I. adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a nasty/awful suspicion
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Suddenly I had a nasty suspicion that the boss was going to make me redundant.
a real/awful/terrible etc nuisance
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The dogs next door are a real nuisance.
a severe/terrible/awful blow
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The news was a terrible blow for his family.
a terrible/awful revenge
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Caesar returned to Rome to exact a terrible revenge.
a terrible/awful shock
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Her death was a terrible shock to everyone.
an awful lot ( also a whole lot informal ) (= a very large amount or number )
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He spends an awful lot of time on the computer.
an awful/appalling tragedy (= very unpleasant and shocking )
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This is an appalling tragedy which will haunt us for the rest of our lives.
awful/dreadful/terrible weather
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We came home early because of the awful weather.
bad/poor/terrible/awful
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Why do doctors have such terrible handwriting?
smell bad/awful etc
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Cigarettes make your clothes smell awful.
taste horrible/awful/disgusting/foul
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The tea tasted horrible.
terrible/awful
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I woke up with a terrible pain in my side.
the awful/terrible/dreadful etc truth
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She could not bring herself to tell them the awful truth.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
how
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Barbaric, we might exclaim, how awful !
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You have to have been there before to remember how awful it was.
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And how awful to imagine people of their age doing that.
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Oh, Alice. How awful you really are.
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For some reason she remembered how awful it was when she first moved in after their marriage.
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They may not even realize how awful they make you and your sisters feel.
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We'd been saying how awful it was, how sorry we were for Connie.
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Your ride to Lincoln will probably illustrate how awful long-distance cycling in Britain can be, and how few facilities are provided.
just
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It is awful , just awful.
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The hotel that we stayed in was just awful , and the food provided was worse.
most
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And, most awful of all, was Amy a murderess?
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The most awful thing has happened.
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It was the most awful moment of his life and he didn't know how to handle it.
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They were Elephant Feet, the most dreaded, the most awful things in the world.
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There'd be the most awful dust-up.
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The world's most awful human problem, third-world poverty, appears to have hardened the hearts of the prosperous.
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I had the most awful time with him.
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She's the most awful snob.
pretty
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Collectively politicians tend to be pretty awful .
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I should have said no, because he looked pretty awful on the road.
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The state of the camps, particularly for transit prisoners, is pretty awful .
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In the intense glare of the television lights, they looked pretty awful .
really
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It's a really awful night, blowing heavens hard.
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It was really awful , travelling back to Leeds and finding your life cave in on you in a week.
so
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Luckily the weather was so awful that nothing was flying, so there was only routine work to attend to.
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Marguerite believed it was not so awful , missing a day now and then.
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What's so awful about this situation is that we can't have a funeral.
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Too many of the conjunctions and alignments here are so awful that one hopes they are very temporary indeed.
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There are many great offensive players in the game right now, maybe because the pitching is so awful .
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If Hell consists of such illusions, is it so awful ?
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Why was fate so awful to Kiki?
too
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This idea was too awful to contemplate.
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But confession was too awful to contemplate, even with Rose.
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This school is too awful to deserve passive acceptance.
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The worst injury it too awful to show.
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The implications were too awful to contemplate.
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People would not stay married if it were too awful .
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Spell after spell crashed down on the Dark Elves, the carnage was too awful to contemplate.
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In any case, it would be too awful having to explain why she needed it.
■ NOUN
day
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But Joan was harking back to that awful day .
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They waited at the North Col for three awful days , watching the deserted ridge for any signs of life.
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It's been the most awful day of my life.
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Wasn't that just the typical end to a perfectly awful day ?
feeling
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I've an awful feeling we should have gone right at the last junction.
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This play, and all these awful feelings , would be safely locked up.
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I've got an awful feeling this deadness will creep up and up and kill me - like Socrates.
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She sat down again, and the awful feeling about the Lumsdens came back to her.
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It hurt very, very badly, but what hurt most was the awful feeling of having let herself down.
lot
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It must save an awful lot of embarrassment.
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You can say an awful lot in seven seconds, and you can say very little in an hour and a half.
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He is the embodiment of a restaurateur's nightmare, some one who behaves grotesquely yet spends an awful lot of money.
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What an awful lot &038; and the joke is what a long way to go to a concert.
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I seem to have collected an awful lot of those parking-tokens over the last few months.
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An awful lot of his 8 million customers are angry.
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You talk an awful lot of wind.
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If you didn't, you were bawled out, and that took an awful lot of getting used to.
moment
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For one awful moment she had thought he was gone, but those signs of activity proved otherwise.
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All night I anticipated the awful moment when the cabins and the cockpit basket would break adrift.
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It was the most awful moment of his life and he didn't know how to handle it.
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For an awful moment , she thought that Jamie had found out something about her real connection with Puddephat.
place
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She had to work in that awful place and get nits and steal and be beaten for wetting the bed.
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Research universities are awful places for freshmen to be adrift, to be searching, to be in need.
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The house was an awful place , Carolyn thought.
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I bought this bloody awful place .
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Dear brother, let me out of this awful place and the blessed Virgin will reward you.
thing
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He told me he was called Willie, but I though that was a jolly awful thing to do to anyone.
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You have no idea of what awful things have happened here.
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The most awful thing has happened.
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The awful thing was that it wasn't over, Jean knew that.
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If I pulled one book out, lord knows what awful thing might result.
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The awful thing was that, as I said it, I began to have serious doubts about it.
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And the truly awful thing was, Alistair was right.
things
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You have no idea of what awful things have happened here.
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They were Elephant Feet, the most dreaded, the most awful things in the world.
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I also had dreadful nightmares - of awful things like giving birth to a cat because they can be carriers of toxoplasmosis.
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My father asked me why I said these awful things .
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He was calling me all the time - awful things .
truth
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Well now the awful truth can be revealed, other people's work is not perfect.
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People crowded around, and the awful truth came out: the barrel wasn't as full as it should have been.
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Then she remembered Edward's march and the awful truth began to dawn.
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They believed in the myth and Diana could not bring herself to tell them the awful truth .
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Gedanken's tummy turned over as the awful truth dawned on her.
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They drank coffee, Jay's brain slurring off some awful truth .
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Shannon lay back against the pillows, squeezing her eyes tight shut, as though that could block out the awful truth .
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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a really awful concert
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an awful power
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I felt awful about not being able to help.
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It sounds awful , but I just can't stand his parents.
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The soup tasted awful .
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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At 300dpi the quality achieved with photographs can generally be described as poor to awful .
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But those are still awful numbers.
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He truly represents an awful lot from a developmental standpoint.
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My father and Ernest were safe, but the awful news of Elizabeth's death killed my father.
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Philip Seymour Hoffman blows them all away with a scene-stealing black comic turn as Dickie's awful preppie buddy.
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The curtains in the photo are an awful fifties maroon, the color of dried blood.
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Then as the electric doors swished open and three police officers jumped out on to the ballast, the awful realisation dawned.
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You seem to take up an awful lot of energy and time.
II. adverb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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an awful cute kid