What does question mean

Crossword clues for question

question

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

question

I.noun

COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES

$64,000 question, the

▪ The $64,000 question is whether or not the rocket will take off safely.

a basic question

▪ The interviewer will ask you some basic questions about your education and work experience.

a crucial question

▪ She seemed to be trying to avoid the crucial question.

a fundamental question

▪ To reach a solution several fundamental questions need to be answered.

a key issue/question/point

▪ The environment became a key issue during the election.

a matter/point/question of honour (=something you feel you must do because of your moral beliefs)

▪ To my mum, paying bills on time is a point of honour.

a personal question

▪ That’s a rather personal question.

a reasonable question

▪ Here is one possible answer to that very reasonable question.

a test question

▪ Some of the test questions were really difficult.

address a problem/question/issue etc

▪ Our products address the needs of real users.

an essay question

▪ We practised essay questions from previous exam papers.

an exam question

▪ Read the exam questions carefully before writing your answers.

an examination question

▪ Read the examination questions carefully before writing your answers.

an interview question

▪ Some of the interview questions were quite difficult to answer.

an obvious question

▪ The obvious question is: why?

an open question

▪ The matter remains an open question.

answered...question

▪ He still hadn’t answered my question.

awkward questions

▪ I hoped he would stop asking awkward questions.

deal with an issue/matter/question

▪ New laws were introduced to deal with the issue.

detained...for questioning

▪ Two suspects have been detained by the police for questioning.

discuss the question/subject

▪ We’d never discussed the question of having children.

dodge an issue/question

▪ Senator O'Brian skilfully dodged the crucial question.

ducked...question

▪ Glazer ducked a question about his involvement in the bank scandal.

embarrassing questions

▪ She asked a lot of embarrassing questions.

ethical issues/questions/problems

▪ The use of animals in scientific tests raises difficult ethical questions.

evaded...question

▪ The minister evaded the question.

fielded questions

▪ The Minister fielded questions on the Middle East.

hypothetical situation/example/question

▪ Brennan brought up a hypothetical case to make his point.

pertinent questions

▪ He asked me a lot of very pertinent questions.

put a question (to sb)

▪ I will be putting that very question to her.

question a witness

▪ They were not permitted to question government witnesses.

question mark

▪ A big question mark hangs over the company’s future.

question master

question tag

question the merits of sth (=not be sure if something is a good idea)

▪ People began to question the merits of nuclear energy.

question/doubt the wisdom of (doing) sth

▪ Local people are questioning the wisdom of spending so much money on a new road.

question/interrogate/interview a suspect

▪ Police confirmed that six suspects are being questioned.

questions remain unanswered

▪ Many other questions remain unanswered.

question/suspect sb’s motive (=think that someone might have selfish or dishonest reasons for doing something)

▪ They began to question the motives of the people who held positions of power.

raised...question

▪ Betty raised the important question of who will be in charge.

reopen a case/question/debate etc

▪ attempts to reopen the issue of the power station’s future

rephrase...question

▪ OK. Let me rephrase the question.

resolve an issue/matter/question

▪ Has the issue been resolved yet?

sarcastic remark/comment/question

▪ He can’t help making sarcastic comments.

searching questions/investigation/examination etc

▪ Interviewees need to be ready for some searching questions.

settle a question/matter

▪ It is the area of pricing which may settle the question of which to buy.

solve a question

▪ Did they really think the Jerusalem question would be solved in a week?

stupid idea/question

▪ Whose stupid idea was this?

tackle a problem/issue/question

▪ The government has failed to tackle the problem of youth crime.

tag question

taken in for questioning

▪ All five teenagers were arrested and taken in for questioning.

the police question/interview sb

▪ Police are questioning two men about the deaths.

the question of how

▪ This still leaves the question of how local services should be funded.

tough questions

▪ The reporters were asking a lot of tough questions.

undergo questioning/interrogation (=answer questions from the police)

▪ Mrs White underwent 20 hours of questioning, and admitted nothing.

venture an opinion/question/word etc

▪ If we had more information, it would be easier to venture a firm opinion.

▪ Roy ventured a tentative smile.

COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS

■ ADJECTIVE

awkward

▪ Don't be afraid to ask awkward questions.

▪ Missile defence has a political momentum that makes a supposedly awkward question such as whether it really works pale almost into irrelevance.

▪ Overfamiliarity at this stage also makes asking awkward questions more difficult.

▪ The extra thirty days for a successful crossing raised some awkward questions.

▪ But the Basle convention fails to offer a watertight answer to the awkward question: which waste is hazardous?

▪ To have assumed otherwise would have been to raise a number of awkward questions.

▪ He's asking awkward questions, he's probably a spy.

▪ Start thinking Both sides spare themselves awkward questions that badly need to be answered.

big

▪ Ready for action A big question mark hangs over the wisdom of visiting any Arab state at present, writes Mike Harper.

▪ Still, the movie fails to answer the big pirate question: Why are fictional pirates always burying their treasure?

▪ The big question isn't so much how it happened as why?

▪ The big question is just how is it all going to work.

▪ The big question is: Will Dessie wear cycle shorts?

▪ Well, law seemed the broadest umbrella for looking at those big questions.

▪ Many of these leave a very big question mark as to their eternal significance.

▪ The big question is whether other cable companies will follow pioneers such as Comcast.

difficult

▪ The second is the more difficult question.

▪ I prefaced it by saying that these were difficult questions which he was at liberty not to answer.

▪ Redundancies arising from a reduction in work present more difficult questions.

▪ Practice interviewing with a friend who will ask you difficult questions.

▪ This is a difficult question but in practice few spreadsheets need more than 1 or 2 MBytes of expanded memory.

▪ Solicitors therefore take counsel's opinion on difficult or technical questions of law or procedure.

▪ The more difficult question is how long he can continue as a one-man movement.

▪ He then turned to the difficult question as to whether land is capable of passing by donatio mortis causa.

important

▪ Finally, there is the important question of inflation.

▪ This leaves one important question: How does the Republican nominee get more of the black and minority vote?

▪ In addition, there are important questions of interpretation to consider.

▪ It is an important question, because it accounts for the detachment with which disasters were viewed at Salomon.

▪ But this is where important questions are raised concerning the police in society.

▪ Sometimes we can only raise important questions, not answer them.

▪ This raises an important question: with what type of poem, what genre, are we faced here?

▪ The matter of where the real values lie seems to me to be the final important question of this book.

key

▪ Fluoride can be harmful; the key question is, at what concentrations does it become toxic in the body?

▪ The key question is, of course, how much inequality can government prevent before the too-much limit is reached.

▪ The key question is how flexibility will be applied in sensitive areas such as foreign policy.

▪ The key question has become how information is organized, who has access to it, and why.

▪ Constantly ask yourself what key questions reading this book is going to help to answer.

▪ It will ensure that these key questions are relevant.

▪ A key question concerns the types of social contact that may be associated with a high risk of transmission of P cepacia.

▪ A key question is whether firms should be able to decide which regulatory body to join.

obvious

▪ An obvious question is the nature of the morphogen.

▪ The obvious question is how long the present authoritative regime will be able to resist the pressures.

▪ The obvious question is: Why?

▪ The obvious question to ask would be: why do mice give birth to mice and elephants to elephants?

▪ Nurture Researchers probing the environmental side of the alcoholism coin begin with the obvious question: Why do people drink?

▪ The next obvious question concerns the reasonableness of such a range of conditions.

▪ Which raises an obvious question: Why do humans have such a powerful urge to consume this poison?

unanswered

▪ All this, while the field is festooned with unanswered question marks!

▪ The space between them was filling up with unasked and unanswered questions.

▪ Future chroniclers may, indeed, describe the 1996 confrontation as the campaign of unanswered questions.

▪ These unanswered questions serve to highlight the practicalities which prescriptions of this kind ignore.

▪ Please do not hesitate to make contact with me in the event that this letter leaves unanswered any questions you might have.

▪ But it left some unanswered questions.

■ NOUN

mark

▪ Then there are notes and figures relating to the library with a lot of question marks.

▪ Light brown jacket, question mark shirt, without a hat.

▪ They grew up in the Depression, when the certainty of a meal was a question mark.

▪ One of the keys dispensed with was the question mark.

▪ Most people stick with basic punctuation marks: commas, periods, and question marks when appropriate.

▪ All the mirrors grew convex, she fingered the globe in its pregnant question mark.

■ VERB

address

▪ However, such historical studies as do address this question indicate that all members do not benefit equally.

▪ It addresses such questions as: Can a teacher who ridicules students be found guilty of slander?

▪ This symposium will address the question of effects of chemical substances on reproductive systems to both females and males.

▪ And because sperm now can be extracted after death, doctors must address the ethical questions raised by the lack of permission.

▪ The majority of the sample did address the question about time off work.

▪ Developers of organizational electronic commerce applications must address these questions if they are to be successful.

▪ That is, he addresses the question of the state.

▪ In coming toward the end of our book, we must address the question that is the title of this chapter.

answer

▪ Miss Menzies couldn't be very helpful about the Datsun, though she answered all his questions very readily.

▪ Go to the previews that have the items on display and talk to the specialists who are on hand to answer questions.

▪ In any case she didn't answer my question.

▪ All of a sudden his cooperation ceased, and he refused to answer any further questions.

▪ Shortly after, however, he was seen out on the campaign trail, but refused to answer any questions.

▪ But nobody could answer the questions.

▪ Civil servants are also instructed not to answer questions about their own part in the conduct of business.

▪ Two of those people were then able to bring their score up to nineteen and one managed to answer all twenty questions.

ask

▪ Why waste everyone's time asking questions which need not be asked when the information is already there?

▪ They asked my mom questions, and then they gave me a chance to say something after all the stuff was done.

▪ Endill would ask Mr Litmus question after question and he was the only teacher who did not mind answering.

▪ As we finish, the woman asks an-other question.

▪ Don't ask questions or ask closed questions.

▪ Even if you win, you lose. 9. Ask questions.

▪ Let the hon. Gentleman ask his question - but briefly please.

▪ Bob asks the questions then explains how the youngsters maintain his enthusiasm.

beg

▪ Plenty of helices are not so stick-like, and of course the argument begs the question of how, rather than why.

▪ But that begs the real question: Who is Speedo Man?

▪ For they beg the questions they ask by simply assuming the truth of individualism.

▪ To say that sexuality exists in the brain simply begs the question.

▪ But Maria's presence actually begs a question since it's the sole moment when a startling presence swoops out of the mix.

▪ It begs the question of what pictures will be sacrificed in order to track Sanders.

▪ But, it also begs some questions.

▪ It is begging the question just to ask it.

pose

▪ None the less, he had clearly purported to pose the question of whether a caution was required, but had not answered it.

▪ He survived the surgery, and I cautiously began to pose questions.

▪ The segregation of school pupils who have disabilities or learning difficulties poses this question immediately.

▪ Simply put, eVote lets people pose questions and conduct votes using e-mail.

▪ Yet nostalgia movies pose a curious question of cinema sociology: what precisely will their posterity be?

▪ Fortunately, some scientists saw them as posing tractable scientific questions and offering new insights.

▪ Even to pose such questions reminds us that there was a large element of chance in the emergence of Mrs Thatcher.

▪ The month before, they had an opportunity to pose some questions to a pediatrician.

put

▪ I think it unlikely that there is any further evidence which would put the question beyond doubt.

▪ He let him approach and drink of the black blood, then put his question to him.

▪ The right hon. Member has a right to put his question.

▪ It was accounted great discourtesy to put any question to a guest before his wants had been satisfied.

▪ There was one man who soon put that out of the question.

▪ And I saw another man with a wheel on his head and put a question to him.

▪ I want to put a specific question to the Minister.

▪ The House is considering whether to put to voters the question of whether slots should be legal.

raise

▪ This raises the question as to whether the genuineness of the Church should be judged by its effectiveness in achieving growth.

▪ The succession also raises immediate questions about the qualifications of Westin, who has no news background.

▪ In effect this raises the question, to whom is the duty of fairness owed?

▪ I raised the question of my own existence.

▪ Shawcross raises these questions within the context of disaster relief but they have a broader setting.

▪ The kind of dependence that marriage creates between adult spouses raises substantive questions of status and power.

▪ This raises the question of whether it is necessary to represent objects at the single cell level.

▪ This raises the question, did the plumes cause the Pangaean crust to fracture?

resolve

▪ Although I can not give a date, we intend to proceed just as soon as we can resolve the question of the contract.

▪ They subsequently found it difficult to talk about organization structure without first resolving questions of strategy.

▪ There have been book-length studies devoted to trying to resolve the question of Doctor Faustus's text.

▪ Gorbachev wrote that only he and Reagan, talking together, could resolve the questions he raised.

▪ Consider the origin of both of these sources, and comment on their value in resolving this question. 13.

▪ Would starting my own business help me resolve these questions? 5.

▪ There is no obvious way of resolving the question of crowd composition.

▪ Flores, to resolve the question.

PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES

(that's a) good idea/point/question

a loaded question

a moot point/question

▪ It's a moot point whether this is censorship.

▪ It is a moot point whether hierarchies exist outside our own thought processes.

▪ Quite how long Lord Young was proposing to delay publication is a moot point.

▪ This, of course, is a moot point.

▪ When you go to a place called Texas Bone, deciding what to order becomes a moot point.

▪ Whether the law should be this is a moot point.

▪ Whether they have appeared as part of the C. and A.G.'s audit is a moot point.

▪ Whether this input has made a significant impact on the pattern of activity is a moot point.

a pointed question/look/remark

▪ As he left the office he locked it behind him, with a pointed look at Bob.

a thorny question/problem/issue etc

▪ In addition, sending encrypted data over international boundaries represents a thorny issue: it is still illegal in some countries.

▪ Melding the top managements also would be a thorny issue.

▪ None of these struck me as particularly penetrating answers to a thorny problem.

a trick question

be open to question/doubt

▪ The authenticity of the relics is open to doubt.

▪ Their motives are open to question.

▪ But whether Republicans want to cooperate is open to question.

▪ Even if, as is open to question, screen violence really does invite emulation, that is the wrong approach.

▪ In particular, the significance of the small number who say their work has been deskilled is open to question.

▪ It also is open to question how well equipped courts are to make this kind of determination-about the workings of economic markets.

▪ The entire business of basing regulations on animal tests is open to question.

▪ The President acceded to the Chancellor's request for two reasons, both of which were open to question.

▪ Whether the yeast could ever be as abundant as this is open to question.

▪ Whether this kind of Labour Party is capable of winning a general election is open to doubt.

beg the question

▪ All this begs the question about the reliability of Mr Dole's gut.

▪ It begs the question of what pictures will be sacrificed in order to track Sanders.

▪ It is begging the question just to ask it.

▪ Plenty of helices are not so stick-like, and of course the argument begs the question of how, rather than why.

▪ Such measures, of course, beg the question in many ways.

▪ To say that seems to me really to beg the question.

▪ To say that sexuality exists in the brain simply begs the question.

▪ Which rather begs the question-shouldn't there be a governing body that regulates such questionable decisions?

broach the subject/question/matter etc

▪ But what was still troubling her was the fact that she had still not broached the subject of Janice.

▪ He broached the matter carefully while Marshall put a match to some logs in the grate.

▪ I never broached the subject with him again.

▪ It was half a year, he thought, since she had last broached the subject of his bachelor status.

▪ It was nine o'clock and they had been driven in by the mosquitoes before he broached the subject of the night before.

▪ Now, popular magazines regularly broach the subject.

▪ Popular magazines now broach the subject of mental illness, while the government is encouraging research into mental health.

▪ When, two months later, Father van Exem broached the subject, the Archbishop was actually quite upset about the idea.

burning issue/question

▪ Another burning issue is unfair dismissal.

▪ But the burning question is: How many times a day do kids wander in looking to buy rolling papers?

▪ It can also lead to the efficacy of our advice becoming the burning issue of discussion.

▪ Quality, of design and typography rather than editorial matter, is a burning issue as far as desktop publishing is concerned.

▪ The burning question is - how soon?

▪ The star trek is over for today, but the burning questions are still unanswered.

▪ Transmission has always been the burning issue for scientists interested in studying this epidemic.

call (sth) into question

▪ And while the injunctions are subject to unwitting acceptance, it is impossible to call them into question.

▪ Nothing that has happened since has called that judgment into question.

fire questions at sb

▪ The Professor had finished, and Ace and Daak were firing questions at her.

▪ The young man took the seat behind the cold metal desk and began to fire questions at me.

it's (only/just) a matter/question of time

▪ But they believe it's only a matter of time before the disease crosses the county boundary.

▪ If he hasn't already killed somebody, then it's only a matter of time.

▪ They think it's only a matter of time before he breaks.

leading question

▪ All right, I won't ask leading questions.

▪ For example, a leading question may take the respondent outside the bounds of the context of everyday life.

▪ In answer to a leading question about the temperature Of the room, he reflected that it had been cold and draughty.

▪ It makes me worry, all those leading questions with hidden assumptions that detectives like to ask suspects.

▪ Never did she ask leading questions or provide suggestions.

▪ To arrive there the counsellor has to stop talking, and in order to stop talking, answerable and leading questions are required.

pepper sb with questions

▪ At every stop, reporters peppered her with questions.

▪ As the doctor tends the grandfather, the young man peppers him with questions.

▪ Later, students peppered King with questions.

▪ The justices peppered the attorneys with questions.

ply sb with questions

▪ She had been there before and was very tolerant of the young man plying her with questions.

▪ Ungerer spent a long time plying them with questions.

pop the question

▪ Jane was delighted when Matt eventually popped the question.

▪ When are you going to pop the question?

▪ Boy goes back on radio and pops the question.

▪ He put a ladder up to her office window to pop the question as she sat at her desk.

▪ Meanwhile, his girlfriend of 17 years, Jenette, was delighted when Brian popped the question.

pose a question

▪ The magazine posed a list of questions to each of the candidates.

▪ He survived the surgery, and I cautiously began to pose questions.

▪ In their minds, buying a gown poses questions more complicated than chiffon or lace.

▪ It is open to the House to ask for reports, and it can pose questions at any time.

▪ Olajuwon stopped by to visit and pose a question: Could Pond help him get to college in the United States?

▪ Simply put, eVote lets people pose questions and conduct votes using e-mail.

▪ That poses a question about their very nature.

▪ Yet these two enemies are also enemies of each other, which poses a question.

pursue the matter/argument/question etc

▪ Anxious to avoid further difficulty, Harriet did not pursue the matter.

▪ I regret that they were unable to pursue the matter any further.

▪ If you feel upset by an apparent unfairness, pursue the matter through the grievance procedure.

▪ It is capable of extension, but we shall not pursue the matter here.

▪ She wouldn't put it past him but in the brilliant afternoon heat she wasn't inclined to pursue the matter.

▪ There was no need to pursue the matter any further prior to arrest.

rhetorical question

▪ A rhetorical question, but asked with deep feeling.

▪ But rhetorical questions can be over-used, especially where answers to the questions do not follow immediately.

▪ Consider these two rhetorical questions, from an essay on Othello: Does this tell us about Shakespeare?

▪ His critics even smile in anticipation of a rhetorical question meeting with a devastating reply.

▪ That is not a rhetorical question.

▪ The rhetorical question rightly goes unanswered, and the following paragraph consigns the missio unmourned to the shades.

▪ The two extremes can be expressed in the form of two rhetorical questions.

▪ These and other rhetorical questions are asked in a spirit of humility with no stones clutched, hidden in the hand.

shoot questions at sb

▪ The prosecutor shot a series of rapid questions at Hendrickson.

sidestep a problem/issue/question

▪ But she sidesteps a question about her priorities in a time of limited funding.

stock excuse/question/remark etc

table a proposal/question/motion etc

▪ Baldwin tabled proposals which involved payments of £34 million a year.

▪ Even our own wets will summon up the courage to table a question or two.

▪ He has tabled a question on the issue for tomorrow's council meeting.

▪ If the hon. Gentleman wants to table a question or write to me, I shall be glad to enlarge upon that.

▪ The move came after a vote by regents indefinitely tabling a motion to rescind their July 20 vote revising admissions policies.

▪ The Umpires' Association had planned to table a motion giving an official vote of support for Lamb.

the larger issues/question/problem/picture

▪ But the larger picture is systematically distorted by the military and political calculations concerning the strategic uses of information and disinformation.

▪ Here we are concerned with the larger problem of the relationship between men as a class and other animals as a class.

▪ It has come to have a bearing on the larger questions of civilized survival.

▪ Mission-driven budgets relieve legislators of micromanagement decisions, freeing them to focus on the larger problems they were elected to solve.

▪ She was blind to the larger picture that involves building and maintaining good relationships with both fellow-workers and superiors.

▪ That ignorance is at the root of geophysicists' struggle with the larger problem of how the whole earth works.

▪ Too much, and the larger picture might become apparent.

▪ You failed to connect the various elements together or to move through the detail to the larger issues of the painting.

there is a question mark over sth/a question mark hangs over sth

throw a question/remark etc (at sb)

▪ One day, as she was scolding me, I suddenly threw a question at her.

▪ Sally arranged herself on his other side and they walked him away, throwing questions at him.

▪ These disparities throw a question mark over the accuracy of social costs data.

touchy subject/question etc

▪ He also knew the answers to some touchy questions.

▪ Morris's lasting influence is a touchy subject at the White House.

▪ You know money is a touchy subject with me.

vexed question/issue/problem etc

▪ A paradigm example of this is the vexed question of spatial visualisation.

▪ And there is another vexed question.

▪ I shall not turn to the vexed question of the national minimum wage.

▪ Potentially an even bigger bombshell is about to burst on the vexed question of pension rights.

▪ The vexed question has always been: Who should write the programs which control these machines?

▪ Then there is the vexed issue of paying for tax cuts.

▪ Until recently what was on the child's school record and whether parent or child could see it was a vexed question.

▪ Was the vexed question of extradition discussed at the Council?

EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES

▪ Does anyone have any further questions?

▪ Eventually his questioners realized he was not the man they wanted and let him go.

▪ How can we best help less developed countries? That's the really important question.

▪ I hate it when strangers ask me questions about my private life.

▪ In the 1980s the question of whether photography was an art went to court.

▪ Jim Lehrer was the only questioner of the candidates in the debate.

▪ Mr Hayes is being kept at Newham police station for questioning.

▪ Several questions had still not been resolved.

▪ That's a very difficult question to answer.

▪ The lawyer's questioning of the witness did not go on as long as expected.

▪ The real question here is how can we integrate asylum seekers into communities.

▪ There were several questions Melanie wanted to ask the interviewer.

▪ These operations can save lives, but they raise difficult questions about animal rights.

EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS

▪ Are you getting paid to ask questions or unload trucks?

▪ Beyond the question of weight loss, olestra raises some messy health issues.

▪ Gorbachev wrote that only he and Reagan, talking together, could resolve the questions he raised.

▪ It is all a question of time.

▪ Last fall, questions were raised about the purchase of a $ 9. 2 million worth of fencing.

▪ One more question you might ask yourself is: Is it Worth the Fight?

▪ Recent literature on public opinion has managed to shed fascinating new light on that age-old question.

▪ She answered the questions in her interrogation with perfect candour, but her answers had the effect of crystallising her basic thinking.

II.verb

COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS

■ ADVERB

why

▪ This leads Ponyboy to question why he and his friends' attack people.

▪ By election day, many observers will question why Bill Clinton and Bob Dole were nominated and why they are running.

▪ From these you can begin questioning why you are spending so much time on certain activities and less on others.

▪ She never questioned why she was working so hard.

▪ At school and university people are encouraged to question why things must be done, rather than accept orders passively.

▪ Some days it makes me question why I went to jail.

▪ The report will question why medical staff working with him did not blow the whistle on his activities.

■ NOUN

assumption

▪ One must also question the assumption that single-discipline degrees are themselves immaculately unified.

▪ Because we are still questioning the assumptions, there are no theories.

▪ And she knew she was annoying them whenever she questioned their assumptions.

▪ Odilon Redon questioned the universal assumption that the photographic image was a transmitter of truth.

▪ Reworking her rich and cultural history to question Western attitudes and assumptions.

▪ The Regional Council also questioned the assumptions on costs in the Government's paper.

▪ There is therefore a need to question this assumption that aggression is a given element which somehow has to be accounted for.

▪ There are at least two reasons to question the assumptions underlying such notions.

decision

▪ He expected her to leave the company without questioning his decision, but he was wrong.

▪ Indeed, many of their old peers questioned their decision to become managers.

▪ He was questioned about the decision not to build a lift at Watford but instead to renew the narrow locks.

▪ The estimated 75,000 people who remain are questioning their decision to stay.

▪ This means primary care needs to continue to develop its own capacity to question the decisions that are being taken.

▪ The journey is going to be hard enough without you questioning every decision I make.

▪ This allows you to question decisions and have your case heard by another senior manager.

▪ He has to question every decision.

motive

▪ Lawyers and supporters of the parents in Orkney questioned both the motives and the methods of this once trusted organisation.

▪ Others question corporate motives and wonder how much we want businesses involved in the schools.

▪ Your Miss MacQuillan says she questions my motives and emphatically will not encourage me to identify her father's killer.

▪ What has happened in the last decade to make anyone question his motives?

▪ He predicted that devolution would be divisive and questioned the very motives behind the policy.

police

▪ The police questioned policy-wheel operators, gamblers, and hoodlums of all kinds.

▪ He reportedly told police who questioned him after the school attack that he had taken an overdose of tranquilizers.

▪ I only know this, because a police inspector questioned me about it in Venice just a few weeks ago.

▪ Last night police were still questioning the other three men and one woman who were arrested at the site.

▪ Three suspects were taken into custody and police were questioning them Friday morning.

validity

▪ However, no one today would question the validity of these groups.

▪ In this moment of excitement, there is no time to question the validity of these presences.

▪ Yet, as education began to spread, women all over questioned its usefulness and validity.

▪ They have taught their employees never to question its validity.

▪ This doctrine means that a person can not question the validity of a piece of legislation through the courts.

▪ I question the usefulness and validity of this explanation.

value

▪ They are not questioning the potential value of, in this context, high-quality environmental information perse.

▪ No one questions the value or the wisdom of these arrangements.

▪ The people of the world's second-largest economy are questioning the values and ramifications of overheated capitalism.

▪ If competition saves money only by skimping on wages or benefits, for instance, governments should question its value.

▪ Some might even question the value of discussing his work at all.

▪ As recently as 1991 at least one authority still questioned the value of routine measurement of blood pressure under 35.

▪ Am I alone, though, in questioning the value of the poppers on the bellows side pockets?

wisdom

▪ The reader might question the wisdom of leaving oil prices to be determined by purely market forces.

▪ At least one money manager who focuses on emerging markets questions the wisdom of that approach.

▪ Some teachers have questioned the wisdom of supplying tape machines at all for the computer.

▪ In fact, it terrified him, and it made him question the wisdom of getting involved with Gabby.

▪ They question conventional wisdom, they ask awkward questions, they do not speak the jargon.

▪ And he even questioned the wisdom of having such a thing as a World Cup.

■ VERB

detain

▪ Any Negro seen on the streets was detained and questioned.

▪ The captain was detained for questioning.

▪ The Trabant driver was being detained and questioned, as were a dozen onlookers.

lead

▪ This leads Ponyboy to question why he and his friends' attack people.

▪ A study of the tasks that need doing may lead you to question whether there is a vacancy.

▪ This leads me to question the completely illusory quality of such identifications.

▪ The shock of seeing these living fossils of Xinjiang first led him to question their authenticity.

▪ Free inquiry within the liberation movements, then, led to a deep questioning of problematic assumptions in the modern political worldview.

▪ Marcia Pointon's fascinating essay on the contemporary portrait leads us to question the central relationship between artist, sitter and spectator.

▪ Two recent incidents have led me to question my responses in a job that I continue to enjoy and do well.