Easy Learning English Vocabulary

HarperCollins Publishers

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First edition 2011

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EPUB Edition © November 2011 ISBN 978-0-00746132-5

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Editorial staff

Senior editors:

Penny Hands

Kate Wild Project management:

Lisa Sutherland Contributors:

Sandra Anderson

Katharine Coates

Kate Mohideen

Elspeth Summers For the publisher:

Lucy Cooper

Kerry Ferguson

Elaine Higgleton

Contents

Introduction

Guide to entries

Pronunciation guide

air travel

the animal world

art and photography

bikes

boats, water and the coast

body

business

cars and road travel

celebrations and ceremonies

clothes

college and university

colours

computers and the internet

cooking

countryside

employment

environment

feelings and personal qualities

food and drink

friends and family

fruit, nuts and vegetables

health

hotels

houses and homes

in the home

industry

jobs and careers

law

materials

maths

money

music

the office

personal items

plants, trees and gardens

reading and writing

routines

school

science

shopping

society and politics

sports

telephone, post and communications

television and radio

theatre and cinema

time

tools

towns and cities

trains

weather

geographical place names

irregular verbs

measurements

numbers/ordinal numbers

people of the world

times and dates

Index

introduction

Collins Easy Learning English Vocabulary is designed for anyone

who wants to broaden their knowledge of English words in key

everyday situations. Whether you need English at work, at

school or university, or for a holiday, Collins Easy Learning

English Vocabulary offers you the information you require in a

clear and accessible format.

This book is divided into 50 subject areas. These cover such

topics as ‘air travel’

,

‘business’

,

‘food and drink’ and ‘science’

,

arranged in alphabetical order. This arrangement by subject

area helps you to learn related words and phrases together. In

this way, you can always be sure of using the right word in the

right context.

Within each topic, vocabulary is divided into nouns, verbs,

adjectives, adverbs, phrases and idioms. Each word is defined

in relation to the topic in question. For example, in ‘air travel’

,

the meaning that is given for the word connection is:

‘a plane that leaves after another one arrives and allows you to

continue your journey by changing from one to the other’.

In ‘computers and the internet’

, on the other hand, connection is

defined in terms of its computer-related sense:

‘a link between a computer and a network’.

For each topic, there are plenty of authentic example sentences

from the Collins corpus. These show you how words and

phrases are used in real English.

At the end of the book, there are additional sections on place

names and people, numbers, measurements, times and dates.

There is also an alphabetical index, and a list of irregular verbs.

We hope that this book will help you to expand your

knowledge of English vocabulary in a wide range of situations.

For more information about Collins dictionaries, visit us at

www.collinslanguage.com.

guide to entries

Pronunciation guide

In this dictionary the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is

used to show how the words are pronounced. The symbols

used in the International Phonetic Alphabet are shown in the

table below.

IPA Symbols

Vowel sounds

aː calm, ah

æ act, mass

aɪ dive, cry

aɪə fire, tyre

aʊ out, down

aʊə flour, sour

e met, lend, pen

eɪ say, weight

eə fair, care

I fit, win

iː seem, me

Iə near, beard

ɒ lot, spot

eʊ note, coat

ɔː claw, more

ɔɪ boy, joint

ʊ could, stood

uː you, use

ʊə sure, pure

ɜ: turn, third

ʌ fund, must

ə the first vowel in about

Consonant Sounds

b bed, rub

d done, red

f fit, if

g good, dog

h hat, horse

j yellow, you

k king, pick

l lip, bill

m mat, ram

n not, tin

p pay, lip

r run, read

s soon, bus

t talk, bet

v van, love

w win, wool

x loch

z zoo, buzz

ʃ ship, wish

ʒ measure, leisure

η sing, working

tʃ cheap, witch

θ thin, myth

ð then, bathe

dʒ joy, bridge

Notes

Primary and secondary stress are shown by marks above and

below the line, in front of the stressed syllable. For example, in

the word abbreviation,/ə,briːviˈeɪʃən/, the second syllable has

secondary stress and the fourth syllable has primary stress.

We do not normally show pronunciations for compound words

(words which are made up of more than one word).

Pronunciations for the words that make up the compounds are

usually found at their entries at other parts of the dictionary.

However, compound words do have stress markers.

air travel

NOUNS

aeroplane [ˈeərəpleɪn] a plane: a vehicle with wings and engines

that can fly (In American English, use

airplane)

aircraft (PL)

aircraft

[ˈeəkrɒːft] a plane or a helicopter

airline [ˈeəlaɪn] a company that carries people or goods in

planes

airplane

(American

English)

see aeroplane

airport [ˈeəpɔːt] a place where planes come and go, with

buildings and services for passengers

air-traffic

controller

[eə ˌtræfɪk

kənˈtrəʊlə]

someone whose job is to organize where

planes go

aisle [aɪl] the long narrow passage between the rows

of seats on a plane

arrivals [əˈraɪvəlz] the part of an airport where passengers get

off planes; wait in arrivals