What is "a cooperative venture"?

It means that the United States and Europe will cooperate in a venture, an enterprise, to study the resistance of microbes to antibiotic agents.

Thank you.

Do you ever look in a good dictionary? An invaluable tool.

Of course I did before posting.

See how Cambridge dict confused me:

Venture:
a new activity, usually in business, which involves risk or uncertainty

Can an activity be "set up"?

Let alone those E-C dicts.

Yes, of course it can. To set-up something, to set something up, means to establish it.

Some of the problems you are encounering are caused by the tendency of some modern authors to use looser language than necessary.
Then of course, in those cases, A2K contributors can help.
I would have thought however, that "to set up a venture" should have been easy meat for a chap like you with a dictionary.

I advise use of the dictionary (it must be a good E-E dictionary) because in reading round the target word or phrase, you learn a lot more.

Dictionaries are nowhere near as useful to ESLs as direct contact with native speakers.



The old saw - "language is going to hell in a hand basket" comes out.

McTag, you're much too bright a fella to be spouting this nonsense.

Yeh, but Oristar is quite advanced.

I agree with your assessment of Oristar's level of sophistication in English, and although i did not comment when i read it, i also agree that a standard English dictionary is at this point preferable to a Chinese-English dictionary. When i had reached a certain level of skill in the French language, i benefited more from a Larousse or a Robert than from any French-English dictionary, because at that point i was reading words in the context of French usage. By that point, i only needed a French-English dictionary for very specific vocabulary, such as the name of a plant or animal, which neither context nor the single language dictionary would provide. So, if in context, i knew i was reading about a bird, that the Robert told me it is volaille--a domestic fowl--was not helpful, since i wouldn't know specifically what type of domestic fowl, and needed the French-English dictionary for that.

But my experience has also been that dual language dictionaries often don't provide sufficient detail. Knowing, for example, why the word means "duck" doesn't tell me why the author used morillon rather than canard. But a good single language dictionary like a Robert would tell me that morillon is tufted. Sometimes you need both types of dictionary.

I agree that Oristar is sufficiently sophisticated in English usage to benefit from reliance on a sole language English dictionary. I would recommend the encycolpedic form of dictionary, although they are had to use until you get used to them.

I have been using Wiki Encyclopedia (English version) most of times. Britannica I loved, but it is not available in China and its online version is too slow to be used here.

I suspect that McT meant a printed dictionary, a book one buys at the store. That is what i meant. However, of course, i have no idea how easay that is to find in China, or what the cost would be.

Oh yes, I meant a book, not a web site.

One of what my father used ironically to call "The Good Book".

See what you did there? You attributed thoughts and conclusions to me, then criticised me for harbouring them.

You naughty chap, you.

There's been a lot of talk about your nationality mate. Well it's clear you're not British. We use hell in a hancart, which was the first book of a noted tabloid editor Richard Littlejohn, described by the Guardian as follows;


Some say the phrase originates from the plague when the dead were wheeled out in handcarts.