We’re almost finished with our collocations with parts of the body. Today we are going to look at nominal collocations (N+N) with leg. As usual, our examples are drawn from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA – www.americancorpus.org), only slightly adapted when needed. These are the first 20 nouns that precede leg:
Most of these collocations pose no comprehension problem. They are quite literal and use basic vocabulary. Here are a few examples:
- She pulled up his pant leg and dabbed the bleeding cut with the paper towel.
- The woman stops and notices a smudge of blood on her pants leg.
- The rider put one foot on the chair and rolled up his trouser leg.
- Then he grabbed the cow’s back leg and lifted it with his tree-limb arms.
- The knee of your back leg should nearly touch the ground.
- Bumstead falls back, trips on a table leg and hits the floor, dropping the gun.
- A chicken, tied to one table leg, pecks the ground in a vain search for food.
- I banged my little toe on a chair leg and spent the next five minutes inventing new ways to curse.
The next examples are also clear, but they translate differently into Portuguese. They all refer to an edible part – a leg – of an animal:
- A man comes over, eating a chicken leg.
- I opened my eyes and saw a turkey leg, now no more than a bone.
- I’ll just serve the duck leg confit, pork belly, sausages, bread and wine.
- Just one crab leg gives you 84 mg magnesium and 351 mg potassium.
- … a big bowl of sliced braised pork leg
When we talk of a fowl (chicken, duck, turkey) in Portuguese, we call this part the ‘coxa’. The crab’s leg is called ‘pata de caranguejo’. And a pork leg is ‘pernil’.
Although thigh usually translates as ‘coxa’ (a person’s thigh is his/her ‘coxa’), when it refers to a fowl it corresponds to our ‘sobrecoxa’, as in the example below:
- Then sample the duck leg and thigh in a cassoulet of beans.
The next ones refer to an artificial leg:
- But his peg leg made his efforts asymmetric, inefficient.
- He had a wooden peg leg which sank several inches into the ground with each step.
- Now, if you asked me to draw you a pirate I’d probably give him an eye patch, a bushy beard, maybe a peg leg, a parrot on his shoulder or a hook where his hand should be.
- Gary stripped himself naked in the tub and left the metal leg on the toilet tank.
As a peg leg is usually made of wood, we could translate it as ‘perna de pau’.
A bum leg may also refer to an artificial leg, but it can simply mean a leg – or another part of the body – that gives you trouble, either because it’s injured or hurts or just doesn’t work properly.
- The dude who answered the door was a wall-eyed hunchback with a bum leg that dragged uselessly behind him.
- He’s 70 years old, has a bad heart and a bum leg, but he’s one of the legendary playboys of the Western world.
- Coot got down on the floor and put his bum leg up in his desk chair.
- It was going to take a lot more than a bum knee to slow me down.
- I’ve had a bum knee and then my ankle gave out on me in the middle of the game.
- [baseball] His bum shoulder seriously hampers his throwing.
Talking about sports, leg is used to refer to a segment of a race, just as we refer to the leg of a journey (‘trecho de uma viagem’). Anchor leg is a collocation used in relay races to refer to the last leg in the race:
- Keenum was running the anchor leg of a 1,600-meter relay.
- The Americans, with Betty running the anchor leg, took the silver in 48.8.
- Jenny Thompson swam the anchor leg of the US team in the 4-by-200 freestyle relay.
| Based on the speed of the runners, the generally accepted strategy used in setting up a 4 person relay team is: second fastest, third fastest, slowest, then fastest (anchor). Each segment of the relay (the distance run by one person) is referred to as a leg. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relay_race) |
In Portuguese, the anchor leg is ‘o ultimo percurso’ and it refers to the runner.
In addition, leg can refer to the segment of a race. In triathlon there are three legs (in Portuguese, ‘três modalidades’):
| …triathlon, in its most popular form, involves swimming, cycling, and running in immediate succession over various distances. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triathlon) |
- To properly train for a 40K bike leg, do these three key workouts each week for six weeks.
- If simply finishing the swim leg leaves you exhausted by the time you reach your bike, you won’t be able to take advantage of your cycling ability.
Still in the bicycling domain:
Air pressure adjusted at the top of the right fork leg charges the system.
Be sure it engages the adjuster rod inside the fork leg.
Side, swing and stance form collocations related to work-out and rehabilitation. Side leg is actually part of a longer collocation:
- BOSU side leg raise: Strengthens hip abductors on both legs; inner thighs, abdominals, buttocks and…
- You finish with the BOSU side leg raise, which forces the hip abductors of your working leg…
- The sound swing leg carried much more than half the body weight.
- Three patients systematically used their prosthetic leg as the swing leg to leave the ground first (group B).
- The initiation of gait (IG) was defined as the time interval between a visual start signal (S) and the toe-off (TO2) of the second foot to leave the floor, defined as the stance leg.
Now let’s take a look at the collocations with leg followed by another noun:
The collocations with muscles, injury/injuries, bone/bones, cramps, and pain are very straightforward and we’ll skip them.
A widely used collocation, especially in relation to cars and planes is leg room:
- Honestly roomy back seat provided more knee and leg room than most midsize and even large cars.
- The rear is spacious and affords good leg room, but the seat is low and head room is a bit sparse.
- It’s about comfort too, like leather seats, satellite TV, and extra leg room in economy class.
The next collocations are related to working out:
- The sport is also a top way to gain leg strength and endurance.
- Repeat 10 to 20 times to build your lower leg strength.
- I joined the 24-year-old quarterback as he worked the leg press during the Steelers’ training camp.
- Using a leg press machine, slowly lower the weight with one leg so your ankle almost touches your glutes.
Leg extension and leg curl are actually other machines related to rehabilitation exercises:
- Sit on a leg extension machine with your back against the pad and rollers in front of your ankles
- another way to tighten and tone is to use the leg extension, leg curl and leg press machines to train your leg muscles.
- Sit on a leg curl machine with your legs straight and the roller behind your ankles
Leg cycle is always followed by one or more nouns:
- NMES [neuromuscular electrical stimulation] leg cycle ergometer was used for all NMES tests.
- None of the subjects had been involved in any regular endurance exercise or NMES leg cycle ergometry prior to the training program.
- These results have direct implications for those who participate in and/or supervise NMES leg cycle training programs.
- Unfortunately, physiologic responses to graded and submaximal NMES leg cycle exercise were not obtained before and after Phase I.
- Demong has just finished 30 leg lifts, 40 push-ups, 5 glasses of water, and a huge turkey sandwich.
- You can’t trim beefy thighs by doing hours of leg lifts.
These are well-known:
- Dorsey was so bowlegged he was fitted with leg braces, which he wore for a year.
- And without, first, crutches, then leg braces and a cane, he would never walk again.
- FDR’s leg braces are visible in the statue.
You don’t want to wear those!
- The raid uncovered handguns and rifles, leg irons, and handcuffs; 11 boys were taken into state custody.
- And then a few days later, she saw Eduardo on television being paraded in leg irons and handcuffs across the grounds of the maximum security prison in Harare.
These are really nice to avoid leg cramps:
- The shorts are long enough to overlap with leg warmers.
- Check your local bike shop for arm and leg warmers.
There is one word we have not considered: back. But you’ll see from the examples below that it is not a noun but an adverb and therefore does not make a collocation with leg. Rather, it modifies the verb:
- Extend right leg back and lower dumbbell.
- Sabrina swung one leg back and forth, pausing to admire her shoes midswing.
OK, the post is on its last legs, but if you still want to have some fun, try finding the English equivalents for the following words and/or collocations in Portuguese:
Algemas de pernas
Âncora [corrida de revezamento]
Aparelho ortopédico (para pernas)
Cadeira extensora
Espaço entre poltronas
Garfo [bicicleta]
Mesa flexora
Patas traseiras
Perna da calça
Perna de trás
Polaina
Trecho final
Have fun!Stella
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Stella E. O. Tagnin professora associada do Departamento de Letras Modernas, FFLCH, da USP. Embora aposentada, continua orientando em nível de pós-graduação nas áreas de Tradução, Terminologia, Ensino e Aprendizagem, sempre com base na Lingüística de Corpus. É coordenadora do Projeto CoMET.e-mail: seotagni@usp.br.
