PHRASE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Phrase

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noun

Phrase n.

A brief expression, sometimes a single word, but usually two or more words forming an expression by themselves, or being a portion of a sentence; as, an adverbial phrase. ""Convey" the wise it call. "Steal!" foh! a fico for the phrase."

A short, pithy expression; especially, one which is often employed; a peculiar or idiomatic turn of speech; as, to err is human.

A mode or form of speech; the manner or style in which any one expreses himself; diction; expression. "Phrases of the hearth." "Thou speak'st In better phrase and matter than thou didst."

(Mus.) A short clause or portion of a period. Note: A composition consists first of sentences, or periods; these are subdivided into sections, and these into phrases.

Phrase book, a book of idiomatic phrases.

verb

Phrase v. t. (past & past part. phrased; pres. part. phrasing) To express in words, or in peculiar words; to call; to style. "These suns for so they phrase 'em."

Phrase v. i.

To use proper or fine phrases. (R.)

(Mus.) To group notes into phrases; as, he phrases well. See Phrase, n., 4.

See images of 'Phrase'

Etymology of 'Phrase'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Phrase" Quotes from Famous Books

... of his canvass for the Presidency Governor Cox has gone upon the theory that the League of Nations needed simple explanation to the people of the Country. In his own phrase, he has talked the ABC's of the League, finding that the technical discussions had failed to hold the interest of the people. Illustrating this policy are two addresses made to state conventions early in August. At Wheeling, to the West Virginia ...

— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris

... for the study of humanity as the doctor and the priest? Patients who had been to him spoke enthusiastically of his observant eyes. His personality always made a great impression. "There's no one just like him," was a frequent comment upon Doctor Meyer Isaacson. And that phrase is a high compliment upon the lips of London, the city of parrots ...

— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... is a good illustration of the constant parallelism of word and phrase characteristic of A.-S. poetry, and is quoted by Sw. The changes are rung on ende and swylt, ...

— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... live—of course there are many exceptions—are only myths and delusions, and another of their dodges to excite sympathy. From the days of their debauchery, and becoming what are termed under a respectable phrase for Gipsies, "old hags," they seem to jump from sixty to between seventy and eighty at a bound. I was talking to one I considered an old woman as to her age only a day or two ago, and she said, with a pitiful tone, "I am a long way over seventy," ...

— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... imbued with little of mere sentiment. He gave little time to discussions belonging solely to the realm of the speculative or the abstract. He was in no sense a dreamer. What Coleridge has defined wisdom—"common sense, in an uncommon degree"—was his. In phrase the simplest and most telling, he struck at once at the very core of the controversy. Possibly no man was ever less inclined "to darken counsel with words without knowledge." Positive, and aggressive to the last degree, he never sought "by ...

— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

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