Collocations

[olegv]

Please look at the following sentences taken from an advanced english practice.

Most animals will attack you to protect their babies/litters/young. The correct answer is young. But it appears that internet shows that "protect" collocates with "young". Please clarify.

While I was eating cherries I accidentially swallowed a nut/pip/stone. The correct answer is stone. Again, it appears that "pip" also fits. I am really confused since the book gives just one correct answer.

Thank you very much for your clarifications.

 

[Tullia]

Please look at the following sentences taken from an advanced english practice.

Most animals will attack you to protect their babies/litters/young. The correct answer is young. But it appears that internet shows that "protect" collocates with "young". Please clarify.

Not all animals have litters (some have a single offspring at a time) so litters would be a bad choice of word.

I don't have a grammatical problem with either babies or young, although I think that, semantically, babies is too narrow a term; small animals do not remain babies very long and will be protected by their parents for longer than that.

In terms of register, young is the correct term: it sounds by far the most natural choice for a factual sentence like your example.

While I was eating cherries I accidentially swallowed a nut/pip/stone. The correct answer is stone. Again, it appears that "pip" also fits. I am really confused since the book gives just one correct answer.

Thank you very much for your clarifications.

Cherries don't really have pips. Pips are, technically speaking, smaller and softer seeds such as those in apples or oranges, rather than the kind of seed one gets in a cherry or peach, which is properly called a stone.

I have heard cherry stones called pips casually, but stones is by far the more common term, and I think more accurate.

Google Fight : Make this fight with googleFight cherrypip VS cherrystone

 

[Rover_KE]

The stone of a cherry, damson, plum etc is also called the pit.

I've never heard them called pips (until now).

Rover