I. noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a grave error (= extremely serious, with serious results )
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He has committed a grave error.
a serious/grave mistake
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There was a serious mistake in the instructions.
a serious/grave mistake
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The decision to take the money was a serious mistake.
a serious/grave risk (= real and big )
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The most serious risk of flooding this evening is on the River Wye.
a war grave
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He had gone with a friend to visit the war graves in Flanders.
as silent as the grave (= completely silent in a mysterious or uncomfortable way )
dig a hole/trench/grave etc
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They dig a small hole in the sand to bury their eggs.
grave concern (= very great concern )
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This disagreement was a matter of grave concern to the US.
grave/great/serious/severe misgivings (= serious and important worries )
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Most of us have grave misgivings about the idea of human cloning.
grave/serious danger (= very great )
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You have put us all in grave danger.
great/grave/serious peril
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The economy is now in grave peril.
serious/grave doubts
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They have some serious doubts as to his honesty.
serious/grave reservations
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They had serious reservations about the plan.
unmarked grave
▪
an unmarked grave
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
early
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I reckon that hat's in for an early grave .
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Because if the indestructible Earnhardt can be put into an early grave , they all can.
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Yet bows and arrows are very rare in early Anglo-Saxon graves .
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The only thing you get out of that is an early grave .
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Widows are suing the companies for death benefits, demanding compensation for the loss of husbands worked into an early grave .
mass
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Most sombre of all is the tomb over the mass grave of the R-101 victims at Cardington, Bedfordshire.
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In Los Mochis, meanwhile, bodies are being exhumed from the mass graves one by one as they are identified.
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Village residents stated that at least 100 people had been murdered and buried in mass graves in the area.
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But the tombs were empty; the bodies had been bulldozed into mass graves in the south, where they had fallen.
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They don't even have basic maps. Mass graves are already being dug.
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Arms and legs, some of which still moved, were sticking out of the mass graves .
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Discovery of Stalinist victims' graves During March a number of mass graves were found near former concentration camps or prisoner-of-war camps.
open
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You were looking into an open grave .
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Something similar was happening now in that open grave in the snow.
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Holman lay at the bottom of the open grave where he'd been roughly dumped.
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Davey runs, but trips into an open grave .
shallow
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At first they saw only the little hand - the fist, decomposed but stretching out of the shallow grave .
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Later, a badly decomposed body was found in a shallow grave five miles from the Lindbergh estate.
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He died in May and the Seales buried him in a shallow grave in a park.
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They looked like pets in a shallow grave .
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Meg's coffin was lowered into a shallow grave packed in the dry, hard ground.
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Her body was found buried in a shallow grave in a grove two days after she was last seen with Thompson.
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Perhaps in a shallow grave of leaves and twigs.
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Hours before the rebels arrived his body was hurriedly wrapped in a blanket and secreted in a shallow grave .
silent
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The huge room was as silent as the grave .
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Stone House is the silent grave of an active industry that died at the turn of the present century.
unmarked
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The bodies that disappeared into unmarked graves ?
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His unmarked grave is just past mile 194.
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Somewhere in unmarked graves , deep in earth, they are anonymous.
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Another wasted corpse in yet another unmarked grave .
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The beautiful, mountainous countryside is littered with the shallow, unmarked graves of the assassinated.
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Mozart was buried in the customary way in an unmarked mass grave , and its exact location has never been discovered.
watery
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Moves are now being made to lift the aircraft from its watery grave and preserve it locally.
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Steward needed three shots to escape his watery grave and had a drenched set of waterproofs to prove it.
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Should any fellow be passing by, he must refuse their invitation or else they will dance him to a watery grave .
■ NOUN
war
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They are pressing their government to stop the diving and turn Truk into a war grave .
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More than 800 men died and their bodies still lie in what has become Britain's most sacred maritime war grave .
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They are reburied with full military honours in the region's Commonwealth war graves .
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Several years before we saw her, she had gone with a friend to visit the war graves in Flanders.
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After they have been examined, they will be buried with full military honours at one of the war graves .
■ VERB
bury
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Village residents stated that at least 100 people had been murdered and buried in mass graves in the area.
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They then buried him in a grave that Phocas had prepared for himself during the night.
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Those corpses, the ones he had buried in their makeshift grave under the old elm tree who were they?
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Her body was found buried in a shallow grave in a grove two days after she was last seen with Thompson.
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They were buried in mass graves , the corpses piled one on top of the other under a few inches of soil.
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Hundreds of people were killed and buried in shallow graves beside the road.
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But sadly, she may never be able to prove what killed the people buried in the mass graves .
dig
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If he went against this young man sitting opposite him, he would in effect dig his own grave .
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Tom Kitain to its freshly dug grave by a grove of olive and cypress trees.
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Richard Lombu, standing next to a freshly dug mass grave , also remembers the scene.
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They dug up her grave when I started agitating in the Movement.
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Another witness describes how he was captured by the rival faction and forced to dig graves to bury their dead.
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I would dig the grave myself, six feet down into the dense clay soil.
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They had already dug Graham Taylor's grave .
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They dug graves for only one day before the Ecumenical Chaplaincy pulled Fritz Huls from his duties.
digging
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By failing to provide stories for a significant proportion of the population, are they not digging themselves a grave ?
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These guys were digging their own graves , and women all over the country were watching while they kept right on shoveling.
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Then the burial party took a pace to the right and began digging the grave of another known soldier.
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They were digging a mass grave .
discover
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I have already discovered where the graves lie.
find
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She went into the churchyard and found their parents' grave .
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Later, a badly decomposed body was found in a shallow grave five miles from the Lindbergh estate.
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They are most commonly found in women's graves of the sixth century accompanied by a relatively large quantity of grave-goods.
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Later that day, we found more surface graves .
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Then Schramm found the row of graves .
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It is found predominately in female graves , either rough or faceted and polished, pierced and worn as beads.
lie
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So it might seem as if Snow could lie purring in his grave , and as if the two cultures were coming together.
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Only Corrary was still subdued, remembering his brother lying in a makeshift grave far from his home Rorim.
mark
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They were the equivalent of tombstones on land: they marked the actual graves .
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There were no walls, just rough stones the size of dinner-plates marking each grave .
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The best-preserved was designated L.F.1, where a fence of planks marked a grave .
rise
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Broken columns, rising over the graves of those who had died prematurely, denoted truncated lives.
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The walls are decorated with black wall hangings and tapestries depicting skeletal forms rising from crude graves .
turn
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Old time railwaymen would turn over in their graves !
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He looked up at the portrait of the handsome, intense Willard, who was almost certainly turning over in his grave .
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The possibility must have made Eleanor's ancestors turn in their graves .
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Imagining his grandfather turning in his grave at the very thought, he paid £120 to repair the old one.
visit
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And the family regularly visit his grave .
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We visit his grave every week and sometimes, Sophie will take something that she's made to put on it.
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Now she's visiting the graves of her husband and 7 of their children.
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Several years before we saw her, she had gone with a friend to visit the war graves in Flanders.
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Louise wished to visit Dorothy's grave , where the memorial stone was now in place.
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They had come to visit the graves of their own dead children.
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I did not ask if they had visited Montaine's grave , or if others who had loved Montaine had joined them.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a watery grave
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Should any fellow be passing by, he must refuse their invitation or else they will dance him to a watery grave.
dig your own grave
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By continuing to make racist comments before the committee, he really dug his own grave.
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I felt the sinking whir of the back wheel as it dug its own grave.
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I thought that before they shot you, they made you dig your own grave first.
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If he went against this young man sitting opposite him, he would in effect dig his own grave.
from (the) cradle to (the) grave
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The state now provided something of a protective safety net from the cradle to the grave.
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They should also inform shoppers as to the product's environmental friendliness from cradle to grave - evaluated according to standardized criteria.
have one foot in the grave
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She sounded like she had one foot in the grave.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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And do the different types of grave reflect different periods or something else?
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Beethoven may be rolling over in his grave , but audiences love it.
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Her body was found buried in a shallow grave in a grove two days after she was last seen with Thompson.
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In fact, none of the graves has any marker at all, and the graveyard itself is unmarked and untended.
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One of two silver cups found together with a set of wine-drinking utensils in a grave .
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The miracles which have since occurred at his grave have confirmed his holiness.
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This band will not go to their graves with their songs still in them.
II. adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
so
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It was so grave , so mad.
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If the matters concerned had not been so grave , it would have been equal to any comedy.
very
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Two of those wounded have very grave injuries.
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The charges in this case are very grave , and they are entirely false.
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He stopped dictating to take a phone call and I saw his face become shocked, then very grave .
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It is on the contrary a very grave flaw, latent but pernicious in its effects.
■ NOUN
concern
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However, there was grave concern about the future of the avionic department there.
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He told them he had received reports that had caused him grave concern .
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As for Stewart, the family developed grave concerns about his health.
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This matter is of the gravest concern to me, and to the good name of this unit.
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The Parish Council have asked me to express their grave concern that such an incident could have occurred at all.
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They watched with grave concern the formidable ascent of U2.
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It is a matter of grave concern .
consequence
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This has grave consequences for Britain.
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Even a tiny fling, even a protected one, can still have the gravest consequence .
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The paradox is all the stranger because the power shortage has had predictably grave consequences for economic growth.
danger
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Mr. Flannery Is there not a grave danger of the former Soviet Union lapsing into anarchy?
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I put myself to sleep each night by imagining that I am in grave danger .
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The building now stands in grave danger from the weather, derelict and in ruins.
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Huamanga, which had rejected all political influence, had few partisans in Congress and thereby found itself in grave danger .
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Lynda La Plante is in grave danger of burning herself out and it's no laughing matter.
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There is also a grave danger that the essence of education will be forgotten.
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I have placed you in the gravest danger .
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The four said their actions were reasonable, given what they alleged were the potentially grave dangers to the environment.
doubt
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But there is grave doubt among environmentalists as to whether the Government will fulfil its promises according to schedule.
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I had grave doubts about where he might take it.
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In my talk with Alec he himself expressed grave doubts whether he wished to take it on.
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There must, too, be the gravest doubts about a system which excludes those who prefer not to join a union.
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The gravest doubt which has assailed historians about Charlemagne's moral and educational programme is whether it had much effect.
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I have grave doubts about that.
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Simply as a proposition this is open to grave doubt .
error
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What sins, what meannesses, what grave errors I had committed in the previous ten years had been forgiven me.
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It would be a grave error to oversimplify any of these outcomes.
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He had committed a grave error in lending his approval, together with that of the Church he represented, to the Exhibition.
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She had made - and with far less justification than her father - the same grave error as he.
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He explained that we had made a grave error - it was Saturday afternoon.
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But as we left the tarmac road and headed up the hill I made a grave error .
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Here indeed, I thought, must lie some of those sins, meannesses and grave errors .
goods
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An abundance of grave goods , especially painted wares, accompanied the burials.
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The other grave goods provide what little evidence we have for the economic basis and material culture of its population.
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The deceased were deposited on their left side and the grave goods were reduced in quantity and included very little painted ware.
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Tomb inscriptions, the coffin, statues, stelae and other grave goods therefore bore the name.
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In many cultures, various objects, termed grave goods , were commonly deposited with human burials.
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All the associated grave goods belonged to the fourth century, the cemetery itself overlying earlier field boundaries and enclosures.
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He had no grave goods and that marked him pretty low both on the social scale and with the archaeologists.
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A similar ambivalence prevailed in the provision of grave goods as in the bestowal of presents.
misgiving
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Orkney Presbytery followed suit, stating their very grave misgivings about the procedures followed by Orkney Islands Council.
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As Soap beached the craft and ushered the two ashore, Pooley viewed the place with the gravest misgivings .
mistake
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Although, now she came to think about it, maybe such caution had been a grave mistake .
problem
▪
That is the gravest problem of all.
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The graver problems await the end of the war.
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Last night, it shouldered a graver problem .
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I shall argue that the suggestions which have been made carry with them grave problems .
reservation
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The Opposition have grave reservations about the Bill.
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Indeed, Humphrey had privately expressed grave reservations about the war, which Johnson had ignored.
risk
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In other words there is a grave risk of escalation.
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Some of these women took grave risks to start their businesses and faced even more danger when they succeeded.
site
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The president will also visit the grave sites of 12 youths killed in recent bombings.
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Two acres have been added to its six-acre collection of grave sites .
threat
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The advance of the disease presents a grave threat to the livestock industry.
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Hayek views the growing dominance of the conception of law as thesis as posing a grave threat to liberty.
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The inflationary spiral constituted a grave threat which, if not halted, could jeopardise the entire economy.
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It can indeed present a grave threat to democracy.
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But the gravest threat to health is posed by the total collapse of the economy, and the ensuing chronic poverty.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
dig your own grave
▪
By continuing to make racist comments before the committee, he really dug his own grave.
▪
I felt the sinking whir of the back wheel as it dug its own grave.
▪
I thought that before they shot you, they made you dig your own grave first.
▪
If he went against this young man sitting opposite him, he would in effect dig his own grave.
from (the) cradle to (the) grave
▪
The state now provided something of a protective safety net from the cradle to the grave.
▪
They should also inform shoppers as to the product's environmental friendliness from cradle to grave - evaluated according to standardized criteria.
have one foot in the grave
▪
She sounded like she had one foot in the grave.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪
"It would be a grave mistake," said the president, "to ignore the problem, and pretend that it will go away."
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"We might be too late," she said gravely.
▪
a grave mistake
▪
A thick fog descended on the mountain, and I knew that we were in grave danger.
▪
Dr. Fromm looked grave . "I have some bad news," he said.
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His expression became very grave when we told him what had happened.
▪
Holmes looked grave , and stood deep in worried thought for a minute or two.
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I have grave doubts that this new government will last.
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The ambassador declared that there would be grave consequences if the hostages were not released.
▪
The situation is grave -- war now seems inevitable.
▪
There was a grave risk that the operation would leave him partly paralysed.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪
Although, now she came to think about it, maybe such caution had been a grave mistake.
▪
His expression was grave and he looked deep in thought.
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Luch looked over at Hector for his smile before bowing grave thanks.
▪
Oppenheimer was, by nature, a philosophical, rather grave person, but some of his colleagues were anything but.
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The advance of the disease presents a grave threat to the livestock industry.
III. adjective
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪
Although, now she came to think about it, maybe such caution had been a grave mistake.
▪
His expression was grave and he looked deep in thought.
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I felt the sinking whir of the back wheel as it dug its own grave .
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Luch looked over at Hector for his smile before bowing grave thanks.
▪
Prosecutors said Saturday that the professed psychic is being held on charges ranging from grave robbery to conspiracy to mislead officials.
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The advance of the disease presents a grave threat to the livestock industry.
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Those who see all the monuments as tombs argue that grave robbers removed the evidence.