A stretched verb is a complex predicate composed of a light verb

Light verb

In linguistics, a light verb is a verb participating in complex predication that has little semantic content of its own, but provides through inflection some details on the event semantics, such as aspect, mood, or tense...

 and an eventive

Eventive

In grammar, eventive may refer to:* eventive mood in Finnish* eventive passive voice aka dynamic passive voice* in transformational grammar, relating to an event as distinct from a fact...

 noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

. An example is the English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 phrase "take a bite out of", which is semantically

Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....

 similar to the simple verb "bite". The concept has been used in studies of German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 and English.

There is no standard name or definition for the concept. Other names include "supported verb", "expanded predicate", "verbo-nominal phrase", and "delexical verb combination". Some definitions may place further restrictions on the construction: restricting the light verb to one of a fixed list; restricting the occurrence of article

Article (grammar)

An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...

s, prepositions, or adverb

Adverb

An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....

s within the complex phrase; requiring the eventive noun to be identical or cognate

Cognate

In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...

 with a synonymous simple verb, or at least requiring the stretched verb to be synonymous with some simple verb.

In English, many stretched verbs are more common than a corresponding simple verb: for example "get rid [of X from Y]" compared to the verb "rid [Y of X]"; or "offer (one's) condolences [to X]" vs "condole [with X]". Correct use of stretched verbs is about as difficult for EFL

English language learning and teaching

English as a second language , English for speakers of other languages and English as a foreign language all refer to the use or study of English by speakers with different native languages. The precise usage, including the different use of the terms ESL and ESOL in different countries, is...

 students as other types of collocation

Collocation

In corpus linguistics, collocation defines a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. In phraseology, collocation is a sub-type of phraseme. An example of a phraseological collocation is the expression strong tea...

.