I played hockey the other day and after the game I was drenched in sweat. It occurred to me that people are always drenched with sweat -- they are almost never covered or coated or whatever. "Drenched with sweat" is a clichéd phrase -- but even stronger than that, it seems to be one of many pairs of words that always seem to be used together.
Curiously, most of the examples I can think of have negative connotations:
- bus plunge
- slipped into a coma
- massive heart attack; massive stroke, etc.
- engulfed in flames
- humiliating defeat
- blissful ignorance
Are we just stuck in our ways? Or are we just happily ignorant of interesting new word combinations?
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