I.nounCOLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a sense of proportion (=the ability to judge how important or unimportant something is)
▪ It’s important to keep a sense of proportion.
assume...proportions
▪ The problem is beginning to assume massive proportions.
epidemic proportions
▪ Violent crime is reaching epidemic proportions in some cities.
high proportion/percentage etc (of sth) (=a very large part of a number)
▪ A high proportion of women with children under five work full-time.
in inverse proportion to
▪ Clearly, the amount of money people save increases in inverse proportion to the amount they spend.
lose all sense of time/direction/proportion etc
▪ When he was writing, he lost all sense of time.
of epic proportions
▪ He had produced a meal of epic proportions.
sizeable proportion/portion/minority (of sth)
▪ Part-time students make up a sizeable proportion of the college population.
smaller proportion
▪ A much smaller proportion of women are employed in senior positions.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
considerable
▪ At this juncture it should be noted that a considerable proportion of international lending does take this latter form.
▪ A considerable proportion of parenting is in the mundane details that women are raised to manage.
▪ Furthermore diarrhoea or weight loss were absent in a considerable proportion of infected patients.
▪ That could pose a problem of considerable proportions, especially in three-dimensional space.
▪ Rural areas supplied not only agricultural products but also a considerable proportion of manufacturing output.
▪ Nevertheless for the foreseeable future a considerable proportion of elderly people will require care at specific periods of their lives.
▪ The resulting slump left a considerable proportion of productive capacity idle.
▪ Thus a considerable proportion both of paintings and drawings has recently been widely seen.
direct
▪ Could it be that Europeanism is in direct proportion to dissatisfaction with one's own political institutions?
▪ And as the country got wilder, the population grew thinner and loveliness increased in direct proportion to danger.
▪ The value of higher education, on this view, is in direct proportion to the critical capacities of its graduates.
▪ This indicates that ferritin is released into the serum normally in direct proportion to the amount stored in tissues.
▪ Latin temperaments rose in exasperation in direct proportion to their owners' frustration.
▪ As one grows the other grows in direct proportion.
▪ A spinning cylinder generates lift in direct proportion to the acceleration it imparts on the air streaming by.
▪ Faith's value, some even suggest, grows in direct proportion to its lack of a rational basis.
epic
▪ The prints in the accompanying exhibition were also of epic proportion - some five feet by four and even larger.
▪ For a team that ranks in the bottom third in caring for the ball, this was a triumph of epic proportions.
▪ Their forced retreat, with a rope too short to reach the ground, took on epic proportions.
▪ Here we have a co-production of mini-series ambitions, but without the necessary budget or pomposity to puff out to epic proportions.
epidemic
▪ Shoplifting has reached epidemic proportions and this gave rise to a lively discussion.
▪ The assertion that this has reached epidemic proportions can not be challenged.
▪ By A.D. 54-5, militant activity had again assumed epidemic proportions.
▪ Worldwide sin is at epidemic proportions.
great
▪ By far the greatest proportion of those joining the new congregations were Presbyterians and they were mostly from rural areas.
▪ Such survivors, after all, form by far the greatest proportion of patients with coronary disease.
▪ We will continue to extend City Challenge and allocate a greater proportion of resources by competitive bidding.
▪ The change was due to the greater proportion of patients with colonic disease, which in this study had a worse prognosis.
▪ In other words, does the expansion of highly distinctive words result in a greater proportion of useful information?
▪ It will become increasingly important for farmers to obtain a greater proportion of their income from the market.
▪ For example, I share a greater proportion of my genes with my sister than I do with my cousin.
▪ The more the company finances by means of debt, the greater the proportion of future profits which are committed to interest payments.
high
▪ Administrative changes during the late nineteenth century should have resulted in a higher proportion of cases being reported.
▪ On the other hand, Mycoplasma infection was found in an abnormally high proportion of people with the syndrome.
▪ Only Torbay, with its high proportion of elderly and retired persons in owner-occupied accommodation, is more poorly provided.
▪ Scores approaching 200 therefore represent a high proportion of very non-standard realizations.
▪ This was often the case with the aged who made up a high proportion of workhouse residents.
▪ In the first place, there is a higher proportion of owner occupation and private furnished renting.
▪ Britain has one of the highest proportions of one parent families.
▪ Certain journals contain abnormally or unexpectedly high proportions of classic references, and hence need longer storage.
increasing
▪ The financial constraints on wives are also not so serious, as an increasing proportion of married women are in full-time work.
▪ They merely pave the way for an increasing proportion of those emissions to come from the burning of imported coal.
▪ An increasing proportion of the early potato crop is grown under polythene sheeting.
▪ In addition there has been an increasing proportion of companies concerned with distribution, and with larger retail unit operations.
▪ As a result, families represent an increasing proportion of households with the lowest standards of living.
▪ In effect, landlords have clawed back for themselves an increasing proportion of rate relief on premises within enterprise zones.
▪ An increasing proportion of these services will be provided by local communities on a fee-paying basis.
▪ An increasing proportion of the latter occupations seek to live beyond the cities and to commute back to them.
inverse
▪ The scope of personal responsibility expands and contracts in inverse proportion to the extent of the protected interests.
▪ When this is not the case, benefit allocations are in inverse proportion to A's and B's.
▪ The stridency of their assertions tended to grow in inverse proportion to the extent of their knowledge on costs.
▪ The proliferation of these diminutive shows will soon be in inverse proportion to the theatres still open to receive them.
large
▪ The lives of a large proportion of the world's population are nasty, brutish and short.
▪ Her head was rather large in proportion to the rest of the thin figure.
▪ A large proportion of the new interest came from young people.
▪ Moreover, a small number of diseases command a large proportion of the limited resources.
▪ If one looks to sources other than the canonical scriptures, Thomas's role assumes larger proportions.
▪ Rotterdam handles by far the largest proportion of that.
▪ When drawing children, your will find that the head takes up a much larger proportion of the height.
▪ The second largest proportion comprise married couples with no children, then married couples with independent children.
low
▪ At lower levels the proportion of wealth belonging to each group was smaller in Coventry.
▪ The lowest proportion revealed to have the virus in their blood was 44%, the highest 72%.
▪ Manufacturing industry has declined, whilst service industries, which employ a lower proportion of manual workers, have expanded.
▪ A lower proportion of their clients receive one of the three main services for which they were referred.
▪ Salary - a low proportion identified this as a source of dissatisfaction.
▪ No women voted at all, which mainly accounts for the low proportion.
▪ The low proportion with an acquittal outcome probably reflects that the vast majority of these cases involve a guilty plea.
▪ London, Edinburgh and Birmingham have produced the lowest proportions of such under-utilised research.
manageable
▪ Now you've narrowed the choice down to more manageable proportions, it's time for the specialist retailer and test fitting.
▪ For its first 900 years Cairo was a city of manageable proportions.
▪ Again the problem is to winnow these down to manageable proportions.
▪ In charting development within the group two samples of boys have been used to reduce the task to manageable proportions.
▪ It is not simply that Spiegelman reduces unimaginable statistics and intolerable realities to concrete and manageable proportions.
▪ The price of keeping the bonus down to manageable proportions is a somewhat less efficient outcome.
▪ It was adjacent to Saint Cloud, but it was of manageable proportions and it had great romantic charm.
relative
▪ The attention paid to physical distribution is related to the relative proportion of distribution costs in total costs.
▪ The number of working-class children also rose, but the relative proportions remained approximately the same.
▪ We have some understanding of the relative proportions of the different ecological types.
▪ One is wet sieved as above, and both the mud and sand fractions dried and weighed to establish their relative proportions.
▪ They illustrate the principle of allometry; that an animal's relative proportions may change as it increases in size.
▪ Hence there is less routine manual work to do and the relative proportion of white-collar workers within factories rises.
▪ A mollusc past the initial stages of growth increases in size without significantly changing the orientation and relative proportions of its organs.
▪ Their compositions remain constant but the relative proportions of each change.
significant
▪ They also do receive a significant proportion of their income from the sale of goods and services rather than from taxes.
▪ Political cultures to refer to those in which there are significant proportions of both the simpler and more complex patterns of orientations.
▪ It follows that a significant proportion of the annual grass crop must be preserved for winter feeding.
▪ By failing to provide stories for a significant proportion of the population, are they not digging themselves a grave?
▪ Nevertheless, it would seem that this was not considered to be a significant proportion.
▪ Conversely, a significant proportion of the companies operating in this country are off-shoots of enterprises whose head offices are situated abroad.
▪ A significant proportion of the dolphin's brain is thought to be used in processing the information produced by the echolocation system.
▪ Even on small contracts, plant costs may account for a significant proportion of total costs.
similar
▪ These three factors each accounted for similar proportions of combined effect on average pay of around 15 percent.
▪ Belfast city council reduced rents in Smithfield market by a similar proportion.
▪ Strikers in the Staffordshire Senior League are currently facing a weighty problem of similar proportions.
▪ At that, time a similar proportion of Members of Parliament were female.
▪ Levels of digestion on the teeth from these two samples are similar, but proportions of teeth affected differ slightly.
▪ Assuming similar proportions even a study of 5000 patients would not have shown a significant difference between the two groups.
▪ Buckinghamshire would be expected to contribute a similar proportion to the relevant costs of the scheme.
sizeable
▪ A sizeable proportion of the episcopal appointments recorded by Gregory are quite clearly uncanonical.
▪ A sizeable proportion of these cases were suspected arson and were related to increased business failure because of high interest rates.
▪ A sizeable proportion of the population did not even listen to the speech.
▪ The Cabinet closed ranks behind him and a sizeable proportion of his back-benchers followed suit.
small
▪ This represents only a small proportion of the structure.
▪ Lone parents have much smaller proportions of household heads in the labour market than two parent families.
▪ Even so, as Table 4.1 shows, wholesale funding remains a comparatively small proportion of total liabilities.
▪ A very small proportion of its whole was active.
▪ Higher house prices mean lower rental yields because rent becomes a smaller proportion of the purchase price.
▪ Only a small proportion of those entitled are doing so.
▪ Although many patients are prescribed psychotropic medication, only a small proportion of these will go on to take an overdose.
▪ Women hold a very small proportion of other public offices.
substantial
▪ For example, a substantial proportion of the road tax levied on vehicle owners goes towards paying for road maintenance and improvements.
▪ The Liberal Democrats and ourselves represent a substantial proportion of public opinion throughout the United Kingdom.
▪ Relatively few students reach secondary school, with a substantial proportion of these being in the Khartoum and Northern regions.
▪ The substantial proportion of Cabernet makes for a slightly more elegant wine, with a delicious combination of spice and blackcurrant fruit.
▪ A substantial proportion of time and effort was devoted to the study of a sample of six Major Project schools.
▪ A substantial proportion of the population, the refugees, had been dependent on international help since 1949.
▪ This was because a substantial proportion were very heavily dependent upon the state for their income.
▪ Unfortunately, a substantial proportion of modern mains transformers have either twin primary windings, or a tapped winding.
■ VERB
contain
▪ A source of silver much exploited in early times was lead sulphide, most notably galena, containing varying proportions of silver.
▪ Sandstone, a sedimentary rock and quartzite, a metamorphic rock, both contain a high proportion of quartz.
▪ Polyphosphates are sometimes referred to as builders and products containing high proportions as built detergents.
▪ For men the older age groups also contain the highest proportions of ex-regular smokers.
▪ The women's daily routines contain a far higher proportion of domestic interruptions than do those of the men.
▪ As a rule it contains varying proportions of base or less precious metals.
form
▪ This occurs for non-woody monocotyledons of low biomass, where leaves form a constant high proportion of the total biomass.
▪ Their short-term assets form a much smaller proportion of the total.
▪ In contrast, rental payments are likely to form a more constant proportion of current pay over the life cycle.
grow
▪ Their confidence grew into overwhelming proportions and in the opinion of many observers they swiftly became Manchester's tedious twosome.
▪ Meanwhile, the system itself had grown to Brobdingnagian proportions.
▪ On their wisdom the industry grew to undreamed of proportions.
▪ Karelin's streak and his story had grown to legendary proportions.
▪ The heap of lumber on my neighbour's veg patch grew to monstrous proportions.
▪ Everyone is an amateur in this world, except the growing proportion of electronic criminals.
▪ Representations of him grew more monstrous in proportion to the scale of the struggles he provoked.
▪ When an extended family is living together at close quarters, even minor irritations can grow out of all proportion.
include
▪ This group has a high doctor-patient contact rate but also includes a proportion of patients with unstable or brittle asthma.
▪ These early parties are nearly always found at Thorney Island and include a high proportion of adults in summer plumage.
▪ In particular it provided flexibility by including a significant proportion of short term placements.
▪ Membership of the Codex committees includes a high proportion of commercial interests, with little balancing representation from public interest groups.
▪ Thus the sample included a high proportion of people at the top end of the jobs hierarchy.
▪ The samples tested in this series may not include a high proportion of health care staff involved in invasive procedures.
▪ Thus a social security system that includes a significant proportion of means-testing is bound to be age discriminatory in its effects.
increase
▪ On the harder ADs and Difficiles, and increasing proportion of pitching will be necessary.
▪ Longer-range follow-ups at 3-8 years reflected increasing proportions of clients becoming total abstainers, and a consistent 10-outcomes.
▪ Aim to increase the proportion of carbohydrates in your diet rather than the sheer volume.
▪ The ability to process information increases in proportion to the number of layers in the network.
▪ As death rates have declined the proportion of elderly classed as married has increased while the proportion widowed has decreased.
▪ And as the country got wilder, the population grew thinner and loveliness increased in direct proportion to danger.
▪ But rewards increase out of proportion to price with the wines from named sites.
▪ For larger values of T -T u the layer thicknesses will increase in proportion.
pay
▪ Businesses pay a proportion of the rates, heating, lighting and costs.
▪ If by fair you mean that everyone pays the same proportion of his income in taxes, the flat tax comes closer.
▪ Most occupational schemes pay a proportion of your earnings when you retire and are called final earnings schemes.
▪ These students may attend one or more classes at the University, paying an appropriate proportion of the full annual fee.
▪ Income tax is a progressive tax because higher earners pay a higher proportion of their income in this tax than lower earners.
▪ Others will have to pay a proportion of the tax, and in London and Aberdeen that proportion could well be high.
▪ They also paid a substantial proportion of the increasingly heavy taxation the Elizabethan and Stuart campaigns on the Continent demanded.
▪ You would be paid a proportion of the amount stated in the Benefit Table.
spend
▪ The poorest Third World countries spend the largest proportions of their incomes on weapons.
▪ You have to spend some proportion of the fee there on the rock.
▪ These would spend a larger proportion of their incomes and so net savings would be reduced.
▪ Poorer households are known to spend a larger proportion of their income on essentials such as food and fuel for heating.
▪ In cities, poor families spend a much larger proportion on energy-often as much as 12-15 percent of their income.
▪ What do you spend the greatest proportion on?
▪ Teacher-pupil interaction Teachers spent a very high proportion of their time in class interacting with pupils.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
blow sth (up) out of (all) proportion
▪ This case has been blown totally out of proportion because of the media attention.
▪ The issue was blown far out of proportion.
mythic proportions
▪ a feat of mythic proportions
▪ By conflating childhood with mythic time - and does not the world possess mythic proportions when we are small?
▪ This is a feat of mythic proportions, comparable to extracting gold from sea water-or helium-3 from the lunar regolith.
of biblical proportions
on a heroic scale/of heroic proportions
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ A high proportion of the products tested were found to contain harmful chemicals.
▪ a program to increase the proportion of women and black people in the police service
▪ A significant proportion of the elderly are dependent on the basic state pension.
▪ Architects must learn about scale and proportion.
▪ Seventy-five percent of California's immigrants are foreign-born, and that proportion is likely to increase.
▪ The new jobs would largely be unskilled and a high proportion would be in inner city areas.
▪ The new law is intended to reduce the proportion of road accidents caused by drunk drivers.
▪ We get a small proportion of our funding from the government.
▪ What proportion of your income do you spend on food?
▪ What is the proportion of men to women in your office?
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Already the hyperbole was out of all proportion compared to the evidence.
▪ It will automatically calculate, for example, what proportion of your income goes on things like the car and household items.
▪ Ratios between two proportions are not, however, regularly used in analysing contingency tables.
▪ Severing the umbilical cord between landlords and peasants vastly increased the proportion of the population for which the centre was directly responsible.
▪ The most desirable proportion of height to length being 9 to 10.
▪ What proportion have neither one, nor both parents as members of the church?
▪ Yves Rocher Dynamic Corp Bio-Vegetal range includes gel, tonics and creams all with a high proportion of sea algae.
II.verbCOLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
perfectly
▪ She had perfectly proportioned features and perfectly proportioned hands and feet and small even teeth that flashed as she smiled.
▪ He was a tiny man, my size standing on a log, perfectly proportioned, except for one thing.
▪ They were so world-weary, scornful of everything that wasn't perfectly proportioned or that they hadn't thought of first.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
mythic proportions
▪ a feat of mythic proportions
▪ By conflating childhood with mythic time - and does not the world possess mythic proportions when we are small?
▪ This is a feat of mythic proportions, comparable to extracting gold from sea water-or helium-3 from the lunar regolith.
of biblical proportions
on a heroic scale/of heroic proportions
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ All storing is performed in the base port once a week with most meats being proportioned.
▪ Both are moved along at the same speed and in the same direction by the proportioning pump.
▪ It provides that such damages can be awarded as are proportioned to the injury resulting from the death to the dependants respectively.
▪ So long as he was solvent in law, he could not proportion his payments to creditors according to their respective debts.