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:
“To summarize the contentions of this paper then. Firstly, the phrase ‘the meaning of a word’ is a spurious phrase. Secondly and consequently, a re-examination is needed of phrases like the two which I discuss, ‘being a part of the meaning of’ and ‘having the same meaning.’ On these matters, dogmatists require prodding: although history indeed suggests that it may sometimes be better to let sleeping dogmatists lie.”
—J.L. (John Langshaw)
““Five o’clock tea” is a phrase our “rude forefathers,” even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” the glorious Magna Charta.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“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)