Pass the Collocations
Collocations. Isn’t that a neat word? It refers to regular pairings of words, and boy, there are many I use incorrectly and have to look up. Problem is, we get so lazy and weird in our speech that we’ve accepted many pairings that are just plain wrong, so I’m going to give you a list of the correct pairings for certain phrases we regularly use. There are myriad, but I’m going to pick the ones I like:
- Abide with: I abide with my husband.
- Absolve by: I was absolved by the judge.
- Absolve from: And he absolved me from the penalties.
- Accord with: I’m in accord with the new policies at work.
- Account to: You will have to account to the principal for what you did.
- Account for: He must account for his actions.
- Advise of: She advised me of the rules.
- Advise about: You need to advise me about the issue soon. (And be careful not to mix up advise and advice, which many do!)
- Agreeable to: He’s agreeable to my plan.
- Agreeable with: Your idea is agreeable with mine.
- Answer to: You must answer to your parents.
- Answer for: I have to answer for my crimes.
- Averse to: He is averse to seeing scary movies.
As you probably noticed, I only covered the letter A—which should give you a clue about next week’s post . . .
