put in perspective

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Daniellll

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what does the sentence "put in perspective" mean?
 

emsr2d2

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what does the sentence "put in perspective" mean?

That's not a sentence, it's a phrase. "To put something in perspective" means to look at something in relation to other things and compare the situations.

John just paid £100,000 for a painting but, to put that in persepective, he has £7,000,000 in the bank!

That means that, at first sight, paying £100,000 seems extortionate (a lot of money), but when you consider the fact that he has £7million in the bank, it probably actually seemed quite cheap to John.
 

TheParser

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what does the sentence "put in perspective" mean?


REMINDER: NOT A TEACHER


(1) The happiest people in the world may be those people who have the ability

to put everything in/into perspective.

(2) My dictionary tells me that "perspective" = to look at things closely.

(3) In other words, to have the ability to know how important something really is.

(4) Mr. X is a bachelor. He has never married because he has not been able to find the

right woman. He has no family. He is rather lonely and knows that he will not have

loving children to care for him in his old age. But he does have a good job, good

health, good friends, and he lives in a free country. So he puts not having a family

into proper perspective. He thinks of the things that he does have; he does not cry

because of the things he does NOT have.

(5) Mr. Y gets on a crowded bus. One rude person is using two seats (one for his

body and one for his packages). Mr. Y asks the rude person to move his packages.

The rude person refuses. Does Mr. Y start a fight? No, he doesn't. Mr. Y "looks

closely" at the situation. His goal is to go from point A to point B. His goal is NOT

to necessarily have a seat on the bus. (Maybe Mr. D would have hit the rude person;

then the police would come; then both Mr. D. and the rude person would have been in

big trouble. Why? Because Mr. D did not put things into perspective.)

(5) People who have the ability to put things into perspective are very wise. (Please

check your first-language dictionary for the definition of "wise.")

(6) Life is full of disappointments. Can we learn to put everything into perspective?

That is the never-ending job that we have in this life.
 
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