Phrase

Phrase

In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words (or sometimes a single word) that form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause.

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Famous quotes containing the word phrase:

    ... that phrase of mischievous sophistry, “all men are born free and equal.” This false and futile axiom, which has done, is doing, and will do so much harm to this fine country ...
    Frances Trollope (1780–1863)

    Men always sell strawberries, women, blackberries, your all- knowing Creole friend says. ‘Why?’ you ask. ‘Ah, it has always been that way.’ When you get to know Creoles better, you realize that the phrase ‘It has always been that way’ justifies everything.
    —For the City of New Orleans, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    Listen to any musical phrase or rhythm, and grasp it as a whole, and you thereupon have present in you the image, so to speak, of the divine knowledge of the temporal order.
    Josiah Royce (1855–1916)