noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a cover story (= the main story on the front of a newspaper or magazine )
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Last month’s cover story was entitled ‘Your Child’s Brain’.
a love song/story
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a tragic love story
a newspaper article/report/story
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I read quite an interesting newspaper report on the war.
a sad story/song/film
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He had listened patiently to his client’s sad story about her awful life.
a spy story/novel/movie etc
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John Le Carré is famous for writing spy stories.
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one of the most exciting spy movies of all time
a story spreads ( also a rumour spreads British English ), a rumor spreads American English
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It was the sort of story that would spread like wildfire.
an amusing story/anecdote/incident etc
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The book is full of amusing stories about his childhood.
back story
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The back story of why she hates her father is a bit too contrived.
biblical story/text/reference
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the biblical story of Noah
compelling story
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His life makes a compelling story .
cover story
credible explanation/story/account etc
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He was unable to give a credible explanation for his behaviour.
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Her excuse was barely credible.
filthy language/story/joke etc
funny story/joke/film etc
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Do you remember any funny stories about work?
ghost story
hard-luck story
horror story
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horror stories about patients being given the wrong drugs
lead story
life story
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She insisted on telling me her whole life story .
moving account/story etc
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a moving account of his childhood in Ireland
scare story
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Despite the scare stories in the media, no jobs will be lost at the factory.
shaggy dog story
short story
sob story
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a sob story about how she lost all her money
sordid business/affair/story etc
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The whole sordid affair came out in the press.
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She discovered the truth about his sordid past.
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I want to hear all the sordid details !
spread a story ( also spread a rumour British English ), spread a rumor American English
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When Brown’s hotel burned down, Clark spread the rumor that Forsyth was to blame.
story line
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The play had a strong story line.
suspense novel/story/movie etc (= one which is exciting because you do not know what will happen next )
tell a story/tale
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He then told the story of how he was injured while riding his motorcycle.
telling...life story
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She insisted on telling me her whole life story .
the full story (= everything he knows about the matter )
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I don’t think he’s telling us the full story .
The story goes that
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The story goes that my grandfather saved his captain’s life in battle.
the whole story (= all the facts )
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I don’t believe she’s telling us the whole story .
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
different
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It means that if the engineer comes up with a different story they can use this to embarrass the plaintiff at trial.
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Last year, however, was a different story .
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But behind the scenes it was a different story .
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They then have a moment of near romance before wandering off into a different story .
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My second book, although it has used the same idea of telekinetic powers, has a completely different story line.
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Taxes on rented and business property are a different story .
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Between races it was a different story .
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Lee told a different story in her lawsuit.
full
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For the best-managed banks can only gain by telling a fuller story .
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But there was no use brooding on it: the full story would never be known now.
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We still do not know the full story of Brixton; therefore, we do not know the truth.
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Fifi tells us the full story of Manuel Gustavo.
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Read the full story in the January issue of eve.
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The full story of the dismissals was told to Fong by Margerine.
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They eventually lost that game although the 3-1 scoreline doesn't tell the full story of bad luck and missed chances.
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That is why some reporters will go to greater lengths to look good than to get the full story .
funny
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I had no doubts about his musicianship, his talent or his ability to tell a funny story funnily.
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The drowned man. Funny how that story stuck.
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He'd give us funny stories - the Colonel coming in the front door while Luke left through the back.
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Perhaps Old Abe has some funny story to tell appropriate to the occasion.
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Tonk and his Friends Pupils will love this funny story of a young robot called Tonk.
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He had told a funny story that had made her laugh.
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He told some quite funny stories .
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Now she has illustrated a second, equally funny story about the time the maiden Belinda is captured by a wicked knight.
good
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A second equally good story describes mopping up an oil spill at sea.
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I saw how it bothered him and I thought it would make a good story .
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Labour still believes that it has a better story about its own plans for improving public services than the Tories.
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Miss Dell writes a good story .
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I think it's a good story too.
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But the Bulldogs should have been one of the best stories of the first round of the tournament.
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For example it has a good story , exciting in parts, amusing in parts and with some memorably drawn characters.
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What is news depends on what makes a good story .
long
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But a long story was an indulgence.
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In exchange I told her long stories .
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So to cut a long story short, in the end I managed to drag myself away from this man.
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The longest story is so full of pathos that the joke lines elicit only sympathy, not laughter.
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To cut a long story short, they did rejoin us at lunch-time, De Gaulle no longer looking shit-scared so much as downright shifty.
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I hoped it would be a long story .
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For them the demand to draft or revise a long story would be wholly inappropriate.
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He launched out on a long story .
old
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It's always the same old story .
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We all love the old Chicago stories .
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A decision to lay off 10% of the work force tells the old story of the drone worker.
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One of the oldest stories , and to me one of the best, was about my great-grandfather, the musical postman.
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I dug my father's old short stories out from beneath the roll top desk and read them.
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The change sheds a bit of light on an old ghost story .
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It is the same old story .
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And, presto, a 400-year-\#old story seems modern, yet still slightly exotic.
sad
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A moor hen's nest floating away on a swollen tyke told a sad story .
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That is the sad story Jim Carlton tells in his forthcoming book about Apple Computer.
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As he left, Lord Henry thought about this sad story .
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The result of this sad story is that we have 4, 000 ancient Samaritan manuscripts all over the world.
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It is one long sad story of complaining and discontent.
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Peter Cameron tells sad stories with tender grace and understatement, as if his work were composed of panels of watercolor.
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Eventually the Kiplings put Low Birk Hatt up for sale and there is a sad and curious story associated with this.
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He spoke for hours and hours, telling me the great and sad story of the Tom Morrises.
short
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F fable A short story in prose or verse which is written so that a moral may be learnt from it.
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Back in the United States he supported himself by doing construction work while trying to publish short stories and novels.
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They should read a selection of material that includes short stories , novels, plays and poems.
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She turned her hand to short stories , getting two published in the early 1990s.
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He has written several articles and short stories and is now working on a novel.
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Ask them to paraphrase a short story , and they may repeat it verbatim without making changes.
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She had some modest successes behind her with short stories .
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He was extremely prolific, writing novels, short stories , detective fiction set in Harlem.
true
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It is based on a true story so outrageous that it would never in a million years have passed muster as fiction.
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Choosing to fictionalize a true story gives her a lot of liberties, and she takes every last one.
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Presenter Michael Buerk had reconstructed the true story of how the man was rescued by helicopter after collapsing by a canal.
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The four girls lounge in their nightgowns and tell each other the true story of how their lives are going.
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He needs to know the true story .
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Rene Russo re-enacts the true story of Gertrude Lintz, a socialite who nurses an infant ape to robust health.
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This was not quite a true story , he admitted, just a joke to raise Secord's morale.
whole
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But this is not the whole story .
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I told them the whole story of my experiences as a teacher.
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But Lakoff's particular academic training can not be the whole story .
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Sam will tell you the whole story .
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Bulk cargoes were not the whole story .
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If there was, and that was the whole story , so be it.
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It is by no means the whole story , however.
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Given the whole story , Ed Woodsum would seem the natural politician, the sure vote getter.
■ NOUN
cover
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MI5 was then advised that Crabb had presumably drowned and was asked to help provide a suitable cover story .
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In 1984, she was the subject of a Time magazine cover story .
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It was the perfect cover story .
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When time magazine made her the subject of a cover story , she encouraged them to include a profile of me.
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Mrs Nowak and Taczek must have got to know most of the truth and stuck by the cover story .
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Consequently, most celebrity cover stories are pretty lame.
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Mineral exploration and leisure development were to be the cover story and they would do at a casual glance.
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The national news magazines have never granted her a cover story or a frill appreciation.
detective
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He also wonders how to open Gabriel's locket and where to find the 101 Detective stories .
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Elizabeth did not like detective stories , because some one was usually hanged at the end of them.
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But they can also be used to play the game that is the simple blueprint detective story .
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That the blueprint detective story at its most basic is not a story.
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That may sound silly, but readers of blueprint detective stories want pure detection.
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The Classical Blueprint Let's start with the classical detective story , sometimes called the old-fashioned detective story.
ghost
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It's a bit like telling ghost stories .
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The change sheds a bit of light on an old ghost story .
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They spent their long winters under a deep blanket of snow, singing and creating ghost stories .
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Huck asks for a ghost story , so Jim tells a story about a scary evening he spent with medical school cadavers.
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We were talking about death and exchanging gruesome ghost stories .
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Myths and ghost stories abound on any normal day.
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There are loads of familiar ghost stories .
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The ghost story may be in for revision too.
horror
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But the refugees' horror stories have not changed.
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There are so many horror stories about ESOPs that many men would just prefer to sign their money away.
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And still the horror stories go on.
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Some shoppers tell horror stories of plastic bags ripping apart as they carry a gallon jug of milk.
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I will refrain from horror stories of Burleigh's past, but I assure you, Corbett is right.
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She can tell the Holocaust horror stories now without bursting into tears.
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But it couldn't have come at a worse time, given that their volatile relationship has turned into a horror story .
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This true-life horror story coming out of Los Angeles a few years back became an instant media sensation.
life
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Sometimes their life stories are so unusual that truth is stranger than fiction.
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Cornell was the most autobiographical of artists, for ever relating his life story -- or lack of one -- in his work.
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This is the time to make up for the imprecision of the life story in Step 1.
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And I realized some songs were more important in paralleling my life story than I thought they were.
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That's why we should now make a start on reminding ourselves of the relevance of our own particular life story .
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Often families, like the patients, floundered in their efforts to adapt to new roles and changed life stories .
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InPart One the life stories are used only retrospectively, drawing on childhood memories of grandparents.
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His platform is his life story and his political career.
line
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But now they have gone, the story line has gone from strength to strength.
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Chapter books require that we and our children maintain our hold on the story line over the duration of the reading period.
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It can make a story line clearer, which is always an advantage.
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This simple story line was elaborated in the works of Hesiod, Aeschylus, Lucian, Ovid, and others.
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Trust remains the central story line .
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They write you better story lines , you work more episodes, get more attention.
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Indeed, one might wonder how the same basic story line would look if supplemented with those evaluative devices.
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The singer of popular song lyrics is a storyteller, and must communicate that story line in a personal, intimate way.
love
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As if in a corny love story , they found themselves in each other's arms.
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The narrative line wavers, its constant ebb and flow in political affairs and love story creating a sense of drift.
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She says she couldn't get involved with the love story .
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I see it as a story of community, a love story.
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And why was their love story so special?
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I love a good love story !
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Even by the industry's fickle standards, it was one of the shortest corporate love stories ever told.
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Not just any love story will do.
news
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Photography for general news stories News of the day-to-day happenings within the organisation can be communicated with much more interest by photography.
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At most major newspapers, publishers control opinion pages but leave decisions on news stories to editors.
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It was the news story of the century, after all.
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Rarely is any news story ever underplayed.
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She's shown us the label so we can recognize the packaged news story like it was a familiar soap powder.
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Anti-continents, news stories began calling them.
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Indeed late news stories can be added just moments before the final pages go off to the printers.
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But even I am a little bit curious as to what the top news stories are.
success
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Her business has become so famous that she felt its success story merited a corner display in her new museum.
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What a pity that the Opposition never tell us any success stories .
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Yoyo came home the next day with the success story of the assembly.
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Last year's success story , Business 2.0, was put up for sale last week.
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Or consider that some of the nations long heralded as family planning success stories have faltered on the road to re-placement fertility.
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Waterstone's was an unlikely success story of the 80s Thatcherite boom.
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Every success story in our business affirms these words.
■ VERB
hear
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I had heard the story before, along with another one reputedly originating from the same school.
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I personally heard this story from a fellow who heard it from the fellow it happened to.
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On hearing the story Lily had retired to bed with a headache leaving Stella to do the washing-up.
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As it got dark, rather than hear a scary bedtime story , Stuart wanted to walk in the woods with me.
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We are always glad to hear your stories , complaints and, of course, your enthusiastic praise.
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When he heard the story , he too began to cry as the wine collected around his feet.
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Once again, he left the pupils to superintend the luncheon and departed into the small parlour to hear their story .
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Children who had never heard a bedtime story and could not write their own names were crammed into classrooms by the dozens.
read
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Either have one person reading the story , or have different people reading different parts.
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You go upstairs and read Campbell a story before she goes to sleep.
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The best known of them was Dornford Yates, author of the now unreadable but once hugely read Berry and Co stories .
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People read the story and laughed.
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Her father was reading her the story , a long time ago.
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Analysis Have the students read their stories .
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You let me read that story you wrote for your class magazine: The Dragon's Mouth.
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Like anyone else, I read these stories and think, my, what heroic beasts.
tell
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The scrum-half's face told its own sorry story .
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At the time Jane Gilbert told these stories , they were of more than academic interest to her.
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Mr. Evans Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that that incredible figure does not tell the entire story ?
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Tuttle and Garagiola visit major league clubhouses, telling the story , and they have achieved some results.
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I remember I would be told infantile stories , altogether appropriate to my infantile station.
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They tell stories that other people told them.
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But in spite of her enthusiasm, she never tumbled to the silent response which greeted her each time she told the story .
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That night at dinner Ken told me an awful story that his friend Greg had related in a letter.
write
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Gina was writing stories to be like Eleanor and also poetry, in imitation of Nigel's youthful ambitions.
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Perhaps Darnley's killers wrote these stories about Bothwell, before they killed Darnley.
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A reporter can only write one story at a time, which I liken to preparing just one dish at a time.
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He might also have had to write his story while lying on his back.
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After the students write their stories , they may want to share them in pairs or with the whole class.
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After all this rigmarole, they were to write a story to fit the words and pictures they had chosen.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a likely story
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It was not a likely story when she was due on stage in half an hour.
a rattling good yarn/story/read
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On one level, it is vastly entertaining and a rattling good read.
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We bet the Weatherfield Advertiser was a rattling good read under Ken's editorship.
cock and bull story
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He gave me a cock and bull story about the glass being smashed by hailstones.
detective story/novel etc
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But they can also be used to play the game that is the simple blueprint detective story.
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Elizabeth did not like detective stories, because some one was usually hanged at the end of them.
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I wanted to stay and read the latest Encyclopedia Brown detective story.
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It was the feeling she had had as a child when she frightened herself with a detective story.
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Key elements are missing, primarily the complexities, surprises and textures of the detective stories.
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Their approach is informal and Physics of Stellar Evolution and Cosmology reads like a scientific detective story.
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This is the detective novel or the crime novel which makes its comments on life through humour rather than more directly.
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Your detective of the detective story, of course, went about seeking information.
end of (story)
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I'm not going to lend you any more money, end of story.
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Another good restaurant bites the dust -- end of story, right?
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Mark a ballot, lick a stamp: end of story.
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The fish will get their wheatgerm this autumn, end of story.
front-page news/article/story etc
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A front-page story about the Owens letter also was published.
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If even one of the cited companies faltered, even though it might later spring back, it became front-page news.
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If she knew that each of these unhappy events would be international front-page news she would be even more upset.
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It became the stuff of front-page news.
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It must have made front-page news.
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Soon, the desegregation of education became front-page news again and forced the Kennedy administration to respond with force.
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The media besiege him, and his views are front-page news.
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The war was no longer front-page news.
get hold of an idea/an impression/a story etc
inside information/the inside story etc
juicy gossip/details/stories etc
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Closed doors with Wilkinson usually meant that he had some especially juicy gossip or that he was fishing for information.
natural-born singer/story-teller etc
only half the story
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How could you side with them after hearing only half the story?
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But numbers on economic growth that look so wonderful for the emerging world tell only half the story.
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But that was only half the story of what was on General Kent's mind, and Harry would see that immediately.
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But this is only half the story.
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If only half the stories are true, this is some one who attracts trouble.
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Obviously, television has heightened awareness of the sport, but that is only half the story.
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Of course, what Dooley did at the water fountain was only half the story!
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The red notebook, of course, is only half the story, as any sensitive reader will understand.
spin a tale/story/yarn
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He could spin a yarn, and you had to take what he said with a pinch of salt.
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Joe was in top form, spinning stories, issuing pronunciamentos, dropping withering quips at every opportunity.
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She liked to spin yarn, sing, and dance.
stick to the/your story
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Bring in the police, the press, the king himself, and I shall stick to my story.
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He had stuck to his story, that they'd quarrelled at the dance and he had left early.
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You do not have to stick to the story line.
success story
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Richardson is one of the few success stories from the housing projects.
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Tonight, we're going to hear about another business success story from the North East.
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Well, the success story might never have happened if the entrepreneur had taken the advice of his bank.
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Any list of success stories is bound to omit some favourite voice.
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Despite the challenges, the nonprofit center and its staff have logged numerous success stories, said Glasser.
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For each service, add a few success stories from recent clients.
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Her success story resulted in a three page feature in Slimming Magazine last February.
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Her business has become so famous that she felt its success story merited a corner display in her new museum.
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One of lung cancer's success stories, he runs a support group for lung cancer patients and their families.
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Sikes shows us the success stories.
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Similar success stories can be found in other countries - for example, the aerospace exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
tall story/tale
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And yet all his life, his integrity warred with a flair for the theatrical, a fondness for tall tales.
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But there's still time to remember tall stories from previous superintendents.
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He wowed his colleagues after hours with tall tales.
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Horden's design blended innovation and massing A tall story or a tourdeforce?
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No Baron Munchausen would have dared to imprison his saga within the limits of a tall tale.
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With his feeling for tall stories he's a radio natural, though.
the same old story/excuse etc
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For those who claimed to have seen or heard it all before, racism was always the same old story.
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It's always the same old story.
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It seems to be the same old story.
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Oh, you know - it's the same old story.
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Sounds like the same old story really.
to cut a long story short
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I was a waitress in a bar and he was one of my customers, and that, to cut a long story short, is how we met.
unconfirmed report/story/rumour etc
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A U. S. Embassy official said he had unconfirmed reports of 300 dead.
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Horrors include the bombing of civilians and unconfirmed reports that napalm has been used.
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One unconfirmed report said Hamilton had intended to take the children hostage but that his plan went awry.
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Several commercial tests are available but there are few and unconfirmed reports of their efficacy.
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The whereabouts of Pastor Tokes remained unclear, amid unconfirmed reports that he had been murdered.
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There were unconfirmed reports that two activists were killed.
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We have an unconfirmed report of shots fired in the area of Brandenburg Gate.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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a book of short stories
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a fifth story apartment
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a headline-grabbing story
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All children love stories.
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Don't be frightened, Connie - it's only a story .
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Grandpa's always telling us stories about when he was a boy
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Have you been telling stories again?
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He looked like some giant from a fairy story .
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Sally, will you read us a story ?
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The story doesn't get interesting till midway through.
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The story I read in the newspaper said they intend to close the theatre down.
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the story of dancer Alvin Ailey
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The film is based on a true story .
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The film was OK, but I didn't think the story was very realistic.
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The main story tonight is the earthquake in Albania.
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The movie is based on a true story .
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The movie tells the story of a young girl brought up in the Deep South in the 1930s.
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There are a lot of wild stories going around.
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There have been a lot of stories in the papers recently about contaminated food.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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Besides, neither of us has enough money to gain entry to that story .
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But it is considerably worse than that, as the story quickly makes clear.
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Genesis and Deuteronomy tell the story in a style that will be accessible to any reader.
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He now had carte blanche to pursue any major story in town and to inject his strong opinions unabashedly into his writings.
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He went out and Sisteradmission-ward came in for a short while, and we reconstructed the story .
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Markoff counters that his stories are accurate and fair.
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The best known of them was Dornford Yates, author of the now unreadable but once hugely read Berry and Co stories.
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The show-biz story of the decade has spawned the cinematic train wreck of 1996.