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The phrase originated in the Age of Exploration, when ships would return to port with their flags ("colours") either raised or lowered to signify that the ship had either been successful or defeated, with raised flags indicating success and lowered flags indicating defeat. Thus, "with flying colours" literally means that someone has completed a ...
The following sentences illustrate some uses of gerund clauses, showing how such a clause serves as a noun within the larger sentence. In some cases, the clause consists of just the gerund (although in many such cases the word could equally be analyzed as a pure verbal noun). Swimming is fun. (gerund as subject of the sentence) I like swimming.
Trying to succeed makes success more likely. Here trying is a gerund; the verb phrase trying to succeed serves as a noun, the subject of the main verb makes. He hurt his knee trying to get over the fence. Here trying is a present participle; the verb phrase trying to get over the fence has the function of an adverb in the main clause.
A famous example for lexical ambiguity is the following sentence: "Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen hinterher.", meaning "When flies fly behind flies, then flies fly in pursuit of flies." [40] [circular reference] It takes advantage of some German nouns and corresponding verbs being homonymous. While not noticeable ...
In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntactic unit composed of a verb and its arguments except the subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause.Thus, in the sentence A fat man quickly put the money into the box, the words quickly put the money into the box constitute a verb phrase; it consists of the verb put and its arguments, but not the subject a fat man.
The second example pairs a gerund with a regular noun. Parallelism can be achieved by converting both terms to gerunds or to infinitives. The final phrase of the third example does not include a definite location, such as "across the yard" or "over the fence"; rewriting to add one completes the sentence's parallelism.
Examples of expository essays are: a medical or biological condition, social or technological process, life or character of a famous person. The writing of an expository essay often consists of the following steps: organizing thoughts ( brainstorming ), researching a topic, developing a thesis statement , writing the introduction, writing the ...
For example, consider the following English sentences: "I know you're coming." "I know that you're coming." In this construction, the conjunction that is optional when joining a sentence to a verb phrase with know. Both sentences are grammatically correct, but the word that is pleonastic in this case.