Welcome to
ESL Printables,
the website where English Language teachers exchange resources:
worksheets, lesson plans, activities, etc.
Our collection is growing every day with the help of many teachers. If
you want to download you have to send your own contributions.
Containers + uncountable nouns - QUANTIFIERS - please help
Dear friends, I am looking for a complete list of containers + uncountable nouns... Of course I know SOME examples, but I would like to have a complete list of nouns which can go with the container... I don �t want to make mistakes because many foreigners make funny "word pairs" that sound really strange...... Can you help me, please? American and British English collocations would be fine....
bag
of rice, money, flour, candy, sugar, pasta, bread, tomatoes, onions, carrots,
compost,
I know the list may be endless, I just want to have few examples to go with EACH of the containers... for example I have never heard about barrel of ... whatever else... and bucket of ....? is it correct to say: a barrel of car petrol ??? or bucket of cream???, milk ???
Well I �d never put petrol in a barrel. It �s delivered by tanker truck to the petrol (gas) station anyway. You can put it in your car (a tank of petrol) or a jerrycan (a jerry can of petrol/gas/etc) to put in your lawnmower.
You probably know that in the US gas is a liquid when referring to fuel... Go figure.
BTW, a sixpack of soda doesn�t (or shouldn�t) exist.
I�m not an expert (i.e. not a woman), but asking for a tube of lipstick?
Barrel or bucket of pig manure should be possible as it�s pretty liquid. I�m not a farmer though.
oh, sorry... We used to put petrol or any (dangerous) chemical to so called "barrels". We even called the barrel that container full of gun-powder (do you know what I mean? - the black stuff the cowboys put into their guns...)
PS: the TUBE of lipstick is ok... sorry for the typo... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipstick - see the comments to the picture on the right - a tube of lipstick...
My goodness, it looks huge. Does your �chemical barrel � ever explode? Is it picked up when full (and sold to terrorist organisations)?
Barrels of gunpowder exist of course, but I thought you were looking for something more contemporary, like barrels of water or whisk(e)y. I still can�t imagine asking for a tube of lipstick in a department store:
�Will that be all, Miss?�
�I�d also like a tube of red lipstick please.� (Does it really go like this???)
oh yeees... I knew there was something to put into a barrel ! Whiskey of course! Thanks a million! I was thinking and thinking and I couldn �t remember...
About the barrels - When the Russians were leaving my country, they left hundreds of such barrels here... Environmental disaster... But I dunno what happened to those barrels... but there were not sold :-) they stayed here...
The tube of lipstick sounds strange to me too... but... maybe it is old-fashioned... the "tube" resembles the shape of the product (the round metal / plastic case)
Barrel is not so common but we hear it on the nightly news in relation to the price of a barrel of oil. Like Philip said barrel is a common idiom (barrel of laughs, barrel of monkeys - see more at http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/barrel).
Tin of asprin? - no - maybe in the old days when medicines came in tins or bottles. Nowadays it�s a packet of asprin.
Six pack of soda? Not here in Australia - we don �t call it soda. A six pack generally means beer but of course we can buy other drinks in six packs like coke and other soft drinks. It could be different in US.
A stick of butter/margerine is not used here, but maybe it is elsewhere.
A tube of lippy is correct but we ladies just don�t say it that way, ever. I think it is referred to as a tube of lippy for manufacturing/retail purposes only.
Your example of package is not used here. We tend to use packet instead.
Bucket of water is the common use for bucket. A bucket of milk was probably used in the days of hand milking but not any more. There are all sorts of hilarious variations like a a bucket of spit, a bucket of shit, a bucket of blood etc that are used in conversation as an idiom.
We do have those barrels that are in your pic - We call them drums instead (industrial storage drums to be exact). Oil is also referred to as being sold in drums. In the old days people used to use old 60 gallon drums to make barbecues. On a more sinister side, a recent murder here involved a victim being disposed of in a 60 gallon drum (and it�s not the first time for this method of disposing of a body)
Thank you both ! Really interesting !!! You are right, tin of aspirin is old-fashioned... It �s interesting to hear the package is not used any more :-) I have also found a bucket of fried chicken, fried onions, fruit chews, mints and live fish (eels) and a bucket of fun :-) But those are not very common examples, I suppose...