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Difficultés anglaises

> last A word that can be an adverb or an adjective. As an adjective it can give rise to ambiguity. It can mean "coming" after all others, final", as in "He was the last runner to hit the finishing tape", "That was the last novel he wrote before he died", "He did not die until he was 90 but he wrote his last novel at the age of 40". Ambiguity arises when last takes on other meanings. For example, it is frequently used as a synonym for "latest", as in "I really enjoyed his last novel and I'm looking forward to the next". In this particular sentence it is clear that last means "latest" not "final" but this is not always the case. For example, in the sentence "He was 60 when he directed his last film", it is not at all clear from the evidence of the sentence alone whether it is his "final" or "latest" film that is being referred to. Thus it is better to use either "final" or "latest" rather than "last" in order to clarify the meaning.• Confusion can arise also between last, meaning "final", and last, meaning "preceding", as in "I did not quite understand the last chapter". On the evidence of the sentence alone, it is not clear whether last refers to the preceding chapter or to the final chapter. Again it is best to avoid ambiguity by using a synonym for last.• Yet more confusion can be caused with regard to last when it is used to refer to days of the week. It varies from person to person whether "last Saturday" refers to the Saturday that has just gone or to the one before that. To some extent it depends which day of the week it is when the statement is made. To avoid ambiguity it is best to specify the date.• Last is also used as an adverb, as in "They last saw their father when he was going to war", "When the family go to the dentist my brother always wants to go in last" and "If you are adding cream to the soup you add it last". The adverbial use does not suffer from problems of ambiguity. Pour éviter fautes de grammaire, contresens et confusions. The English Usage Dictionary est le parfait complément des dictionnaires bilingues, du dictionnaire de définitions anglaises et du Thesaurus. Ce dictionnaire signale toutes les difficultés que recèle l'usage d'un mot: orthographe, grammaire, prononciation, homonymies, etc. Exemple d'article du dictionnaire English Usage Dictionary