Example sentences for: phrasal

How can you use “phrasal” in a sentence? Here are some example sentences to help you improve your vocabulary:

  • Fifteen is not a lot of senses for take : in the Ox-ford Thesaurus we listed twenty-seven senses for which there were viable synonyms before reaching the phrasal verb section; the phrasal verbs yielded another twenty-five common senses for which synonyms could be adduced.

  • I should not like to have to face the task of listing all the adverbs that might be used with the verb run , even if it is restricted to cars: smoothly, quietly, silently, uninterruptedly, fitfully, intermittently, efficiently, well, faultlessly, beautifully, perfectly, poorly, badly, sluggishly, economically, swiftly, rapidly, quickly --and then one must be prepared to add the multi-word phrasal modifiers, like without a hitch, as if it would never stop, like a clock, like clockwork , etc.

  • The general production of the book is poor: the paper has too much “see-through,” causing the type on the back of a page to interfere with the legibility; the type is too gray; the definitions are run into one another, with semicolons in place of definition numbers, making it difficult to distinguish senses and requiring one to read through a long entry before coming to the sense sought; it is almost impossible to discover where a new part of speech begins; subentries of idiomatic phrases and phrasal verbs are given the same prominence as headwords, making them easy to find but detracting from the headword treatment; and the substandard typography has created many loose lines which poor proofreading has failed to catch.

  • Also, the alphabetical order might prove a bit off-putting for some, for phrasal verbs are set flush left with a hanging indention (like headwords) immediately after the main verb: for instance, take , which has fifteen main entries of its own (for reasons we shall get to), is followed by headword-style entries for take after, take against , etc., through take up with ; it is only then that one reaches the entry for takeaway .

  • The question is trivial, for the systems need not be mutually exclusive, nor need they exclude phrasal sets like Shut up!


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