Is there any difference in meaning between "I grow my hair out." and "I let my hair grow out." Another example is between "I dry my hair naturally." and "I let my hair dry naturally." I can see both sentences, but am not sure about the differences. Could you help me?
Learn English – Difference between “I let the hair grow.” and “I grow the hair.”
word-usage
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These three words can be synonyms, but have slightly different connotations.
First, travel is usually a verb...
I will travel to Washington DC.
...but not always. In common speech (at least as far as I am familiar), when used as a noun, it is used in its plural form:
How were your travels?
Compared to the substantially equivalent sentences:
How was your trip?
How was your journey?
One could also ask How was your travel?, but it this would have a more specific meaning, for instance, "How was your flight from New York to L.A.?" as opposed to "How was your entire journey, and the time you spent in L.A.?"
Trip and journey are more closely interchangeable, and vary mostly in duration, distance, and formality.
A trip can be a short journey. One can take a trip to the store, but it would be unusual (except in poetic exaggeration) to take a journey to the store
A journey would often imply a longer (in terms of time and/or distance) trip, perhaps to multiple destinations, or with a greater sense of unknown. A journey may not be fully planned out ahead of time.
A business conference to Seattle would probably be described as a trip, whereas a family vacation road-trip from Nebraska, through the Colorado Rockies, camping in Nevada, then stopping in Las Vegas and returning through Oklahoma and Kansas, might be described as a journey.
Often, in colloquial English (at least in the U.S.), trip is far more commonly used than journey, even when describing long/epic travels.
Both trip and journey can also be verbs, but when used as verbs they are not interchangeable. To journey is to engage in the act of journeying:
We journeyed to the Grand Canyon.
However to trip is to cause someone to stumble or lose their balance.
She tripped the thief with her cane.
I tripped over the dog.
To trip up has the additional connotation of causing someone to blunder:
The reporter tripped up the senator.
There are also some additional cases where trip and journey cannot be interchanged in some common expressions:
- A guilt trip
- A high brought on by recreational drugs can be called a "trip."
- Trippy -- slang; reminiscent of the "trip" (high) brought on by recreational drugs; especially LSD
A similar question has been addressed and closed here: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/84837/whats-the-difference-between-hallow-sacred-holy-and-saint
I'll still take a stab at this one.
Saint is easy to separate from the other two because there are formal criteria for a religion to recognize somebody as a saint. As you said, a saint is a person. The term is used colloquially in reference to people who are really nice, as well.
Holy and sacred both imply that the thing being described is dedicated to a deity. Yes, they are most commonly used in Jewish, Christian, or Islamic writing. They don't have to be. The gate to Valhalla in Nordic Mythology is the Holy Door. Wiccans frequently refer to things as sacred.
I would say the primary difference between the two is Holy is an intrinsic trait, and sacred is an attributed trait. Think of if like Holy is an actual property of the thing being discussed. Sacred is the reputation of the thing being discussed.
See also: http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-sacred-and-holy/
Best Answer
If you say:
you are just saying what you do.
If you say:
it means you purposely do this; you could choose not to but don't.
It is similar to: I choose to let my hair dry naturally.