Examples: coffee cup fairy tale washing machine Sometimes we hyphenate them (join them together by a hyphen). Examples:...
Nouns can be either countable or uncountable. Countable nouns can be: preceded by a (a dog), both singular and plural (dog, dogs) counted (one dog, two dogs, three dogs, thirty dogs). Examples: programme case...