to open present
54
1.0
- phrasal verb
- /ˈoʊpən ˈprɛzənt/
- On Christmas morning, we all gathered around the tree to open presents together.
- opening presents on Christmas
- kids open presents
- opening presents on Christmas morning
Examples
-
Let's open presents.
-
I was usually first in line to open presents.
Fiction book (1996) -
Do you want to come home and open presents?
-
And I want to open presents on Christmas morning.
-
When are we gonna open presents?
-
Go get Grandpa and we'll open presents.
-
But here, we have dinner at 6:00... and we open presents at 8:00.
-
We ate brunch and opened presents.
Fiction book (2000) -
Remember when we lit the Menorah and opened presents?
-
They celebrated his birthdays and, on Christmas, invited him to stay overnight so they all could open presents together.
Fiction book (2000)
How Revealed
54
1.0
132
1.1
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to unwrap a gift' is directly derivable from combining 'open' (to make accessible) with 'present' (a gift); opening an object naturally maps to unwrapping or revealing its contents. This is a straightforward compositional pattern common across languages and should be immediately understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituents.
Etymology
Open present comes from the simple action of taking off the wrapping paper from a gift so you can see what is inside. The word open means to take off a cover and present means a gift, so open present means 'to unwrap a gift'.