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I think the more global issue here is that we can’t rely too much on controlling the scope of meaning of specific words and phrases. Sometimes, we want a phrase to be very specific. Sometimes we want it to mean more than it usually means.
We accomplish that higher degree of broad scope or specificity with larger units of grammar. In school they tell us that a sentence is “a complete thought”. That’s not entirely true or clear, but leaning too hard on something less than a sentence can have disappointing results. Context is really important.
Too often, I get frustrated with the desire to have a phrase with no context either mean a very specific thing (when it can mean multiple things in different contexts) or mean something broader than the most common meaning, again, with no context.
I think it works better if we write a phrase in a sentence or a sentence in a paragraph in order to craft the environment within which the phrase takes on greater confidence in expressing a particular meaning because of the foundation of the context.
I totally agree. Thanks to both of you for the interesting discussion, I understand now much better how these constructions work!