I. noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a bomb attack (= usually intended to achieve a political aim )
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Animal rights activists are believed to have carried out the bomb attack.
a bomb site (= where a bomb has exploded )
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the bomb sites of war-torn London
a bomb threat
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The station was closed because of a bomb threat.
a bomb/fire/terrorist etc alert
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a full-scale flood alert
a bombing raid
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Bombing raids had destroyed most of the country's oil refineries.
a car bomb (= a bomb hidden in or under a car )
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A car bomb exploded killing 33 people.
a terrorist attack/bombing/act
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More than 50 people were injured in the terrorist attack.
an air/bomb attack (= an attack from a plane using bombs )
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Malta was under heavy air attack.
atomic bomb
be destroyed by fire/a bomb/earthquake etc
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The building was destroyed by fire in 2004.
bomb disposal experts/team/squad/unit
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The device, which contained 400lbs of explosive, was made safe by army bomb disposal experts.
bomb disposal (= getting rid of bombs before they explode )
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The building was evacuated and a bomb disposal team moved in.
bomb disposal
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The device, which contained 400lbs of explosive, was made safe by army bomb disposal experts.
bomb hoax
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a bomb hoax
bomb scare
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a bomb scare in Central London
bomb scare
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a bomb scare
bomb shelter
bomb site
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They’ve pulled down so many buildings around here it looks like a bomb site.
bomb/shotgun/nuclear etc blast
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A bomb blast completely destroyed the building.
car bomb
cherry bomb
cluster bomb
cost a bomb/a packet British English (= have a very high price )
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He has a new sports car that must have cost a bomb.
fusion bomb
hydrogen bomb
incendiary bomb/device
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The explosion seems to have been caused by an incendiary device.
indiscriminate attacks/killing/violence/bombing etc
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terrorists responsible for indiscriminate killing
letter bomb
megaton...bomb
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a five megaton atomic bomb
neutron bomb
nuclear bomb
nuclear bomb/weapon/missile etc
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the threat of nuclear attack
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concern about the country’s nuclear weapons program
parcel bomb
petrol bomb
smart bomb
smoke bomb
stink bomb
time bomb
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Cutting down the rainforest is an environmental time bomb.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
atomic
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He had led the team that developed the Soviet Union's atomic bomb and had begun seeking peaceful applications of nuclear power.
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He was a spy for the Soviets in Los Alamos, during the atomic bomb project.
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Much controversy has surrounded Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb .
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On September 23, 1949, Truman declared that the Soviets had detonated an atomic bomb .
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A star marks the epicentre of the atomic bomb dropped in 1945.
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The United States might have created the atomic bomb in hundreds of different ways.
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He was, for example, totally ignorant of the atomic bomb project.
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The final decision of where and when to use the atomic bomb was up to me.
huge
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Police had already thwarted attempts to bring two huge van bombs to Madrid, and to detonate a car bomb in Bilbao.
incendiary
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There were high-explosive and incendiary bombs of various types available, but no combination weapon.
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We had two incendiary bombs , but they were in the canteen.
nuclear
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Physics may tell us how to build a nuclear bomb but not whether it should be built.
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I heard new vocabulary: nuclear bomb , radioactive fallout, bomb shelter.
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That is enough to make between 10 and 20 nuclear bombs .
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Mere nuclear bombs would do little to halt life in general, and might, in fact, increase the nonhuman versions.
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Cunningham said that the United States has lost considerable bomb-making skills in the eight years since it stopped making nuclear bombs.
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The first would use the same radar and missiles, but would replace the interceptor with a nuclear bomb .
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Systems for delivering nuclear bombs to distant targets, however, are very difficult and expensive to produce.
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Hussein used the money to accelerate his program to build a nuclear bomb .
small
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Johnny Cooper thought it almost impossible that three men carrying only sixty small bombs between them had created such havoc and destruction.
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Pure fusion bombs might be much smaller than existing bombs.
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We could detonate a very small atom bomb in the vicinity of another.
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Even a charge of conventional explosive in the vicinity of a small atom bomb would suffice.
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If the small atom bomb went up, so then would the hydrogen bomb.
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Urban violence and civil unrest were mushrooming like small bombs threatening to blow up the machine from within.
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I'd placed six smaller bombs , and had them all lit in forty seconds.
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He spent some time expressing his preference, for tactical reasons, for smaller neutron bombs before developing his argument.
smart
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Armed with plasma guns and smart bombs , they have a three-pronged mission.
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Our people are much smarter than our bombs ever can be.
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It was used in the Persian Gulf war to target smart bombs and guide tanks across the desert.
unexploded
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With its aid, two unexploded mortar bombs are located.
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Their wastes include solvents, fuels, mine tailings, radioactive wastes, and unexploded bombs and shells.
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And two unexploded bombs in the Mile End Road.
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Mr Aston told the court that the oil tank was like a large unexploded bomb .
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Much was seized for food by a starving population, and much became the casualty of unexploded mines and bombs .
■ NOUN
atom
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We could detonate a very small atom bomb in the vicinity of another.
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A fart is not an atom bomb ....
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Even a charge of conventional explosive in the vicinity of a small atom bomb would suffice.
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If the small atom bomb went up, so then would the hydrogen bomb.
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Teller, of course, worked on the atom bomb and the H-bomb.
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Britain has already accumulated enough nuclear waste to build 5,000 atom bombs .
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Then war intervened, Oppenheimer became involved in the atom bomb project, and he lost interest in gravitational collapse.
attack
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Soldier dies after Armagh bomb A soldier has died after a triple bomb attack in Northern Ireland.
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In a weekend of violence, the defence minister, Khaled Nezzar, narrowly escaped from a car bomb attack .
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Cars were set on fire and a bomb attack was made against the mayor's car with his family inside.
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All four were acquitted of involvement in a bomb attack in Stockholm on April 7, 1986.
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Another suspected drug handler was fatally injured in a car bomb attack in Bilbao on Jan. 9.
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From June 1944 the flying bomb attacks were less concentrated spatially, but even more destructive.
blast
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Then a bomb blast devastated the theatre and wiped away her smile of anticipation.
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This, investigators say, links him to the truck bomb blast .
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Tuesday's mortar bomb blast left him with three chunks of shrapnel in his abdomen.
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They've always taken a special interest in Sefton because of the bomb blast .
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Sefton was badly injured in the bomb blast in Hyde Park in nineteen eighty-two, but survived.
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The bomb blast fractured the ventilating system and spewed dust particles along the system throughout the hospital.
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Another bomb blast was reported on a railway line outside Cape Town.
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The bomb blasts in Moscow last August remain unsolved.
car
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The commando had been planning a car bomb attack in Seville during its April fair.
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Carl Krebsbach wore it out when he sent away for $ 20 worth of car bombs .
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Suddenly the phone rings: a suspect car bomb in the city centre.
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And a car bomb near a Medellin shopping mall injured 50.
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In a weekend of violence, the defence minister, Khaled Nezzar, narrowly escaped from a car bomb attack.
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A car bomb shook Madrid's Barajas airport.
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Up to 13 bombs went off across the city, many of them car bombs.
cluster
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By now, the police were chasing protesters into various neighbourhoods, and throwing cluster bombs of rubber pellets at locals.
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It will also strongly criticise the use of cluster bombs .
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The planes were reported to have used cluster bombs and also to have strafed roads and buildings.
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The MoD had to spend £20m upgrading and ordering extra stocks of the cluster bombs for the Kosovo campaign.
disposal
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It could take half an hour for a bomb disposal team to get to Royalbion House.
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One of the devices went off before bomb disposal squads arrived.
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The device went off at 12.30am as bomb disposal men were about to carry out a remote-controlled explosion with a robot.
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The bomb disposal unit destroyed the bomb with a controlled explosion.
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Approval will also be given to supply bomb disposal equipment and goods for civilian end-users.
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The most advanced bomb disposal centre in the world has been officially opened by the Duke of Kent.
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The army's bomb disposal experts say the lesson is simple ... report anything suspicious, especially in the run up to Christmas.
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Army bomb disposal experts from Catterick military base in north Yorkshire are examining debris from both devices.
explosion
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Mr. Bowis My right hon. and learned Friend will recall the bomb explosion a month ago on the track in my constituency.
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For comparison, the atomic bomb explosions that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about 20 kilotons each.
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A bomb explosion aboard a ferry south of Trincomalee on Sept. 10 killed 24 soldiers and 15 civilians.
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The heat released in this reaction, which is like a controlled hydrogen bomb explosion , is what makes the star shine.
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Three people were reported killed and three injured in bomb explosions in the capital Santo Domingo on Sept. 23.
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The bomb explosion during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics seems to have been pivotal.
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In Johannesburg two men died in overnight bomb explosions at the city's main railway station.
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On Aug. 22 Abdullah stated that there had been 170 bomb explosions in the state in the previous 12 months.
hoax
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Note the offence of making a bomb hoax call etc. under section 51 Criminal Law Act 1977.
hydrogen
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The large scale release of fusion energy has so far occurred only in stars and in the hydrogen bomb .
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On 12 July 1953, when the Soviet Union exploded its first hydrogen bomb , equilibrium was restored.
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Might it not be the equivalent of a small hydrogen bomb ?
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The main source of helium-3 is in fact hydrogen bomb recycling!
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The heat released in this reaction, which is like a controlled hydrogen bomb explosion, is what makes the star shine.
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The largest accessible source of helium-3 on Earth is from the decay of tritium in hydrogen bombs .
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In spite of the situation we find ourselves in, maybe hydrogen bombs aren't the biggest cause for concern.
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The Soviet Union tested its own hydrogen bomb within a year, and the nuclear arms race escalated further.
letter
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Hunt alert: Huntsmen in Northern Ireland have been alerted by police after letter bombs were sent to two hunt members.
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It emerged yesterday that all three letter bombs were contained in Jiffy bags and were of similar construction.
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Earlier Monday morning, a letter bomb exploded in the London offices of Al-Hayat, injuring two mail clerks.
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Two letter bombs , in 1961 and 1980, cost Brunner the use of an eye and the fingers of one hand.
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He says the letter bombs could have injured any of the people who handled them on their way to their targets.
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In a search of the offices, police found a second letter bomb among the unopened mail.
mortar
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With its aid, two unexploded mortar bombs are located.
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After some ti me the job is completed and the two mortar bombs have been neutralised.
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Suddenly there was the unmistakable swish of a mortar bomb , then the explosion a few yards away.
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Tuesday's mortar bomb blast left him with three chunks of shrapnel in his abdomen.
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From their position in the hills, the forces lobbed three mortar bombs into the crowded streets.
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Two were hit by shrapnel from a mortar bomb at the weekend.
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The other two had been trying to rescue him when all three had been killed by a single well-placed mortar bomb .
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Several other mortar bombs have been thrown out into the darkness.
parcel
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He would leave the packet open so that the desk sergeant saw they were not getting a parcel bomb .
petrol
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Last summer saw violence at Blackbird Leys as things came to a head ... with petrol bombs and bricks.
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Home Office Ministers fiddled while tyres and a few petrol bombs burned.
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The raiders burst into the dining-room and rolled hand grenades along the floor as a petrol bomb was launched outside.
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A number of petrol bombs exploded harmlessly between the protesters and the security forces.
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Another Epworth resident was burned alive a few days earlier when a petrol bomb was thrown into his home.
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The police used armoured vehicles and tear gas to contain the protesters who were armed with rocks and petrol bombs .
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Violence continued into the following afternoon and evening; petrol bombs were thrown and shops looted.
pipe
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Police were also seeking a motive for an attempted pipe bomb attack on a house in Ballymoney, Co Antrim.
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The pipe bombs , on early evidence, appeared to be fairly crude.
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Black powder was used in the pipe bomb that caused the explosion, Daschle said.
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They left behind pipe bombs as their calling cards, although no one was ever injured.
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Police Minister Avigdor Kahalani said the explosives were pipe bombs packed with nails.
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In San Diego, all three devices, which shared some similarities, were pipe bombs delivered by mail.
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The park has been closed since early Saturday, when the pipe bomb exploded during a free concert.
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A pipe bomb hidden in a black backpack explodes in a park filled with people, injuring scores with shards of shrapnel.
scare
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She says that they were told that it was a bomb scare .
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No, not the usual boring bomb scare , but a cultural occasion of enormous significance.
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The previous day also the factory was evacuated after a bomb scare .
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Cross-channel ferries held up by a bomb scare ....
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Apparently there had been a bomb scare recently.
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Following the find, the centre was evacuated again because of a bomb scare which police believe was a hoax.
shelter
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Feb. 13 At least 300 civilians killed in allied attack on Baghdad bomb shelter .
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The only thing less suited to the big screen would be a movie set in a bomb shelter .
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Until church members complete a sewer system, they have been forbidden to use their newly hewn bomb shelters .
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They even went down to the basement bomb shelter and shook pillows.
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Every church compound has a bomb shelter .
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Bennett persuades his family to build a bomb shelter .
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The idea of turning the most historic room in the nation into a bomb shelter struck me as in exceedingly bad taste.
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Residents remained in the bomb shelters Saturday.
site
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Sophie's room is a bomb site .
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Ruptured gas lines resulted in fires that gutted entire communities of wooden houses, leaving behind smoldering embers resembling a bomb site .
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There were bomb sites around and a lot of it looked like something out of the Ealing comedies.
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The memorial at the bomb site featured mournful bagpipes played Amazing Grace after Marine Capt.
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Trains were running, albeit a rather cautiously past the bomb site .
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Similar disasters are scattered piecemeal all over Britain, on bomb sites and over the slums they were built to clear.
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He looked at the bomb site .
squad
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The police had sealed off only part of the city centre while the bomb squad investigated.
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All of the bombs were removed and disabled by the New York Police Department bomb squad before they exploded.
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The way Max's biological clock is ticking, it's a wonder Emma didn't call out the bomb squad .
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The bomb squad also was summoned to examine one other package that proved to be harmless.
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KINETON/Warwickshire Time allowed 02:24 It's a training exercise ... but for the bomb squad this scenario is disturbingly real.
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In each instance, the explosives were removed by a New York police bomb squad to a basement.
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The device, discovered inside a Ford Transit van, was made safe after controlled explosions carried out by bomb squad officers.
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The bomb squad took the device to the basement and disarmed it by inundating it with a water cannon.
suicide
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This development follows the first suicide bomb attack for two years.
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Each time there is a suicide bomb or attack we should point a finger at ourselves?
threat
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Pervez Musharraf, delayed his flight home because of a bomb threat .
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More than 50, 000 people carrying free foam-rubber tomahawks evacuated the stadium as if there had been a bomb threat .
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Many passengers switch flight after bomb threat .
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Last Thursday, campus officials received a bomb threat that was sent over the university e-mail system.
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Schools cancelled extracurricular activities, and many parents took their children out of classes after word of the bomb threat spread.
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Last Monday, a bomb threat against the county courthouse was delivered by telephone.
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It belongs to the man who called in the bomb threat 18 minutes before it detonated.
time
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These factors have created a demographic time bomb . 2.
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Was it some psychic time bomb long ago planted on Ludlow Street?
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Our baby is a bomb , too: a time bomb.
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The man is clearly a walking time bomb .
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Her footsteps and the faint noise of her limbs striking one another as she walked sounded like the mechanism of a time bomb .
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I felt like a walking time bomb , set to detonate in sixty minutes.
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It is a time bomb waiting to explode.
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The Senate version of the bill contained a time bomb , however.
■ VERB
build
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Kaczynski sought to build increasingly lethal bombs by improving his bomb design and his bomb-making techniques.
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In retrospect, the decision to build the bomb was fraught with agonizing ambiguities.
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Physics may tell us how to build a nuclear bomb but not whether it should be built.
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That amount of plutonium was enough to build a couple of bombs like the ones we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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Britain has already accumulated enough nuclear waste to build 5,000 atom bombs .
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Inevitably, the scientists used some of the same ingenuity they brought to building the bomb to improving their high-desert outpost.
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In any case, they argue that if a country really wants to build its own bomb it will do so.
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Bennett persuades his family to build a bomb shelter.
defuse
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Police evacuated nearby buildings and cordoned off the area while they defused the bomb .
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Some economists say that declining population growth rates have defused the population bomb .
destroy
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The bomb disposal unit destroyed the bomb with a controlled explosion.
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Although their car and many of their belongings were destroyed by the bomb , they said they would continue their honeymoon.
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Janet Seligman's parental home was partly destroyed by a bomb , and Rita May's damaged.
detonate
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Police had already thwarted attempts to bring two huge van bombs to Madrid, and to detonate a car bomb in Bilbao.
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On September 23, 1949, Truman declared that the Soviets had detonated an atomic bomb .
drop
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They dropped ninety-three bombs and caused casualties and damage at a rate Paris had not experienced before.
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Sixteen billion gallons of water dropped like a bomb on the town below.
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I was a crew member of the Enola Gay, the B29 that dropped a bomb on Hiroshima.
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Can you imagine what would happen if they dropped a bomb on the Suq al-Sabat?
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We asked who led the Lancasters into action when they dropped their bouncing bombs .
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It tells of homes set aflame, planes dropping turpentine bombs and the wanton shooting of unarmed black men on the street.
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They come in at treetop level and drop these bombs .
explode
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What makes him do that is his belief that the man is about to explode a bomb .
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On 12 July 1953, when the Soviet Union exploded its first hydrogen bomb , equilibrium was restored.
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All of the bombs were removed and disabled by the New York Police Department bomb squad before they exploded .
injure
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At least two people were injured by the letter bombs .
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Sefton was badly injured in the bomb blast in Hyde Park in nineteen eighty-two, but survived.
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Three people were reported killed and three injured in bomb explosions in the capital Santo Domingo on Sept. 23.
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Another suspected drug handler was fatally injured in a car bomb attack in Bilbao on Jan. 9.
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At least 10 people were killed and 150 injured in bomb attacks last month.
kill
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But three - and the Czech liberal was killed by a bomb - is too much.
▪
Gen. Khan Aqa, deputy head of state security, was killed by a car bomb in Kabul on Nov. 3.
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Around 12 people were killed when a car bomb exploded outside a police station in the Chechen capital, Grozny.
place
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Javier Mugica Astibia, a town councillor in Navarra, by placing a bomb under his van.
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Why should they be involved in a case where the charges are placing and sending bombs ?
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I'd placed six smaller bombs , and had them all lit in forty seconds.
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They simply wandered around in the dark, placing their bombs on the parked aircraft until they ran out of them.
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They placed bombs on two isolated aircraft and then headed for the hangars where they expected to find some worthwhile booty.
plant
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He wanted to plant a bomb in the middle of the busy market, but he was a day early.
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They allegedly delivered the explosives to Ali Chanaa, who was supposed to plant the bomb .
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He did five himself in Long Kesh in the early seventies for planting a bomb .
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Nobody even knows who is planting the bombs or why.
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The Crown claim that all three were on their way to plant the bomb under a car.
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You'd never have thought anyone would plant a bomb there.
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Richard Jewell was the security guard accused by the media of planting the bomb that exploded in the city.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
dirty bomb
plant a bomb
▪
Police discovered that a bomb had been planted in the bus station.
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He did five himself in Long Kesh in the early seventies for planting a bomb.
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He wanted to plant a bomb in the middle of the busy market, but he was a day early.
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Suspected rebels last week planted a bomb outside the prime minister's home, although no one was injured in the blast.
▪
You'd never have thought anyone would plant a bomb there.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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A bomb exploded near the country's busiest airport before dawn today.
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a flea bomb
▪
Billy Joe Tolliver threw a 44-yard bomb into the end zone.
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Morrow was convicted in 1998 of sending four letter bombs to government officials.
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The bomb exploded on a bus in Jerusalem during the city's morning rush hour.
▪
The protesters were armed with rocks and petrol bombs.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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Another bomb blast was reported on a railway line outside Cape Town.
▪
Conservative Central Office has ordered special security screening measures to prevent firearms or bombs being smuggled into the £3m pavilion.
▪
Her shocked and sobbing face epitomised the terror that the bombs had brought to thousands of innocent city centre workers and shoppers.
▪
I heard new vocabulary: nuclear bomb , radioactive fallout, bomb shelter.
▪
Peggy ScottAdams's provocative ballad is hitting radio audiences like an emotional bomb .
▪
The brunette gift wrapped a bomb and handed it to grateful squaddies on point duty in Northern Ireland.
▪
Their bomb load was so great and dangerous that the slightest error would have been suicidal.
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They must have had their faces upturned when the bomb went off; perhaps they were anti-aircraft personnel.
II. verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
car
▪
The government accused Escobar of masterminding a double car bombing in Bogota on Monday which killed four people and injured dozens more.
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Rogue troops are even suspected of participating in the car bombing at the Jakarta stock exchange in September that killed 15 people.
days
▪
It was just a few days after the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.
▪
McVeigh is known to have been in contact with individuals at Elohim City in the days before the bombing .
embassy
▪
The party that became notorious in the 1980s for bombing embassies and kidnapping foreigners is now preaching against rudeness.
target
▪
Somehow they bombed the target in perfect weather and unopposed, and returned to Jersey.
▪
B-52s went all-out, bombing vital targets that were heretofore untouched, such as Haiphong Harbor.
trade
▪
Salameh was a close associate of the alleged mastermind of the Trade Center bombing , Ramzi Yousef.
▪
An effort to upgrade security after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was sidetracked by budget considerations.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
dirty bomb
saturation bombing
suicide attack/mission/bombing etc
▪
As Delbert saw it, they went on suicide missions, which was just the kind of action he wanted.
▪
His suicide mission came as a surprise to more people than just his family.
▪
The powers-that-be decide to send you on a suicide mission - nice peeps, aren't they?
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪
"How'd it go?" "I bombed on the written section, but I think I did okay on the multiple choice part."
▪
Although the show was a hit in London it bombed on Broadway.
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I bombed on the quiz he gave us.
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I bombed the English test yesterday.
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I just bombed the written section of the test.
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In 1986 they made "Shanghai Surprise," which bombed.
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NATO warplanes bombed a dozen towns Thursday.
▪
She has had few offers of work since her last movie bombed so spectacularly.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪
Her laundry had been bombed, and the hospital was full of casualties, as well as the maternity block.
▪
Lawrence Evert, shot down 33 years ago as he tried to bomb a nearby railroad bridge.
▪
They had made two attempts to bomb United States military trains in Lower Saxony in 1987 and 1988.