3 uses
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Definition
a duty
- A gerundive has a form similar to the gerund but implies the necessity, obligation, or worthiness of the action to be done, as in the book is worth reading.three — Toward a Standard: Putting the "R" in "American" (65% in)
- Ordinary people, depending on their level of schooling, might make an effort to sound refined when they had to, but free of that obligation just relaxed and used the language as it came naturally to them.one — The Language Wars (31% in)
- He claimed that Simon's belief in "a morality of language," an obligation to preserve and nurture the niceties, the line distinctions, that have been handed down to us, "is the credo of a czarist emigre, not an English grammarian."one — The Language Wars (35% in)
There are no more uses of "obligation" in Do You Speak American?.
Typical Usage
(best examples)