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dwell on

phraseB2Not compared — the two pools are counted one word at a time, so a phrase has no score

To dwell on something is to keep thinking about it long past the point of usefulness. Turning it over, and over.

It is almost always a criticism or a warning, since telling somebody not to dwell on a mistake is advice to stop. It takes a direct object after on. There is a milder use about speech, since dwelling on a point means spending too long on it. The old sense of dwell meaning to live somewhere survives in dwelling, which is what planners call a house.

Definitions of dwell on

  1. 1phrasedwell onTo think or talk about something for too long.B2

    “There is no point trying to dwell on what went wrong.”

Practised in A Man Called Ove, Thinking & Memory

First appears in chapter 5 of A Man Called Ove.

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