history with hilbert

The prime minister wants to reduce social stratification and make the country a classless society. Even in family stratification the role of women is hidden.

The sample of people questioned was drawn from the university's student register and stratified by age and gender. a stratified society

They were part and parcel of the mercantile world system.

It is a tenet of contemporary psychology that an individual's mental health is supported by having good social networks. This policy goes against common precepts of decency.

Chestnuts had burst out of their prickly green husks. I find this sweater slightly prickly. a prickly issue/situation

In the upper extremities, wrist and finger extensors and deltoids were the most affected muscles.

Women were expected to adopt a subservient role/position. His other interests were subservient to his compelling passion for art.

Among the staff there are some pockets of resistance to the planned changes (= some small groups of them are opposed). The pilot said that we were going to encounter a pocket of turbulence (= an area of violently moving air).

He bartered his stamp collection for her comics. We spent a whole hour bartering with stallholders for souvenirs.

Further to your letter of 11 March, I should like to inform you of a number of recent developments. They have done a lot to further the cause of world peace.

He bought a patch of ground outside of town. London is my patch, I will show you around.

Religious leaders have called for a total cessation of the bombing campaign.

The other two ran slap bang into him from behind.

Politicians are always good fodder for comedians (= they make jokes about them). This fodder will be good for our animals. This gossip is fodder for newspapers.

Steering a sailboat is counter-intuitive - you push the tiller the opposite way to the way you want to go.

day-to-day problems/responsibilities

The bank went bust, with calamitous consequences for global markets. a calamitous war. calamity

a provisional government These dates are only provisional. I have tentative plans to take a trip to Seattle in July.

The library is cracking down on people who lose their books. The law limits engine idling to four minutes, but there aren’t enough police officers to crack down on the problem.

As the country prepares for war, more and more money is being spent on armament. the country's armaments programme

the forelegs of a horse. the foreground of the picture. The presidential campaign has brought the issue of big political contributions to the fore. Various ecological issues have come to the fore since the discovery of the hole in the earth's ozone layer.

only a dash of seasoning.

Certainly if the job were offered me I'd grasp at the chance. She grasped at his shirt as he ran past. a drowning man and economy in the state of slump will grasp at straw.

I don't doubt the veracity of her words but she may be embellishing some facts.

The blurb on the back of the book was full of the usual hyperbole - "enthralling", "fascinating", and so on.

I told you quite explicitly to be home by midnight. It should be explicitly stated exactly what the grant covers.

He was charged with embezzlement and misappropriation of union funds. These agreements may be ineffective in preventing misappropriation of technology. He is accused of misappropriating $30,000 to pay off gambling debts.

Medical development is perceived as intrinsically good. works of little intrinsic value/interest Maths is an intrinsic part of the school curriculum.

Ligatures are used in surgery to stop the flow of a bleeding artery.

You've just got to crack on, whatever the problems are. We can crack on with the painting after breakfast.

Wait for the right moment and you'll be at large again.

In the psychotherapy group, patients were free to play out their fantasies. We were forced to stand back and let the crisis play itself out. The debate will play out in the media over the next week or two.

abysmal working conditions The food was abysmal. The standard of the students' work is abysmal. titanic heights and abysmal depthsIt was an abysmally poor interview. The critics were abysmally wrong on almost every point.

a milk crate a crate of empty bottles a packing crate

She refused to become involved with him despite his passionate entreaties

I was too tired to exert myself. exertional. Physical exertion isn’t always a good thing in a hot climate.

George Lucas was a visionary when it comes to special effects. Her visionary ideas weren't realised until 30 years later.

By extension, you lose the ability to control your own economic development.

The idea was first mooted as long ago as the 1840s. His name was mooted as a possible successor. It's a moot point whether building more roads reduces traffic congestion.

The issue has been a bone of contention between him and me. The statement which you brought up is not my contention.

a diffuse literary style. This idea diffused across the whole world. Television is a powerful means of diffusing knowledge. The drop of red dye diffused slowly in the water.

Could I have a smidgen more wine? It was five years since I'd last seen him, but he hadn't changed a smidgen.

Yesterday's coup brought further upheaval to a country already struggling with famine. I'm not sure it's worth the upheaval of moving to gain just a little more space.

Some politicians tend to flip flop on their policies.

a faithful old retainer

The flavours intermingle to produce a very unusual taste. Fact is intermingled with fiction throughout the book.

Their main thesis was that war was inevitable.

Farmers encroached on forest land to grow crops. These devices are encroaching on people’s privacy.

an aircraft in the livery of Air Atlantique

I don't have to listen to you, you are a junior.

We revamped the management system, but the business is doing no better than it was before. The walled garden was completely revamped last year.

Several changes have been made for the betterment of the sport.

All the shopping had spilled out of my bag. The contents of the truck spilled out across the road. People were spilling out of the wine bar onto the street. All his resentment spilled out.

The prices are plummeting, so it's a good moment to buy a few shares. The climber plummeted to the ground, but luckily he survived

the 60s backlash against bourgeois materialism the backlash against feminism

He was found guilty of possessing an unlicensed firearm.

She briefed everyone about an upcoming fire drill. I would like to brief you on my plans. I have a brief at my new job tomorrow.

promised that as president he would never subscribe to the use of torture as an interrogation method, regardless of the circumstances

Hark, I hear a distant trumpet! He's always harking back to his childhood and saying how things were better then. The director's latest film harks back to the early years of cinema.

having known only thralldom, the people rejoiced in their newfound freedom

Switzerland is a heterogeneous confederation of 26 self-governing cantons.

My friend is a prodigious history buff

like in Holland

the liminal state between waking and sleeping

President aired his views on the war. The professor aired his controversial opinions and got fired.

That's what I started to tell you before we went off at a tangent."I wonder," he said, and went off at a tangent.

It seems this nag hasn't been fed for ages. It seems this nag hasn't been fed for ages.

Ulysses

He worked fast, cutting and slicing the turf neatly, heaving the sod to one side. He's won again - the lucky sod! Apparently he's a sod to work for. What did you do that for, you stupid sod

He was never seen fornicating in public again, with or without a woman's consent.

Pelts in demand were sable, mink, chinchilla and silver fox. a $150,000 sable coat

she-ass

a wood tends to rot away much more easily than a stone-based material.

It's traditional that you haggle over/about the price of things in the market. Haggling is now a thing of the past and unacceptable. I'm not going to haggle about it.

All the dictionary examples are taken from a corpus of billions of words.

The numbers on your spreadsheet don't tally with ours.

Their argument was too shaky to consider it. His shaky step caught my attention. The fence around your property is shaky.

An autopsy showed that he had died of strangulation.

The questionnaire was intended to elicit information on eating habits. They were able to elicit the support of the public. The teacher elicits definitions from the students. elicitation

She's managed somehow to procure his phone number.

a horticultural show He is a professor of horticultural science.

We all agreed that winning was not the be-all and end-all. It was the period when everyone saw men in space as the be-all and end-all of space exploration.

"I hear Italy beat France in the semifinals last night." "Beat them? They wiped the floor with them!"

The doctor said I'll kick the bucket soon anyways.

The village was guarded by a ragtag group of soldiers. He arrived with a ragtag collection of friends.

I know nothing about him because he's always so closet. I don't want her to know about the party, can we closet? Two weeks before my exams I closeted myself (away) in my room with my books and I didn't speak to anyone. a closet communist

One of the peers left the room in the middle of the meeting.

Her calm face belied the terror she was feeling.

Everyone is very busy during the run-up to publication. A similar campaign was launched in the run-up to Christmas.

The new public relations manager has the difficult task of shoring up the company's troubled image. Boundary walls have had to be shored up.

overtures of friendship. Neither side in the conflict seems willing to make peace overtures. So he's been making overtures (= showing a sexual interest), has he?

Her plans to make him jealous backfired on her when he started dating her best friend.

We were hoping to stave off these difficult decisions until September.

The parish council consisted of both clergy and laymen. Oh, no, I was too young to be anything but a layman.

circumstantial evidence The case against her was circumstantial.

After five years of ruminating, I finally got around to making the things.

Blockade running is the practice of delivering cargo (food, for example) to a blockaded area.

Believe it or not, each year, people fight tooth and nail to land this position. We fought tooth and nail to take care of them.

a tax dodger. a conscription dodger.

Their ugly front garden and tacky, tawdry lights fail to reflect our village image. A lot of the city's housing consists of nondescript houses and some districts are downright tawdry. I knew that his motives were tawdry.

Irredentism is usually understood as a desire by one state to annex a territory of another state. This desire can be motivated by ethnic reasons because the population of the territory is ethnically similar to the population of the parent state

share common ground. We have never been able to find much common ground

We walked around the city, lapping up the atmosphere. Everyone clapped and cheered and you could see he was lapping it up.

Their advice is not meant to send you down a rabbit hole, and involve you in chaos and disorder. She once went down that political rabbit hole. Let's avoid that particular rabbit hole and consider a broader and more unsettling point.

the fruit of your loins (= your child/children) He favoured his adopted son over the issue of his own loins.

He is a great devotee of the prime minister. devotees of golf

His new book is just a rehash of his previous ones. The information in the report is a rehash of old discussions and misconceptions. Some students merely rehash what they've heard in lectures.

Unfortunately, everything is being done piecemeal. Do we fix it all now, or do we approach it piecemeal over time?

The following is a table of the other ensigns used in Malaysia.

The Nazi-Soviet pact carved up the Baltic states in 1939.

The war caused an exodus of the civilian population.

penitential garb. monastic garb

non-combatant troops/ships About 100,000 non-combatant civilians died in that battle.

I know exactly how much time and manpower are wasted in this branch. This boulder cannot be moved with manpower. We are to give him the manpower and assistance he needs

The chicks are expected to fledge in August. It is one way to support Russia's fledging democracy and to help people in great need.

A few weeks later he was again on guard duty. I know how they usually work guard duty in the military.

He was summarily dismissed from his job. More than 50 other captured rebels were summarily executed

After the accident, the company refused to accept culpability. The Army denied any culpability, but later compensated owners.

I could see immediately that the lock had been tampered with. Tampering with pipelines could result in ruptures or fires. She is charged with official misconduct and tampering with witnesses.

The housekeeper works long hours for her exploitative employers. The merchandising looks greedy and exploitative.

The opening of the superstore will sound/toll the death knell for hundreds of small independent shops.

ten ruinous years of war. The proposed bill is ruinous to the home building industry.

We help small companies to get off the ground

Europe has not been just a cash cow, but an important source for political thinking

The company announced plans to ramp up production to 10,000 units per month. To stay competitive, they'll have to ramp up product development as well as cut prices. Mitsubishi has ramped up the speed of its new micro-controllers.

What does the acronym VIP mean? CEO is an acronym for Chief Executive Officer.

Why don't you plot your ideas for the living room?

He was released from prison with/on the proviso that he doesn't leave the country.

The government is reported to be concerned about the growing insurgency in the south. counterinsurgency

People say that in politics the name of the game is making the right friends. Repeating the vocabulary related to the field of interest or the most used phrases is really the name of the game

Can you slice the bread in half? The bullet sliced the water and killed the fish. John sliced my legs and I tripped.

That was hard to disparage, for a number of reasons. When they talk among themselves, these women commonly disparage men. The actor's work for charity has recently been disparaged in the press as an attempt to get publicity.

proclivity

He has the propensity to be a bit gregarious when he shouldn't be. I have a propensity to insult people even when I don't intend to. propensity to utilize a certain array of phrases and words that are characteristics of social minorities in the capitol.

they had a downtime after the long-lasting period of continuous shore raids.

Sumptuary laws dictated which classes of people could wear certain clothes or fabrics. Sumptuary goods were restricted to certain groups within society through laws or social rules.

Irredentism is one state's desire to annex the territory of another state

He wrote off the last of his off-board probes.

create a framework for

Conferences are seen as a gravy train by many organisers who charge exorbitant rates for poor services.

And maybe they could muddy the waters a bit for good measure.