“Spread” is quite
a common verb and its general meaning is familiar to most students from lower
intermediate level upwards, in my experience. However, it is a horrible word to
use consistently accurately.
When preparing this discussion, I thought about the various
possible ways to use the word “spread”.
I could think of so many ways that it
helped me realise why students sometimes use this word wrongly or
strangely. If you check a dictionary definition
of “spread”, this will become obvious
to you too, and some of you may already have realised that it is a tricky word
to use well.
With this in mind, this two-part discussion will focus
mainly on one common but strange usage of “spread”. In order to stimulate your interest, this
discussion will be in two parts. My
challenge to you today is to identify the one sentence below which uses “spread” strangely. When you answer, please give a reason for
your answer, and if you are really keen, say how you would correct it. Tomorrow, all will be revealed!
Sentences with “spread”:
spot the strange one
Thank you @Michael for another interesting lesson:)
Well, I found the third sentence a little strange but I know there are so many strange sentences in English I've not yet come across:)
BTW, as the sentence is---The company spread a competitive tender for the manufacture of 10,000 high-precision widgets to the market.
"Spread" we usually use as you have used in other examples like to spread something around or to make something multiple in number in different regions.
But here, as the company just want to give a tender or project to some other small companies or someone making that things,so it's a kind of assignment and if I'll take the real meaning of spread then definitely it is not appropriate here.
So can we use here "Call for" or "arrange" in place of "Spread".
Am I right or I'll get my answer in part-2:)
Thank you:)
I think, the 3rd is wrong. It would be 'issued a competitive tender'. ?
For no. 3 I feel there should be a different verb: They may have sent notifications about the tender to different manufactureres, but still I wouldn't say they spread the tender. I think you could say they spread information about the tender in question.
With the help of a bilingual dictionary I suggest:
The company invited a (competitive) tender for the manufacture of (...)
the company tendered the manufacture of (...)
