I.nounCOLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a chess piece (=one that you move around the board)
▪ Some of the chess pieces were missing.
a chicken piece (=a chicken breast, leg, thigh or wing)
▪ You will need two chicken pieces per person.
a lump/piece of rock
▪ His leg was trapped under a large lump of rock.
a piece of advice (also a bit of adviceinformal)
▪ Let me give you a piece of advice.
a piece of clothing
▪ There were pieces of clothing scattered around the room.
a piece of equipment
▪ When you buy an expensive piece of equipment, you need to insure it.
a piece of evidence
▪ The study produced one interesting piece of evidence.
a piece of glass
▪ He cut his foot on a piece of glass.
a piece of gossip
▪ I’ve got an interesting piece of gossip which might interest you.
a piece of homework
▪ I still have one piece of homework left to do.
a piece of land (=an area of land)
▪ He built a house on a piece of land near the river.
a piece of legislation
▪ The most important piece of legislation was the Prevention of Fraud Act.
a piece of music
▪ It’s a beautiful piece of music.
a piece of news (also a bit of news British English)
▪ Leo thought about this piece of news carefully.
a piece of paper
▪ Can I have another piece of paper?
a piece of poetry
▪ We had to memorize a piece of poetry.
a piece of propaganda
▪ The claim was a typical piece of Russian propaganda.
a piece of research
▪ A recent piece of research shows why marriages break up.
a piece of sculpture
▪ This is a magnificent piece of sculpture.
a piece of software
▪ This excellent piece of software is compatible with both PCs and Macs.
a piece of wood
▪ He made a bench out of pieces of wood.
a piece of wreckage
▪ The fishermen were left clinging to pieces of wreckage.
a piece of writing
▪ It's a brilliant piece of writing.
a piece/bit of cheese
▪ Would you like a piece of cheese?
a piece/bit of chocolate
▪ Would you like a piece of chocolate?
a piece/bit of information (also an item of informationformal)
▪ He provided me with several useful pieces of information.
a piece/item of data
▪ Every single piece of data is important.
a piece/length/strand of wire
▪ The pieces of wire he’d cut were too short.
a piece/slice of cake
▪ Would you like a slice of cake?
a piece/stroke of luck (=something good that happens by chance)
▪ What a piece of luck that he arrived when he did!
a slice/piece of bread
▪ Can I have another slice of bread?
an item/piece of baggage
▪ How many pieces of baggage do you have?
bite-size pieces
▪ sushi served in convenient bite-size pieces
blow sb/sth to pieces/bits/smithereens
▪ A bomb like that could blow you to bits.
chop sth into pieces/chunks etc
▪ Chop the meat into small cubes.
conversation piece
cut sb a piece/slice of sth
▪ Shall I cut you a slice of cake?
cut sth into pieces/slices/chunks etc
▪ Next cut the carrots into thin slices.
establish/piece together the facts (=find out what actually happened in a situation)
▪ The police are still piecing together the facts.
in two/halves/pieces etc
▪ I tore the letter in two and threw the pieces in the fire.
museum piece
▪ Some of the weapons used by the rebels are museum pieces.
party piece
period piece
▪ a house furnished with period pieces
piece of elastic
▪ a piece of elastic
piece of furniture
▪ I can’t think of a single piece of furniture in my house that I bought new.
piece of machinery
▪ a piece of machinery
piece of string
▪ I need a piece of string to tie this package.
piece of the jigsaw
▪ As he explained, another piece of the jigsaw fell into place.
piece of toast
▪ I had a piece of toast for breakfast.
piece/pile/load etc of shit
set piece
▪ The trial scene is a classic set piece.
shot to pieces
▪ My nerves were shot to pieces after my driving test.
slice/piece of pie
▪ Would you like another piece of apple pie?
smashed to pieces
▪ Several cups fell to the floor and smashed to pieces.
tear sth to pieces/shreds
▪ The dogs tore the meat to pieces.
thrilled to bits/pieces (=very thrilled)
tiny pieces
▪ tiny pieces of paper
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
important
▪ Situation: A is a teacher who told the class yesterday that an important piece of homework must be done that night.
▪ The marketing department writes the really important pieces.
▪ In this respect a particularly important piece of legislation is the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977.
▪ This is not a perfect collection, as too many important pieces of the Bird legacy are missing.
▪ Disgorgers are a minor but very important piece of tackle.
▪ Tires are probably the most important pieces of a car.
▪ Perhaps the most important piece of advice of all is to trust your own instincts.
▪ He offers two important pieces of advice about starting your own business.
large
▪ Don't worry if you can't buy any miniature marshmallows - cut the large ones into pieces with scissors.
▪ When you add vinegar to milk, the small solid pieces clump together and form larger solid pieces.
▪ We all took a large piece of the treasure, and some used it sensibly, and some did not.
▪ Leaving a glowing trail over one thousand kilometers long, it broke into several large pieces as it progressed.
▪ A large piece of whale blubber, bearing the marks of fleshing knives, has been discovered off west Falkland.
▪ I called Socks and gave him a large piece of my mind.
▪ Kendo then took the prey from Fitz, having let him tear out a large piece of the monkey's intestines.
▪ Loomas' larger pieces are deceptively simple.
little
▪ He felt that this little piece of bad luck might affect his whole day.
▪ The little pieces of white paper inside trembled like strips of packing excelsior.
▪ Harry wanted to take the little blonde piece and jive with her.
▪ Cut off a little piece and light it, it would heat up anything you wanted.
▪ He managed to contain himself and somehow he got the hundred into the middle without shredding the notes into little pieces.
▪ I played little pieces by Dussek and Clementi, and there was no real discipline involved; it was strictly for fun.
▪ I think they're a good little piece of apparatus.
▪ The little piece of moon, like a chip of eggshell, shone in the sky over us.
long
▪ A long, straight piece of road with no other traffic, and his car hit a tree.
▪ Separate each oil-cured eggplant into 4 long pieces and arrange in star pattern on top of meat.
▪ Obviously you will need a longer and wider piece of wood than the size of the cutlery blank.
▪ I gave the ticket to a man with a cat tied to a long piece of red yarn.
▪ I looked around the ship, and after a few minutes, I found some long pieces of wood.
▪ Helen Appleton Read, the only woman critic to review the show, wrote a long piece in the Brooklyn Eagle.
▪ Elliott: You need a long piece to go right round him.
▪ Much better than a long piece of string!
small
▪ The ground shook and small pieces of earth rained down gently on their heads.
▪ When you add vinegar to milk, the small solid pieces clump together and form larger solid pieces.
▪ Add the oil and deep fry the pork, stirring with a spatula to break it into small pieces.
▪ The victim still had a small piece of metal from the van in his leg, he added.
▪ It was a small piece of shrapnel, but it did a number on the left cheek of my hind end.
▪ Edward looked warningly at Helen and Helen heard herself say that there was a small piece of land.
▪ By collision and gravitational attraction, the larger planetesimals swept up the smaller pieces and became the planets.
tiny
▪ He took the tiny piece of crumpled paper from his top pocket and unfolded it.
▪ Every tiny piece of business is something it wants, as well it should for the sake of its stockholders.
▪ The bomb detonated with a sharp crack, sending tiny but razor-sharp pieces of metal into the backs of the gun crews.
▪ It made our hands and fingers itch, but the tiny pieces of red flesh were delicious.
▪ Others were tiny pieces of polyvinyl-chloride insulated plastic covering, source identified.
▪ The Hawk is a tiny piece of the Machine.
▪ There was quite a good helping of pudding but only a tiny piece of meat.
▪ Jakhaila Miracle Braxton is resting her 3-pound-something body on a tiny piece of sheepskin in an incubator at Mercy Hospital.
■ NOUN
museum
▪ We do not want fossilised museum pieces of countryside but communities with jobs and a living, dynamic and healthy social fabric.
▪ Gluck was armed with an incredibly heavy musket, a single-shot museum piece with an octagonal barrel and a smooth bore.
▪ Those that have are museum pieces.
▪ Now the 1986 tax-revision measure that shut down shelters and closed some loopholes might best be called a museum piece.
▪ But will I been seen as a museum piece by some?
▪ All the planes are museum pieces, normally kept in a museum.
▪ After all, these chairs were built to be used, not to be museum pieces.
▪ He acknowledges that liturgy is not a museum piece but needs to evolve as part of a living tradition.
■ VERB
break
▪ Then they broke the chair into pieces, agreeing to save the folding tables for a Christmas Day blaze.
▪ She broke off a piece of baguette, spread it with butter and jam, stuffed it into her mouth.
▪ Often projects are planned with an overall budget, not broken down into component pieces.
▪ Add the oil and deep fry the pork, stirring with a spatula to break it into small pieces.
▪ With remarkable poise, he quickly put the two broken pieces in one hand and made an attempt to paddle canoe-style.
▪ But it was a home thrust, for the Dennison family was breaking in pieces.
▪ Leaving a glowing trail over one thousand kilometers long, it broke into several large pieces as it progressed.
cut
▪ This was cut from a piece of linen texture board and then backed with some cream silk.
▪ It was in brick form like a pound of butter and you would cut off your own piece.
▪ An arrow, cut into two pieces.
▪ Decide how many pages you want. Cut pieces of paper into eight parts, making enough pages for your book.
▪ Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?
▪ Our sergeant ran in front of an artillery piece, and the beehive round cut him to pieces.
▪ It wasn't too pretty. Cut to pieces with a whip, and almost decapitated.
▪ Simon ducked his head, cut a piece of ravioli in half with his fork and put it in his mouth.
fall
▪ It should fall out in one piece.
▪ And then he fell into two pieces.
▪ The metal bubbled for an eye-aching moment, and then the door fell in two pieces in the passage beyond.
▪ After he left, I fell to pieces.
▪ He hated playing agony aunt but he couldn't afford to have Hirschfeldt falling to pieces.
▪ Supposing the union fell to pieces, these were the fracture lines along which it would naturally break.
▪ The Soviet Union is falling to pieces; a bloody struggle for those pieces can not be ruled out.
▪ The media seemed to be willing the marriage to fall to pieces.
pick
▪ As proved by history, women are the ones who have to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of war.
▪ He came over to me, picked up the piece of paper before me, and sat back down on the bed.
▪ In her motherly concerned way, she was cosseting him as he tried to pick up the pieces of his life.
▪ In the more stable area people were returning to pick up the pieces of their lives.
▪ Upon release, however, he slowly picked up the pieces of his life and rebuilt his career.
▪ He picked up a piece of paper with some writing on it, could not decipher the writing, and dropped it.
▪ My life fell apart, but he had no trouble picking up the pieces and forged ahead with a new woman.
pull
▪ Something that pulls all the pieces together.
▪ He reached in and pulled out some crumpled pieces of paper.
▪ I had pulled the two heavy pieces and wood across the entrance to the trench.
▪ He pulled out the piece of paper upon which earlier I had signed my name.
▪ She tried to regroup her scattered brain tissue, pulling back pieces of her mind before they were lost for ever.
▪ He reached into his windbreaker and pulled out a piece of paper.
▪ Make a small cut and then try to pull the gall to pieces bit by bit.
▪ Four of them parody the fire brigade, pecking and pulling a piece of bread.
put
▪ Bought dinner and put a twenty-dollar gold piece on the table.
▪ They will put the pieces together with Microsoft Powerpoint.
▪ He put another piece of bread in his mouth and chewed.
▪ A man put a 5p piece into the guitar case and then Alice put a lop piece in.
▪ Because I had to take it apart afterwards and put all the pieces back where they were.
▪ A man put a 5p piece into the guitar case and then Alice put a lop piece in.
▪ With remarkable poise, he quickly put the two broken pieces in one hand and made an attempt to paddle canoe-style.
tear
▪ If Hyde returns while I am writing this confession, he will tear it to pieces to annoy me.
▪ He was thrown from his chariot and his horses tore him to pieces and devoured him.
▪ And it's a myth that foxes are torn to pieces while still alive.
▪ We are lost, for they will surely tear us to pieces with their sharp claws.
▪ Harald tore the passport into pieces.
▪ Kendo then took the prey from Fitz, having let him tear out a large piece of the monkey's intestines.
▪ The remains of the Con federate machinist who was torn to pieces were shoveled into buckets and thrown overboard.
write
▪ Coffin was still pondering on the significance of what he had seen written on the piece of paper from Place's jacket.
▪ He also has written a piece that 100 percussionists will perform at the opening ceremonies for the summer Olympic Games.
▪ The gifted local amateur occasionally writes a piece of enduring worth, and not all commissions involve an expensive financial transaction.
▪ The marketing department writes the really important pieces.
▪ He doubled back to tell Holly she had written a nice piece on Donaldson.
▪ Top staff meetings at the White House and in the various agencies and departments are devoted to getting puff pieces written.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a nasty piece of work
▪ Cyril and Wyatt had gone around together with that other boy, that Donald, who was a nasty piece of work.
▪ You'd best steer clear of him, Manderley, he's a nasty piece of work.
a piece/slice of the action
▪ A police station, so help me, is a piece of the action.
▪ His successors never again ran the town, as he did, but they always had a piece of the action.
▪ If you want a slice of the action tickets may still be available on.
▪ If you want to get a slice of the action book early - no kidding.
▪ Nation shall speak peace unto nation, and I shall grab a piece of the action.
▪ Or did evil Uncle Humbert destroy it, because under the law he would then get a piece of the action?
▪ So how do you get a slice of the action?
▪ Will foreign firms get a piece of the action?
be a piece of cake
▪ Creating graphs is a piece of cake on the computer.
▪ Getting tickets to the game will be a piece of cake.
▪ But there is no use pretending the Saturn-Pluto effect will be a piece of cake.
▪ My bone marrow was harvested a couple of weeks ago and the whole thing was a piece of cake.
▪ Normally, walking along tarmac is a piece of cake after the rocky excursion along a ridge.
▪ Should be a piece of cake.
▪ That was a piece of cake compared to finding a square mile without an ad.
▪ The one he was allocated, Parky, a homely, Hoomey-sized bay, was a piece of cake compared with Bones.
be falling to pieces/bits
▪ The walls were all dirty and the furniture was falling to pieces.
▪ But most of the material was falling to pieces.
▪ The Soviet Union is falling to pieces; a bloody struggle for those pieces can not be ruled out.
▪ There's a difference between consciously colouring a passage and not being able to control a voice that is falling to bits.
▪ They would blaze into prominence just as the foreground planting was falling to pieces.
bits and pieces
▪ Do any of these bits and bobs belong to you?
▪ making a mosaic out of bits and pieces of tiles
▪ There are all sorts of bits and pieces in this box.
▪ For the next two decades he made a sort of living finding bits and pieces of editing and translation work.
▪ Having chosen the size of guttering, draw up a list of the various bits and pieces you need.
▪ He circled the house, looking in, and saw nothing but the bits and pieces of ordinary living.
▪ My eyes adjusted, and things became edges, corners, bits and pieces of what they were.
▪ Not a single one had listened to it or even heard bits and pieces on the news.
▪ Storing the furniture and the bits and pieces we didn't need immediately was a bit more difficult.
▪ The bits of information range from play dates with friends to the sometimes frightening bits and pieces of domestic violence.
▪ Why teach in bits and pieces a subject which is a whole?
fall to pieces/bits
▪ After he left, I fell to pieces.
▪ As a result, now that the autumn rains were here, it was already showing signs of falling to pieces.
▪ Being a super-duper well-'ard off-road jobbie, your machine can take a fair amount of punishment before falling to bits.
▪ He hated playing agony aunt but he couldn't afford to have Hirschfeldt falling to pieces.
▪ Supposing the union fell to pieces, these were the fracture lines along which it would naturally break.
▪ The media seemed to be willing the marriage to fall to pieces.
▪ The Soviet Union is falling to pieces; a bloody struggle for those pieces can not be ruled out.
▪ There's a difference between consciously colouring a passage and not being able to control a voice that is falling to bits.
how long is a piece of string?
pick sth to pieces
pick up the pieces (of sth)
▪ The town is beginning to pick up the pieces after the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.
▪ As proved by history, women are the ones who have to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of war.
▪ I picked up the pieces myself.
▪ In her motherly concerned way, she was cosseting him as he tried to pick up the pieces of his life.
▪ In the more stable area people were returning to pick up the pieces of their lives.
▪ It has already made behind-the-scenes preparations to share the job of picking up the pieces.
▪ Then the red mists cleared and she sank to her knees, picking up the pieces, moaning softly.
▪ This hopefully will cause them a fixture congestion around April/May with us hopefully been able to pick up the pieces.
▪ Whimper like a whipped puppy, Jay, have a drink and pick up the pieces.
piece of the puzzle
▪ All the pieces of the puzzle were in place: it was time for a little conference.
▪ But what about the piece of the puzzle we have so far omitted?
▪ Fortunately, the next step in the research process supplied the missing piece of the puzzle.
▪ How television has changed is one piece of the puzzle.
▪ It's another piece of the puzzle.
▪ So he created a temporary scaffolding to get one piece of the puzzle going.
▪ Take me out of there, and you're taking away a big piece of the puzzle.
▪ The final pieces of the puzzle had now been slotted into place.
say your piece
▪ He knew that he was clever and always wanted to say his piece in meetings.
▪ I was wondering what would happen when Dolly came out on to the stage and said his piece.
▪ Now I have come forward and said my piece.
▪ She'd come this far to say her piece and say it she would, come hell or high water.
▪ Sutton was allowed to say his piece.
▪ The horse-trading that lies ahead will end only when the three key players have said their piece.
▪ The rules state that you let a guy say his piece and you consider what he said.
▪ We each said our piece, each absolutely predictable.
slice/share/piece of the pie
▪ Smaller capitalist countries are maneuvering to gain a bigger share of the pie.
▪ That meant nearly one in five students was moderately to severely work-inhibited-a considerable slice of the pie.
▪ Virtually every academic institution, it seemed, wanted a piece of the pie.
take sth to bits/pieces
▪ After all these years, I'd taken something to bits and successfully put it all back together again.
▪ Carter shrugged and fetching a, paraffin stove from inside a caravan began to take it to pieces.
▪ He learnt how to take a car to pieces.
▪ Most reputable dealers will take a computer to pieces for you.
▪ Operators decided to clean down equipment regularly, not just superficially, but by taking it to pieces.
▪ Unfortunately appearances has been misleading and heavy filling was found as they started to take it to bits.
tear sb/sth to shreds/pieces
▪ In the end the prosecutor's case was torn to shreds by Russell's lawyer.
▪ Male Siamese fighting fish will tear each other's fins to shreds.
▪ A shell had exploded in the body of one of them, tearing it to pieces; others were torn and wounded.
▪ And having got under them, he can't half tear them to pieces.
▪ He was thrown from his chariot and his horses tore him to pieces and devoured him.
▪ If Hyde returns while I am writing this confession, he will tear it to pieces to annoy me.
▪ They snarled at them as if they were criminals and took their papers as if they'd like to tear them to shreds.
▪ They will tear you to pieces.
▪ We are lost, for they will surely tear us to pieces with their sharp claws.
▪ Within two years, other researchers had torn it to shreds.
the villain of the piece
▪ But to do so in this way was to make her appear the villain of the piece.
▪ But who is really the villain of the piece?
▪ Charles the Bald remained the villain of the piece.
▪ Nor do I regard the villains of the piece as the fighters themselves.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a piece of paper
▪ a beautifully made piece of furniture
▪ a pack of chicken pieces
▪ a simple boat made from a few pieces of wood
▪ a truly impressive piece of Greek sculpture
▪ Another typical piece of Owen's work is the poem, 'The Sentry'.
▪ One of the pieces in Greene's sculpture collection is valued at $12,000.
▪ Our satellite dish has a piece broken off of it.
▪ Some of the jigsaw pieces are missing.
▪ The books were eagerly borrowed and well used, and they finally fell to pieces.
▪ The collection includes pieces in both oils and watercolours, with a range of still life paintings.
▪ The concert began with three short pieces by the Brazilian composer Villa-Lobos.
▪ The equipment had to be taken apart and transported in pieces.
▪ The old wreck had been smashed to pieces on the island's rocks.
▪ The Times did a nice piece on the illegal gambling.
▪ The vase lay in pieces on the floor.
▪ There were pieces of broken glass all over the road.
▪ Tim cut the pie into eight pieces.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And indeed it was something very different - the bones of a human skeleton, a few pieces of clothing still on it.
▪ But finally Helen had crumpled her last piece of newspaper.
▪ Crude as Farley plays it, his endearing-blowfish persona is quite a piece of work.
▪ Harry wanted to take the little blonde piece and jive with her.
▪ If you want a piece, indicate by saying yes.
▪ Taking a page from the Netscape playbook, Microsoft is giving away key pieces of Internet software.
▪ The position of the piece of gravel would have made it virtually impossible for the fish to dislodge it.
▪ When a piece of quicklime was held in the tip of the flame it became white hot and glowed brilliantly.
II.verbCOLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
together
▪ He was like a man piecing together a long silent dream.
▪ The manager develops an understanding of his milieu by piecing together all the scraps of data he can find.
▪ Robert Foley is an anthropologist at Cambridge University who has tried to piece together the history of our social system.
▪ And that's 4 weeks cutting, shaping and piecing together in the workshop using techniques, both old fashioned and up to date.
▪ Equally questionable esthetically is the dashboard, which has a look of being pieced together from assorted parts.
▪ By piecing together the jigsaw fragments, I was able to recreate the chapter.
▪ Officials are still trying to piece together what happened before the fatal crash Sunday.
■ NOUN
information
▪ Some of it is valuable in itself, and some becomes valuable when it is pieced together with other information.
■ VERB
try
▪ They're still trying to piece together her last movements.
▪ Robert Foley is an anthropologist at Cambridge University who has tried to piece together the history of our social system.
▪ He finished up trying to piece together what happened.
▪ Chief Superintendent Louis Munn said police were still trying to piece together exactly what happened and establish a motive for the attack.
▪ Unable to locate her son, Mxolisi, Mandisa tries to piece together what has happened.
▪ Officials are still trying to piece together what happened before the fatal crash Sunday.
▪ Accident investigators have been at the scene this morning trying to piece together what happened.
▪ Urich has always been a likable actor, and he is sympathetic as a man trying to piece his life together.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a nasty piece of work
▪ Cyril and Wyatt had gone around together with that other boy, that Donald, who was a nasty piece of work.
▪ You'd best steer clear of him, Manderley, he's a nasty piece of work.
a piece/slice of the action
▪ A police station, so help me, is a piece of the action.
▪ His successors never again ran the town, as he did, but they always had a piece of the action.
▪ If you want a slice of the action tickets may still be available on.
▪ If you want to get a slice of the action book early - no kidding.
▪ Nation shall speak peace unto nation, and I shall grab a piece of the action.
▪ Or did evil Uncle Humbert destroy it, because under the law he would then get a piece of the action?
▪ So how do you get a slice of the action?
▪ Will foreign firms get a piece of the action?
be a piece of cake
▪ Creating graphs is a piece of cake on the computer.
▪ Getting tickets to the game will be a piece of cake.
▪ But there is no use pretending the Saturn-Pluto effect will be a piece of cake.
▪ My bone marrow was harvested a couple of weeks ago and the whole thing was a piece of cake.
▪ Normally, walking along tarmac is a piece of cake after the rocky excursion along a ridge.
▪ Should be a piece of cake.
▪ That was a piece of cake compared to finding a square mile without an ad.
▪ The one he was allocated, Parky, a homely, Hoomey-sized bay, was a piece of cake compared with Bones.
bits and pieces
▪ Do any of these bits and bobs belong to you?
▪ making a mosaic out of bits and pieces of tiles
▪ There are all sorts of bits and pieces in this box.
▪ For the next two decades he made a sort of living finding bits and pieces of editing and translation work.
▪ Having chosen the size of guttering, draw up a list of the various bits and pieces you need.
▪ He circled the house, looking in, and saw nothing but the bits and pieces of ordinary living.
▪ My eyes adjusted, and things became edges, corners, bits and pieces of what they were.
▪ Not a single one had listened to it or even heard bits and pieces on the news.
▪ Storing the furniture and the bits and pieces we didn't need immediately was a bit more difficult.
▪ The bits of information range from play dates with friends to the sometimes frightening bits and pieces of domestic violence.
▪ Why teach in bits and pieces a subject which is a whole?
how long is a piece of string?
piece of the puzzle
▪ All the pieces of the puzzle were in place: it was time for a little conference.
▪ But what about the piece of the puzzle we have so far omitted?
▪ Fortunately, the next step in the research process supplied the missing piece of the puzzle.
▪ How television has changed is one piece of the puzzle.
▪ It's another piece of the puzzle.
▪ So he created a temporary scaffolding to get one piece of the puzzle going.
▪ Take me out of there, and you're taking away a big piece of the puzzle.
▪ The final pieces of the puzzle had now been slotted into place.
slice/share/piece of the pie
▪ Smaller capitalist countries are maneuvering to gain a bigger share of the pie.
▪ That meant nearly one in five students was moderately to severely work-inhibited-a considerable slice of the pie.
▪ Virtually every academic institution, it seemed, wanted a piece of the pie.
the villain of the piece
▪ But to do so in this way was to make her appear the villain of the piece.
▪ But who is really the villain of the piece?
▪ Charles the Bald remained the villain of the piece.
▪ Nor do I regard the villains of the piece as the fighters themselves.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Accident investigators have been at the scene this morning trying to piece together what happened.
▪ He finished up trying to piece together what happened.
▪ He will not piece or parse.
▪ It took days, but finally they thought they had it pretty well pieced together.
▪ Organisations such as Gamblers Anonymous concern themselves with piecing together the casualties of addiction.
▪ Twenty-five years after Fernando's death, it was possible to piece together his skeleton in its entirety.