injure/wound/hurt/harm/damage as verbs/adjectives/nouns

Learning English

	injure/wound/hurt/harm/damage as verbs/adjectives/nouns

				Agustin from Spain writes: I would be very grateful if you could explain the difference between injure, wound, hurt, harm, damage and their associated adjectives: injured, wounded, hurt, harmed and damaged. Their meanings are so close that I have difficulty differentiating them.

	Roger Woodham replies:

difference between hear and listen

Hello, Tien. Thank you for your question about what is the difference between hear and listen.

We use hear for sounds that come to our ears, without us necessarily trying to hear them! For example, 'They heard a strange noise in the middle of the night.'

Listen is used to describe paying attention to sounds that are going on. For example, 'Last night, I listened to my new Mariah Carey CD.'

So, you can hear something without wanting to, but you can only listen to something intentionally. An imaginary conversation between a couple might go:
'Did you hear what I just said?'
'No, sorry, darling, I wasn't listening.'

seek, search and look for

seek verb FORMAL 
1 to try to find or get something, especially something which is not a physical object:"Are you actively seeking jobs?" she asked.
Hundreds of dissidents are seeking refuge/asylum in the US embassy.
2 to ask for advice, help, approval, permission, etc:
Legal advice should be sought before you take any further action.



search 1 to look somewhere carefully in order to find something:
The police searched the woods for the missing boy.
She searched his face for some sign of forgiveness, but it remained expressionless.He searched (in/through) his pockets for some change.
I've searched high and low (= everywhere), but I can't find my birth certificate.
The detectives searched the house from top to bottom (= all over it), but they found no sign of the stolen goods.FIGURATIVE She searched her mind/memory for the man's name, but she couldn't remember it.
FIGURATIVE People who are searching after inner peace sometimes turn to religion.

2 to try to find the answer to a problem:
Philosophers have searched for millennia but they haven't found the meaning of life.
3 A police officer who searches you or your possessions looks for something you might be hiding:
The men were searched for drugs and then released.


look for sth/sb
to try to find something or someone, either because you have lost them or because you need them 
Have you seen my gloves? I've been looking for them all week.
I was looking for Andy. Do you know where he is?
How long have you been looking for a job?


 In seek there is the idea of something not material, intangible

 In search the idea is that you examine a place carefully in order to find sth. 

 In look for the main idea is that you have lost something.


I hope this helps, bye!!

meaning of 'at all'

Question: A student in China asked, “Can at all be used in a positive context?”

Answer

The expression at all is used to intensify a statement or question—that is, to make it stronger. 

It is common in negative statements and questions, where it means “in any way” or “even slightly.” It is also used occasionally in positive statements, where it means something like “absolutely.”

Below are some example sentences with at all.

How to use the words all and the whole correctly

How to use the words all and the whole correctly.

All
We use all (of) to express the total number or amount of something.	all (of) my friends, all (of) the time All (of) my friends visited me in the hospital.
We usually use all (of) with uncountable nouns.	all (of) the money, all (of) the oil She has spent all (of) the money on cosmetics.
We usually use all of with personal pronouns it, them, etc.	all of them, all of it Have you invited all of them?
All is usually placed after the personal pronounwe, they, them, us.	we all, they all We all enjoyed the concert.

get and become

'Get' and 'become'

				Olga from Latvia asks: Please tell me when we must use become and when we must use get. Margarete Stepaneke from Austria asks: I would very much like to know when to usebecome. My feeling is that verbs like get, turn,go and grow are often preferred to become. Is there a rule for when to use become?

	Roger replies:	more questions

			Get, as we shall see, has many different meanings whereasbecome basically indicates development of some kind. Get is more informal and is frequently used in speech; becomeis more formal and is more often used in writing. Get/become + adjective When used with adjectives, get indicates growth or development and can therefore be used as the preferred alternative to become in an informal register. Compare the following sentences: Informal Formal I got interested in photography when I was ten. I became interested in art in later life. As he got older, his garden got really messy. As he became older, he could no longer maintain his garden It got colder and colder the further north we went. It became increasingly cold as we travelled north. I'm getting quite hungry now, aren't you? He became quite angry when he discovered there was no food

			Become + noun We cannot, however, use get with a noun, even though the meaning is 'grow' or 'develop into'. We have to use become in this sense: 'She was only seventeen when she became a beauty queen.' 'Texas became the twenty-eighth state of the USA in 1845.