high strung and ply
What does "high-strung" mean?
I looked up and got 30 plus meanings to the word "string" and I really am not in the mood to discern which one matches the meaning I'm looking for.
Also, I had kinda similar problem with the verb "ply."
What does it imply in the following sentence:
"She used to ply dessert with, together with hot tea."
High-strung is term that describes a type of personality or temperament that is tense, nervous, easily stressed out, and volatile. Think of a stringed instrument; the more tension you put on the string, the higher the resulting note is -- and the more apt it is to break.
"Ply", in the sense of plying someone with sweets, means to offer or stuff someone with sweets.
There are also other sensed of ply; you can ply a trade (work at or practice that job -- and here I mean practice not in the sense of preliminary attempts or run-thoughs, but in the sense of practicing law or medicine), you can ply the seas (sail on them), and the noun sense of "ply" refers to thin layers that are stuck together to form a thicker whole, as in two-ply toilet paper or plywood (which is thin layers of wood glued together into one thick sheet).
If you want to know about a word phrase, you should look up that whole phrase, rather than looking up constituent parts. Since this is hyphenated, most online dictionaries will treat it as one word and give a definition for the whole phrase. For instance:
http://www.answers.com/high-strung
As for ply, my understanding is that it implies a bit of pushiness. So to ply someone with dessert would be something like "Are you sure you don't want some ice cream? Oh, you finished your pie. Let me get you another slice."
Where did you get your example sentence for "ply"? It's not grammatically correct.
First off, thanks a million for the tips
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/high-strung
:o)
Secondly, you're right about the 'ply' example. The original sentence was: "She used to ply them with, together with hot tea."
The pronoun "them" here refers to the guests. Since I didn't know the meaning of "ply" and therefore wasn't familiar with its usage, I went back and reread the previous sentence which mentioned "desserts." So, I just went ahead and substituted that.
I hope hoping nobody would notice but you did :o)
That improves it somewhat, but it doesn't address the main problem. "With" is a preposition, which means it's supposed to introduce a prepositional phrase. Yet there's nothing to go with it. It's like saying "I like to eat apples and."
I suppose it could be something like "Things are the sort of things she used to ply them with, together with hot tea". That would be technically grammatically incorrect, but not glaringly so.
Oh, I see what yo saying.
That would, again, be my fault.
I think the original sentence was "they missed (or something) the dessert she used to ply them with."
But somehow I dropped out the first part when jotting it down in my vocab notebook.
Ply:
"4.To continue offering something to; ensure that (another) is abundantly served: plied their guests with excellent food. "
"5. to supply with or offer something pressingly to: to ply a person with drink. "