Sharp PW-E500A operation manual Linguistic evidence, Idiomatic phrases and phrasal verbs

she was very attached to her brother because the synonyms are equivalent to attached to:

fond of, devoted to, full of regard for, full of admiration for; affectionate towards, tender towards, caring towards; <informal> mad about, crazy about, nuts about.

Linguistic evidence

OTE was compiled using the Oxford English Corpus, the collective name for Oxford’s holdings of language databases amounting currently to over 300 million words of written and spoken English, which are in machine-readable form and available for computational and lexicographical analysis. The text is drawn from a very diverse range of sources (from scholarly journals to internet chatrooms, via novels and newspapers), either as large portions of continuous text or as short extracts selected for the ever-growing database of the Oxford Reading Programme by its international network of readers.

The Oxford English Corpus allows lexicographers to sort and analyse thousands of examples in context and thereby see more clearly than ever before how words are actually used. For the specific purposes of this thesaurus they have been able to:

■confirm whether a word has senses for which there are suitable synonyms

■check the sense of words being selected as synonyms

■actively find synonyms which have not previously been recorded.

The Corpus is also used to obtain the sentences and phrases given as examples of usage.

Idiomatic phrases and phrasal verbs

English is full of idiomatic expressions—phrases whose meaning is more than the sum of their parts. For example, a shot in the dark means ‘a guess’, while a shot in the arm means ‘a boost’. Neither of these has very much to do with more literal meanings of shot. Phrasal verbs are expressions such as book in and turn out, consisting of a verb plus a particle. The meaning of a phrasal verb is also often quite idiomatic; for example, the meanings of take off are quite distinct from the meanings of take. This thesaurus includes a rich selection of both kinds of idiomatic expression, and provides synonyms for each. If a word is used as both a noun and

a verb, the idiomatic expressions are entered as subentries under the part of speech in which the word is used. Thus, by the book is given under the noun senses of book, while book in is given under the verb senses.

Register: standard vs. informal and regional English

Informal usage is more prevalent than it was even just a few years ago. People may be heard using slang expressions in quite formal contexts, while the use of swear words and taboo words is on the increase. Taboos generally are weakening, though more so in Australia, where bastard is scarcely different from guy or chap, and less so in southern US States such as Texas. This thesaurus contains a rich selection of informal and vulgar synonyms for more formal expressions. Users who wish to avoid giving offence should treat the vulgar slang labels as warning notices.

Most of the synonyms given are, of course, part of standard English; that is, they are in normal use in both speech and writing everywhere in the world, at many different levels of formality, ranging from official documents to casual conversation. These general synonyms are given first in each synonym set. Some words, however, are appropriate only in particular contexts, and these are placed after the standard expressions and labelled accordingly. The technical term for these differences in levels of usage is ‘register’. The main register labels used in this thesaurus are the following:

informal: normally used only in contexts such as conversations or letters between friends, e.g. swig as a synonym for drink.

vulgar slang: informal language that may cause offence, usually because it refers to bodily functions.

formal: normally used only in writing, in contexts such as official docu- ments, e.g. dwelling as a synonym for home.

technical: normally used only in technical and specialist language, though not necessarily restricted to any specific field, e.g. littoral as a synonym for beach. Words used in specific fields are given appropriate labels, e.g. Medicine, Christianity.

literary: found only or mainly in literature written in an ‘elevated’ style, e.g. ambrosial as a synonym for delicious.

50