0

I got a question about the usage of generalization of collocations.

There is a word such as "bird of prey" to refer to birds eating animal flesh.

And one way to generalize reference of a noun is to put "the" in front of the word, especially for animals, plants, recent inventions; the lion is the king of the animal world of Africa / the smartphone is nowadays a required item.

Then my question is whether this kind of expression below is also okay to show generalization;

The bird of prey is a bird that eats animal flesh.

For other nouns, such as "man of steel," when someone says "the man of steel," a native English speaker would think some particular or specific man of steel since there are several possible possibilities; Stalin, or the Superman in the recent movie, etc.

user87088
  • 1
  • I've found one duplicate which answers this question; I'm sure there are others too, in the tags you've chosen. – Andrew Leach Aug 03 '14 at 09:29
  • Just a factual note here: a "bird of prey" is one which hunts and feeds on living animals. Birds which eat animal flesh which the bird did not kill (carrion) not "birds of prey", but scavengers. Also, I doubt that very many English speakers who, upon hearing "man of steel", would think of Stalin. – brasshat Aug 03 '14 at 15:29
  • 'Bird of prey' is too general a term to warrant the definite article. 'The crocodile is ...' but 'A reptile is ...'. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 03 '14 at 15:43
  • Thanks for all the feedback. Yes, I agree with the comment that the word is too general for the general usage of the definite article to be used. – user87088 Aug 03 '14 at 16:49

0 Answers0