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Stretch your imagination:
"Dressing up" has nothing to do with "dressing down."
Can you think of other sets like that?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Clap on, clap off...oh, wait.
Come on! Come off (it).
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dressing up -- dressing down
Slow up -- slow down
These are two completely different categories. In the former there is pretty much no relation at all between the phrases and the latter are synonyms.
Bring up, in the sense of raising a topic. He brought up the matter of unequal access to natural resources.
Bring down, in the sense of stifling someone's good mood. He's constantly bringing me down whenever he sees me enjoying myself.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Throw up (sick)- throw down
Though where the up and down give synonymous meanings, that's interesting too.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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chopping up a log after chopping the tree down!
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Carpal Tunnel
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getting it on .. getting off
(but then most anything can be made salacious)
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Carpal Tunnel
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So the verb part of the one should refer to something completely different than the other?, Wofa Ho?
{ basically my English is not up to this preposition stuff, to use and understand those littlest ones right is the hardest thing with foreign languages}
Last edited by BranShea; 09/17/11 08:34 PM. Reason: see cursives
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old hand
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old hand
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take on - take off
put on - put off
onset - offset
inset - outset
undertake - overtake
let on - let off
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Carpal Tunnel
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So the verb part of the one should refer to something completely different than the other?, Wofa Ho?
{ basically my English is not up to this preposition stuff, to use and understand those littlest ones right is the hardest thing with foreign languages} It's more that the parts look as if they should be opposites, but the wholes turn out to be completely unrelated. The incongruity makes you do a double-take. It's part of the perils of using idiomatic language. (My ninth grade French teacher tried to cure us of literal translation by asking us to translate, word by word, the sentence "I was left behind." Snickers everywhere...)
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