word for word
27
3.5
- idiom
:
palabra por palabra
- Say exactly what I told you, word for word.
- copied word for word
- word for word plagiarism
- writes word for word
And I said it word for word, along with Barth.
- And I said it word for word, along with Barth.
- Just saw Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal performing Shakespeare word for word, and people laughed.
- Just repeat word for word what this real guy in real life said.
- Okay, so we rerecord every podcast word for word and we sell them.
- That is word for word my exact view on the whole thing as well.
- Now I I can't remember it word for word but I'll give you the gist of the comment.
- That's actually word for word my promise and made good on that promise.
- I want it scripted word for word Thank you What are your thoughts on Snapchat?
- Oh, sometime when someone reads a poem in my class, I will say to them, read it backwards, not word for word, but line for line.
- And this SEC report that I just spent over an hour and a half going through word for word.
- He couldn't find his notes, unfortunately, even though he wrote it all down word for word.
Examples
-
You remember everything you hear word for word?
-
That's actually word for word my promise and made good on that promise.
-
Tell them this word for word, Guy.
-
Just repeat word for word what this real guy in real life said.
-
Here is a word for word script that you can use.
-
That is word for word my exact view on the whole thing as well.
-
We had this conversation yesterday, word for word, gesture for gesture.
Fiction book (1999) -
"I want you to write down word for word everything he specifies."
Fiction book (1995) -
A word for word account of Amenpanufer's courtroom confession has survived through the centuries.
-
Please repeat that instruction word for word so I can understand it clearly.
Synonyms
How Exact
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'using exactly the same words' is directly compositional: the repetition of 'word' with the preposition conveys an item-by-item or exact correspondence (word-by-word reproduction). This pattern has close equivalents in many languages (e.g. Spanish 'palabra por palabra', French 'mot à mot'), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will almost certainly infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Word for word comes from the simple idea of copying or repeating every single word exactly, like someone writing down a sentence and repeating each word one by one. That's why it means 'using exactly the same words' or 'without changes'.