All of the sentences below (including collocations of "lose peace" are in
general usage.  If I were acting like a language maven, I might suggest that
the more exact usage would be "have lost peace" or "had lost peace" because
there is a process (not a single act) involved in losing peace.  I "lose" or
"lost" my keys.  I "have lost" my hair.  But conventional wisdom asks us to
simplify verbs as much as possible without losing important meaning.  Thus,
auxiliaries are often omitted, especially in less formal writing and
speaking.

Jeff Glauner
Park University

----- Original Message -----
From: "SIRAISI Tomio" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, July 24, 2000 8:07 AM
Subject: Collocation of the verb "lose"


> Hello everyone.
>
> The following questions seem trivial to a native speaker of English, but I
> think the collocations of words is the hardest component of language
> learning.
>
> What I want to know today is the collocation of the word "lose".
>
> In many reference books and dictionaries in Japan, we find a sentence like
>
> "You do not know the importance of health until you lose it."
> "It is not until you lose health that you realize its blessing."
>
> But some language mavens insist that "lose health" is too formal and can
> rarely be used today. Is it true?
>
> How about "lose peace" as in
>
> "We cannot realize that importance of peace until we lose it."
>
> I find no examples of "lose peace" in the dictionaries I consulted.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> SIRAISI Tomio