about – English Grammar Profiler

NOUNS, phrases / a, about, almost, AP, believe, did, do, for, give, hear, his, in, it, keep, kept, loss, lost, my, NN, not, other, president, same, say, take, the, understand, utter, VH, VV, with, word, words, XX, _AT

In the English Vocabulary Profile at B1: not believe/understand/hear/say, etc. a word = anything A search in iWeb corpus for: _XX _VV a word 1 N’T SAY A WORD 1726 Don’t say a word against my father. listen 2 NOT SAY A WORD 756 3 N’T UNDERSTAND A WORD 608 It was brilliant, even though I didn’t understand a word of it. listen 4 N’T BELIEVE A …

WORD (phrases) Read More »

DETERMINERS / about, MF, N, one-third, size, the, _A

Male raptors are about one-third the size of females. CSMonitor   A search in iWeb for _MF _A _N 1 1/2 A CUP 770 2 1/2 THE PRICE 663 3 1/2 AN HOUR 655 4 1/2 AN INCH 593 5 1/3 THE PRICE 543 6 1/2 THE TIME 386 7 ONE-THIRD THE SIZE 377 8 1/3 THE SIZE 370 9 …

fractions as predeterminers Read More »

B1, B2, CLAUSES, complements, PREPOSITIONS, relative, REPORTED SPEECH, stranding, VERBS / about, choose, deal, for, from, II, like, look, looking, PELIC, talking, V, with, work

This post is about two points in the English Grammar Profile found in two different categories and two different CEFR levels.  Differentiating them depends on what prepositional verbs are.  A combination of the verb and preposition has an idiomatic expression with a distinct meaning.  However, the English Vocabulary Profile gives a better idea of the …

STRANDED PREPOSITION Read More »

ADVERBS, C1, fixed expressions, FOCUS, fronting, GSE, phrases / about, all, comes, considered, day, down, end, II, in, IO, it, long, NN1, of, PELIC, practically, speaking, taking, the, things, think, to, view, when, you, _AT

‘at the end of the day‘ can be used literally, meaning the time of day, but is also an informal phrase that means:  when everything is taken into consideration.   *It contains the most common 5 part N-gram in English: ‘at the end of the’ iWeb 392146 English Grammar Profile C1 Point 8 in the category …

At the end of the day (FOCUS EXPRESSIONS) Read More »

1 The word ‘JUST’ is most often a general adverb. (RR) 4 JUST ABOUT The intensifying phrase ‘just about‘ premodifies the determiner ‘every’ in the following sentence: Just about every person came. (RR21) 350827 5  However, ‘JUST’ can also be an adjective. (JJ)

ADJECTIVES, B2, FUTURE, PAST, simple / about, just, PELIC, to, VB, VVI

Collins lists the ‘about to’ structure under adjectives, pointing out that there is no future tense in English.  There are many ways we refer to the future in English.  The structure means ‘very soon’. There are 3 almost identical B2 points in the category of FUTURE in the English Grammar Profile: Point 41  in the …

BE + about to INFINITIVE Read More »