In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words (or sometimes a single word) that form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause.
Read more about Phrase: Examples, Heads and Dependents, Representing Phrases, Confusion: Phrases in Theories of Syntax, The Verb Phrase (VP) As A Source of Controversy
Famous quotes containing the word phrase:
““The life of reason”Ma phrase once used by people who thought that reading books would deliver them from their passions.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Rude am I in my speech,
And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent,—others merely sensible, as the phrase is,—others prophetic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)