Collective nouns
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....
Graham's Grammar Posts
My foot
When you say “my foot!” you are telling someone that you don’t believe – or strongly disagree with – what someone has told you. It is an idiom used to express disbelief or incredulity....
What is correct: “crave” or “crave for”?
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...
Can “cherish” be used in the past tense and the future tense?
“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...
What does “split the budget” mean?
You probably know that a budget is a sort of plan for your money. When you make a budget, you decide how much money to allocate to different sorts of expenses such as food,...
Prepositional verbs
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
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...
Everything but the kitchen sink
The idiom “everything but the kitchen sink” means “almost everything”. To help understand the phrase, imagine you are moving home. You want to take everything with you, but some things are fixed and can’t...
To bowl over
“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...
Compound nouns
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:...