Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary - aside

(asides) Frequency: The word is one of the 3000 most common words in English. Note: In addition to the uses shown below, 'aside' is used in phrasal verbs such as ‘cast aside’, ‘stand aside’, and ‘step aside’. 1. If you move something aside, you move it to one side of you. Sarah closed the book and laid it aside. ADV: ADV after v 2. If you take or draw someone aside, you take them a little way away from a group of people in order to talk to them in private. Will put his arm around her shoulders and drew her aside. ADV: ADV after v 3. If you move aside, you get out of someone’s way. She had been standing in the doorway, but now she stepped aside to let them pass. ADV: ADV after v 4. If you set something such as time, money, or space aside for a particular purpose, you save it and do not use it for anything else. She wants to put her pocket-money aside for holidays. ...the ground set aside for the new cathedral. ADV: ADV after v 5. If you brush or sweep aside a feeling or suggestion, you reject it. Talk to a friend who will really listen and not brush aside your feelings... The Prime Minister swept aside concern about the rising cost of mortgages. ADV: ADV after v 6. You use aside to indicate that you have finished talking about something, or that you are leaving it out of your discussion, and that you are about to talk about something else. Leaving aside the tiny minority who are clinically depressed, most people who have bad moods also have very good moods... Emotional arguments aside, here are the facts. = apart ADV: ADV after v, n ADV 7. An aside is a comment that a character in a play makes to the audience, which the other characters are supposed not to be able to hear. Exasperated with her children, she rolls her eyes and mutters an aside to the camera, ‘No wonder I drink!’. N-COUNT 8. An aside is something that you say that is not directly connected with what you are talking about. The pace of the book is leisurely, with enjoyable literary and historical asides. = digression N-COUNT