an argument collocation

Expressions - Collocations of the word " argument "

Expressions with the word argument, phrases with the word argument, idioms with the word argument.

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A completely new type of dictionary with word collocation that helps students and advanced learners effectively study, write and speak natural-sounding English . This online dictionary is very helpful for the education of the IELTS, TOEFL test.

• Collocations/collocation - common word combinations such as 'bright idea' or 'talk freely' - are the essential building blocks of natural-sounding English. The dictionary contains over 150,000 collocations for nearly 9,000 headwords.
• The dictionary shows words commonly used in combination with each headword: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions, common phrases.
• The collocation dictionary is based on 100 million word British National Corpus.
• Over 50,000 examples show how the collocation/collocations are used in context, with grammar and register information where helpful.
• The clear page layout groups collocations according to part of speech and meaning, and helps users pinpoint speedily the headword, sense and collocation they need.
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• Transcription

Collocation: essentials

What is collocation?

Simply put: the juxtaposition of words with other words with a frequency greater than chance Another definition is the tendency in all languages for certain words to co-occur

To explain.  Some words are primed to occur with other words and the term for this lexical priming as it is called, is collocation. A key term to understand is synonymy which just refers to the fact that two or more words may have approximately the same meaning such as heavy, weighty and hefty which can all be used to describe a stone .  We can say, too that:     It's a weighty responsibility     It's a hefty responsibility or     It's a is heavy responsibility without changing the sense of the phrase very much. However, we do not speak of a weighty rain shower or of having a hefty head when we are tired, even though the adjectives carry a very similar meaning.  We can say, therefore, that all three words collocate with the word responsibility but not with the phrase rain shower .

Some are easy, aren't they?

• It's reasonable to guess that you had torrential rain but waterfall seems possible, too.
• Words or phrases which collocate with carriage are less predictable but there is a limited range including gun, horse drawn, hac k ney, railway, open-top and possibly a few more.
• Words such as high have a much greater collocational range and it's impossible to predict what you might have put in the gap – velocity, wall, chair, horse, price, tree?   The list of possibilities is long but not infinite and does not include child, dog, book, paper and thousands more.  Because the word can have more than one meaning, other collocates are possible such as life, finance and literature .
• There are far more words which can't naturally follow air-conditioning than can.  The most obvious choice is probably unit but system, plant and duct , are possibilities, of course.  It's a fair bet that you did not select piece, arrangement, workshop and many more which could in some circumstances be synonyms of unit, system and plant but which simply do not collocate naturally with the noun phrase.
• to and fro, the black sheep of the family and an open and shut case are widely understood clichés.  Native speakers know thousands of these chunks and deploy them almost as single words (lexemes, technically) to save thinking time.  The only word with collocates with and fro is to in English so this is an example of a very powerful collocation called a fixed idiom.
• The adjective towering can only be used to describe certain nouns.  It's not possible to say what you thought of but the list won't be very long: inferno, rage, mountain range, wall, column, arch and giant are all possibilities but happiness, joy, mouse, cream cake, keyboard and many thousands of other nouns are simply not possible.
• flock of will only be followed by a very restricted range of other items (all nouns) such as sheep, birds, starlings etc.  Saying a flock of lions is absurd and a flock of school children is unusual but possible if you want to conjure a particular image in the hearer's mind.  (In fact, many authors deliberately use unusual combinations of words to jolt the reader.)  The term, by the way, is called an assemblage noun and there are a number of common ones in English which only collocate with certain nouns including gang, shoal, herd, pack etc.

The most obvious problem for learners of the language is the sheer unpredictability of many collocations which, for a native speaker, are ingrained in the memory.  We cannot guess that, for example:     *heavy fog     *short face     *make the washing     *do the bed     *lose a train are all forbidden in favour of dense, long, do, make and miss respectively.

We can, however, help learners to acquire more natural language by making them aware of common collocation from an early stage and that, of course, means that we need to know a bit more about them than our learners.  That's what this short guide is for.

Naturally, some collocations are stronger than others, as we saw above.  The nature of collocation can be illustrated like this:

Note the overlaps.  There is probably no principled way in which we can always distinguish, e.g., a strong collocation from an idiom or a binomial although it is easy enough to identify examples of one or the other.

If you want to know more about idioms and binomials, see the guide to idiomaticity in the in-service section of this site, linked below.

Collocations can also be classified by word class.  This is often a useful way to limit one's focus in the classroom and help learners to identify collocations of a particular sort so they are, for example, only trying to notice particular combinations of words, not all combinations. At lower levels, the most important combinations are probably adjective + noun and verb + noun as these are very frequent and frequently variable across languages.

You can test yourself to make sure you can recognise stronger and weaker collocation of these six types by clicking here . We may, incidentally, disagree about some of the matches in that test because concepts of strength vary between people.

Collocation does not work equally in both directions.  For example:

The number of nouns which can combine with the adjective heavy is huge and will include:     weight, car, man, breathing, metal, plate, computer, stone, table, brick, key, ashtray and almost every other noun which is not in itself associated with something light, such as feather or bubble .  The number of possible nouns runs into many thousands. However, if we take any of these nouns, it is easy to see that the number of adjectives which can be used to modify them is much smaller than the number of nouns which can be modified by heavy . For example, the noun rain can be modified by heavy but it is clear that the number of other adjectives we can use with this noun is limited and it is almost possible to produce a complete list confined to:

You may be able to think of a few others but the list is clearly not anything like as long as the list of nouns which can be described as heavy . Equally, as we saw above, the adjective torrential can only be used with a small number of nouns and it is possible to come up with a list of fifteen:

and it is quite possible that not all native speakers of English would accept all those as natural combinations.

Other sorts of collocation work the same way so, for example, the list of nouns which can be the object of the verb make is very long but the list of verbs which can use bed as the object is very much shorter.

There is a classroom implication that we need to focus on collocations which are limited, not on those which are so numerous that they can't be taught.

Collocations are very helpful for learning vocabulary.  In particular, medium and strong collocations are encountered frequently, can often be used a single chunk, without the need to think too much and make a learner's production seem much more authentic. Many learners are also very keen to learn idioms in English and, providing we focus on common ones which are usable in many different settings (i.e., avoiding things like raining cats and dogs which nobody uses), they, too, can form part of our teaching.

There are some things to consider:

Here are some examples of exercise types you could use in collocation teaching

Odd-one out:

Word grids.   Students work with dictionaries and/or a text to put a X in the right boxes:

Matchers.  Students draw the lines and end up with something like this:

Gap fills.   Students work together to see what can naturally go in the gaps:

We …………… the …………… path up the mountain until we …………… the summit. The view was quite …………… and we …………… for over an hour just …………… it.

Selections.  Students choose the right collocations:

The tasteless / foul / bright hotel was in a dirty / unclean / polluted alley. The receptionist was so abusive / cruel / spiteful that we felt undesirable / unwelcome / objectionable from the outset.

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argument noun

1-) angry discussion.

angry, fierce, furious, bitter, heated, violent • big ・They had a big argument yesterday. ・I could hear my parents having an angry argument.

little, petty, pointless, ridiculous, silly, stupid ・ There's no use in continuing a pointless argument.

become/get involved in, get into, engage in, have ・Every time we talk about money, we get into an argument.

end in, result in, turn into ・The discussion turned into a bitter argument.

cause, provoke, start, fuel • be looking for ・Unnecessary remarks can cause an argument.

lose, settle, win • avoid ・This time he managed to win the argument.

arise, break out, develop, erupt ・An argument arose due to miscommunication.

draw into, embroil in, involve in ・Don't let yourself be drawn into arguments.

PREPOSITIONS

about ・There was a lively argument about the new proposal.

between ・There was a heated argument between the two men.

over ・The argument over the new airport is still raging.

with ・He quit his job after an argument with a colleague.

2-) reason supporting opinion

basic, general • central, core, main ・The two opposing sides presented their central arguments.

good, major, powerful, sound, strong, valid ・The valid arguments in the article were well-supported by evidence.

compelling, conclusive, convincing, persuasive ・The speaker made compelling arguments that swayed the audience.

fallacious, flawed, spurious • tenuous, weak, unconvincing ・This article has employed an unconvincing argument.

cogent, coherent, logical, plausible, rational, reasoned • balanced ・The lawyer's cogent arguments convinced the jury.

economic, moral, ethical, legal, philosophical, political, theological, theoretical ・The moral argument in the book explored the consequences of selfishness.

advance, articulate, deploy, outline, offer, present, provide, put forward ・To win any argument, present solid and convincing arguments.

construct, develop, formulate, hone • make, produce • use ・Effective arguments are developed through thorough research and analysis.

illustrate, underline • justify • suggest • be based on ・Strong arguments suggest a credible and compelling stance.

bolster, endorse, reinforce, strengthen, substantiate, support ・It is important to cite examples to support your argument.

consider, hear, listen to • accept, agree with ・Accepting an argument is a crucial step in the decision-making process.

disagree with, dismiss, rebut, refute, reject, counter ・I am prepared to rebut every argument made against me.

contradict, counter, demolish, undermine, weaken ・You need to counter these arguments effectively to win the debate.

go, run • apply ・The argument applies equally to both sides of the issue.

against ・There are countless arguments against this ridiculous proposal.

concerning ・The arguments concerning the benefits of the program are convincing.

for ・The low crime rate is a good argument for moving to this city.

in favour of ・His arguments in favour of a new school are very persuasive.

all/both sides of an argument ・I think it's important to listen to both sides of the argument.

a flaw in the argument ・I can show you where the flaw in the argument lies.

a line of argument ・She decided to try a different line of argument.

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Collocations.

1. Collocations

2. The most common collocations

Different combinations of words can form a collocation : verb and noun, adjective and noun, noun and verb, among others.

30 English collocations with HAVE

1000 English collocations e-book

HAVE is one of the most common verbs in English, and we use this word in many different ways! In today’s lesson, you’ll learn 30 different collocations with have. These are the typical combinations of words that native speakers use.

Today I’ll show you the collocations and some example sentences. I would also encourage you to create your own sentences using these collocations, because this will help you remember them better.

A lot of students tell me they know a lot of English words, but they have a hard time putting the words together. Learning collocations will help you put words together in a correct way, in a way that sounds natural. You can learn over 1000 common collocations inside my e-book – just click on the link to learn more.

Okay, let’s look at these common collocations with have!

have children / have kids / have a baby

You can have children / have kids / have a baby. But there are a couple important details here – you can use have children / have kids in two ways:

• When you already have children in your family: I have three kids. Do you have any children?
• When you’re thinking about or planning to have children in the future: We’re hoping to have children next year. I’d like to have kids before I’m 30.

The expression “have a baby” refers to the actual event of giving birth to a baby:

• She’s 8 months pregnant. She’s going to have a baby soon.
• I had a baby last year.

have + an illness, have surgery / have an operation

We often use “have” with illnesses, both minor and major. You can have a headache, have a cold, have a fever, have allergies, have the flu . You can also have cancer, have a stroke, have a heart attack.

• I can’t concentrate very well when I have a headache.
• He just found out that he has lung cancer.
• Call an ambulance – I think she’s having a heart attack!

We also say have surgery and have an operation – these mean the same thing, referring to a medical procedure in which the doctors go inside your body to fix something.

have an appointment / interview

We use “have” with appointments and interviews that are already scheduled. For example:

• I have a dentist appointment next Friday.
• My brother had a job interview yesterday – I hope it went well.

have a conversation / talk / chat / discussion

It’s very common to talk about having a conversation/talk/chat with someone:

• This morning, I had a long conversation with my best friend.
• My son is struggling in school. I’m going to have a talk with his teacher about it.

We can also have a discussion, referring to a conversation that is longer and more in detail.

• The managers had a discussion about the best way to grow the business.

have an argument / fight

For communication in which there is conflict, we say have an argument and have a fight:

• My roommates had an argument about whose turn it is to clean the bathroom.
• She had a fight with her boyfriend and she’s still mad at him.

We typically use have a fight for verbal fights, using words to attack each other. With physical fights, actually hitting each other, we typically use get into a fight.

have + events

We can have events like have a party, have a picnic, and have a barbecue.

• We’re having a party next Saturday – want to come?
• My family has a barbecue every year on the 4th of July.

have a good time / have fun / have a blast

Have a good time, have fun, and have a blast all refer to having a good or great experience.

• The kids had a blast at the circus.
• Hope you have fun on your trip!

have difficulty / trouble / a hard time

“Have a hard time” is another way to talk about having difficulty or having trouble:

• I had a hard time understanding that article.
• He’s having trouble logging on to the website – his password isn’t working.

Note that after have difficulty, have trouble, and have a hard time, we use the -ING form of the verb for the action that is difficult.

have breakfast / lunch / dinner / a snack / a drink / a meal

In English, it’s more common to say “have breakfast” rather than “eat breakfast.”

• We had dinner at a nice restaurant for our anniversary.
• I often exercise before I have breakfast.
• The students are having a snack right now.

We usually use the expression “have faith” not so much in the sense of being religious, but instead in the sense of trusting or having confidence in someone, or being confident and hopeful that something positive will happen:

• I’m sure you’ll do great on the exam – I have faith in you.
• I have faith that scientists will find a cure for this disease someday.

have a chance

To have a chance means to have an opportunity. We can use this in the past or future:

• Please call me when you have a chance. (future)
• Sorry, I haven’t had a chance to reply to all my e-mails yet. (past)

have a feeling / have a hunch

These two expressions don’t actually refer to your emotions, which are also called feelings. To have a feeling or have a hunch means you suspect something to be true… maybe not based on very obvious evidence, but your intuition tells you it’s true.

• My interview was OK but not great. I have a feeling the interviewer wasn’t impressed by my experience.
• I’m not sure who broke the window, but I have a hunch it was my neighbor’s 8-year-old son who loves to play baseball in the yard.

have feelings for (someone)

The expression have feelings for someone is different – this means to be interested in someone romantically.

• Bob still has feelings for Susan, even though they broke up years ago.

have a / the day off

We use this expression to talk about a day when we don’t have to work or go to school, or do some other regularly scheduled responsibility. Some people say “have THE day off” when mentioning a specific day:

• I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had a day off for the past two weeks.
• Let’s get together for lunch tomorrow – I have the day off.

Now you know 30 different ways that we frequently use the word HAVE in English! I hope you had fun learning with me today. You can learn many, many more collocations inside my e-book – and it also includes a practice quiz with every chapter. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next lesson.

Learn the common combinations of words used by native English speakers!

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Shayna Oliveira

Shayna Oliveira is the founder of Espresso English, where you can improve your English fast - even if you don’t have much time to study. Millions of students are learning English from her clear, friendly, and practical lessons! Shayna is a CELTA-certified teacher with 10+ years of experience helping English learners become more fluent in her English courses.

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Collocation

What is a collocation.

Table of Contents

Examples of Collocation

Types of collocation, why understanding collocation is important.

Have, Take, and Make

• have a baby, have breakfast, have fun, have a headache, have an illness, have a good time
• take advice, take a bath, take medicine, take a picture, take a shower, take your time
• make breakfast, make a cake, make a mistake, make some tea, make a wish
• If you want to sound like a native speaker, you must recognize and learn the collocations.

This page was written by Craig Shrives .

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Definition of argument noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

• to win/lose an argument
• After some heated argument a decision was finally taken.
• argument with somebody She got into an argument with the teacher.
• argument about/over something He was killed during a violent argument over money.
• argument with somebody about/over something We had an argument with the waiter about the bill.
• argument between A and B Jack was always the one who settled arguments between us.
• He felt offended by the suggestion, and a violent argument ensued.
• I don't want to get into an argument with her.
• I had a big argument with my mother this morning.
• I was determined to win the argument.
• The argument over decentralization will probably continue forever.
• We had an argument about what we should buy.
• He was able to see both sides of the argument.
• become involved in
• get involved in
• argument about
• argument between
• argument over
• brook no argument

Join our community to access the latest language learning and assessment tips from Oxford University Press!

• a strong/convincing/compelling argument
• to advance/present an argument
• Having heard both sides of the argument , the court will make a decision.
• Her main argument was a moral one.
• argument for/against something There are strong arguments for and against euthanasia.
• The author makes a compelling argument for the use of hydrogen as a fuel.
• argument in favour of something What are the arguments in favour of change?
• argument that… The judge rejected the defence argument that the evidence was too old to be relevant.
• His argument was that public spending must be reduced.
• the language used to frame the legal arguments
• There is a very good argument for increasing spending on education.
• the arguments against increasing taxes
• This argument is developed further in the next chapter.
• Their argument sounds plausible but is it really valid?
• The government's argument is always based on how much such a plan would cost.
• The company dismissed his arguments as alarmist.
• She tried to think how to refute the argument on moral grounds.
• I'll briefly address each argument.
• I can see no flaw in your argument.
• He put forward some very convincing arguments.
• Do you have any evidence to support your argument?
• Centralized government, so the argument goes, is too far removed from the problems of ordinary citizens.
• As I see it, his argument boils down to a combination of two basic points.
• be based on something
• depend on something
• rely on something
• argument against
• argument concerning
• argument for
• all sides of an argument
• both sides of an argument
• a flaw in the argument
• Let's assume for the sake of argument (= in order to discuss the problem) that we can't start till March.
• There is room for argument about precise figures.
• I can see a few problems with this line of argument.
• The proposals were accepted without further argument.

Other results

Nearby words.

• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

coherent argument

Meanings of coherent and argument.

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(Definition of coherent and argument from the Cambridge English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

• Examples of coherent argument

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• Definition of coherent
• Definition of argument
• Other collocations with argument