As Dr. House said, choosing a doctor, you choose a diagnosis. With words and phrases the same thing. For example, the phrase "be careful" people of different professions or hobbies can interpret in different ways. A lover of rock music will immediately remember Victor Tsoi’s composition “Watch Yourself”, and the philologist mentally breaks down the phrase into its components and realizes that the verb is in the imperative mood and the adjective is next to it. But we will not talk about the differences between people, but about the subtleties of the meaning of the phrase.
Meaning of adjective and sentence
Imperative in this sense makes it possible to ask or order to be careful. But what does the last mean? To understand this, let's look into the explanatory dictionary and find out the meaning of the adjective:
- Providing for possible danger.
- Restrained, careful, not rude.
I must say that when they call to be careful, they usually think about the first sense of the adjective. True, it’s easy to imagine scenarios when it comes to fragile objects and their security. Let's make the appropriate sentences and, thus, kill two birds with one stone:
- Be careful with this vase, because she is 2,000 years old.
- Never enter into serious transactions with people who do not inspire confidence in you. Be careful with them. Otherwise, you can get into big trouble, understand?
- Be careful with your desires, for they can come true.
- Be careful with desires, protect them from harsh reality. Life is usually hard on our dreams.
The last two sentences intentionally used one main noun “desire” to show how the context changes the meaning of the word. We hope this was a prominent example.
Caution as a character trait
Some people do not need caution. Because they fit the definition of "cautious person." Of course, when it comes to borderline, crisis situations, this type of person can even be considered paranoid: he worries about something all the time, worries, thinks that there are enemies or ill-wishers around.
Another thing when it comes to war. I remember the film “Braveheart” (1995), when the enemies talked about William Wallace, that he has a very developed intuition, he has a fantastic sense of trap. As a result, as we know, he was lured into a trap by deceit. But it’s not worth it to be too trusting and in peacetime, because the reality is full of all sorts of well done people who are ready to deceive an honest worker, without even starting, perhaps, the law. So the reader can only say: "Be careful!"
Synonyms of adverbs
Our area of interest includes another part of the speech that we cannot miss in any way - this is the adverb “caution”. To him we will pick up replacements, which, on occasion, can be used by the reader if he discovers the poverty of his vocabulary:
- neatly;
- carefully;
- incredulously;
- suspiciously;
- prudently;
- judiciously;
- sensibly;
- prudently;
- prudently.
As you can see, most of the list with synonyms “cautiously” is made up of analogues for the first meaning of the adjective, and the second meaning is in an obvious minority. But, hopefully, this will not prevent the reader from using both of them equally.