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The Harvard sentences, or Harvard lines, [1] is a collection of 720 sample phrases, divided into lists of 10, used for standardized testing of Voice over IP, cellular, and other telephone systems. They are phonetically balanced sentences that use specific phonemes at the same frequency they appear in English.
In the beginning (phrase) Infinity plus one; Information wants to be free; Inherently funny word; Inside baseball (metaphor) An Irish solution to an Irish problem; Irrational exuberance; It was a dark and stormy night; It's better to burn out than to fade away; It's Britney, bitch; It's not you, it's me
The word what can be used to form a free relative clause – one that has no antecedent and that serves as a complete noun phrase in itself, as in I like what he likes. The words whatever and whichever can be used similarly, in the role of either pronouns ( whatever he likes ) or determiners ( whatever book he likes ).
An idiom is a common word or phrase with a figurative, non-literal meaning that is understood culturally and differs from what its composite words' denotations would suggest; i.e. the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words (although some idioms do retain their literal meanings – see the example "kick the bucket" below).
Object abstraction, or simply abstraction, is a concept wherein terms for objects become used for more abstract concepts, which in some languages develop into further abstractions such as verbs and grammatical words (grammaticalisation). Abstraction is common in human language, though it manifests in different ways for different languages.
In the phrase colorless green ideas the abstract noun idea is described as being colorless and green. However, due to its abstract nature, an idea cannot have or lack color. Sleep furiously – which functions as the predicate of the sentence – is structurally well-formed; in other words, it is grammatical. However, the meaning that it ...
A proverbial phrase or expression is a type of conventional saying similar to a proverb and transmitted by oral tradition. The difference is that a proverb is a fixed expression, while a proverbial phrase permits alterations to fit the grammar of the context. [1] [2] In 1768, John Ray defined a proverbial phrase as:
Syncope: omission of parts of a word or phrase. Symploce: simultaneous use of anaphora and epistrophe: the repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning and the end of successive clauses. Synchysis: words that are intentionally scattered to create perplexment. Synecdoche: referring to a part by its whole or vice versa.