Collocations: Violate, breach, break, disobey and infringe
Transcript:
Hello! Today we look at some useful collocations for Legal English.
Collocation is a set of generally two, but sometimes three words used together to sound natural and correct in English. If you don’t use the right words together your English will sound incorrect and wrong.
For example, “merry” collocates with “Christmas”, so we say “Merry Christmas”, but “merry” does not collocate with “new year”, so if you say “Merry New Year” it sounds wrong and very unnatural. In fact, we say “Happy New Year”. For the same reason we say “fast food”, and not “quick food”, but we say a “quick shower” and not a “fast shower”. It is not enough, to just learn words, but you should try to learn words that collocate together.
Good examples of collocation in Legal English are verbs like “Violate”, “breach”, “break”, “disobey”, and “infringe”, which are synonyms, and fundamentally all mean the same thing, but which collocate with different nouns.
Here are the most common collocations of these words:
breach a contract
breach/break someone’s trust
breach confidentiality
breach security
break/disobey/violate the law
break/breach someone’s trust
break a treaty
break/disobey/infringe a rule
break speed limits
disobey/break/infringe/ a rule
disobey/break an order
disobey a command
disobey a court order
disobey/break/violate the law
infringe a right
infringe copyright
infringe a trademark
infringe a patent
infringe/break/disobey a rule
violate/break/disobey the law
violate privacy
violate sanctions
violate human rights
Thank you very much and see you next time for more Peter’s Pills to improve your Legal English!
How good is your general English collocation? Try some exercises here:
- Speak Speak – Intermediate vocabulary exercise: collocations
- English Practise – Collocations exercise
- Business English Resources – Advanced Collocations Exercises
- Englishexercises.org – Collocations
Legal English – Sommario delle Lezioni
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 59 – Appurtenent vs In gross
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 58 – Building societies and Banks
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 57 – Valid, void and voidable contracts
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 56 – Rescission
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 55 – Golden expressions
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 54 – Pre-emption right vs Right of first refusal
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 53 – What do we mean by “agent” of a company?
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 52 – Voting at a meeting
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 51 – Contracts vs Deeds
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 50 – Executive and Non-Executive Directors
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 49 – Transfer of shares vs transmission of shares
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 48 – They, them, their for singular nouns
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 47 – Jointly and severally
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 46 – Invoice words
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 45 – Quotation
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 44 – Gazumping and Gazundering
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 43 – English words that the English do not understand
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 42 – Easement vs Profit à prendre
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 41 -er, -or and -ee names
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 40 – The Objects Clause
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 39 – When is Latin hot, and when is it not?
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 38 – Default
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 37 – Company Agent
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 36 – Injunction (false freind)
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 35 – Mortgage
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 34 – Freehold, Leasehold and Commonhold estates
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 33 – Transferor, Transferee and Transmittee
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 32 – Tax evasion, tax mitigation and tax avoidance
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 31 – Numbers
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 30 – Ordinary resolutions vs special resolutions
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 29 – AGM vs EGM
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 28 – A going concern
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 27 – Collocations: Violate, breach, break, disobey and infringe
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 26 – Company meeting words
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 25 – Mortgagor vs Mortgagee
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 24 – Fixed charges vs Floating charges
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 23 – Doctrine
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 22 – Construe
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 21 – Sign vs Execute
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 20 – The closing statement
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 19 – Writing Business Emails
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 18 – Limited companies
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 17 – Annual Accounts
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 16 – Meetings
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 15 – Attorney-at-law vs Attorney-in-fact
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 14 – Here and there compounds
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 13 – Subject Matter
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 12 – The clear days rule
- Legal English – Peter’s Pills – Lesson 11 – Shareholder, Member or Holder of shares?
- Legal English: Peter’s Pills – Lesson 10 – Competition Law
AUTORE
Peter Liebenberg è uno specialista nella formazione delle persone nella conoscenza della lingua inglese. Ha creato molti corsi nel campo dell’inglese per professionisti, tra cui English for banking, English for business e English for Insurance, ma ha sempre avuto un debole per l’inglese legale. Altri corsi che ha creato comprendono Phrasal Verbs I e II. Quando Peter non fa formazione, corre a Parco Sempione, crea arte nel suo studio sulla Martesana e fa volontariato.