Think health and safety

Question

Hi there,"When feeding birds, think safety and health." (*) "Think health and safety" looks like a fixed expression (an idiom?) to me. Otherwise I would probably expect some preposition immediately after "think" (of, about)...If you could comment on the expression (grammarwise)Also, perhaps there are other similar (fixed) word combinations where "think" immediately precedes a noun (and there is no preposition between the two words)?

Englishmaven · Accepted Answer

The grammar isn't the concern. We usually say "health and safety."

GPY · Answer

"think + noun / noun phrase" is a set pattern of words (it is not specific to "think health and safety"). It has a different flavour than "think of ~" or "think about ~" and cannot be used as an all-purpose replacement for such phrases. It may sound slightly jargony or abbreviated. I think it is mostly used when we need to take something into consideration, or focus on something, in order to understand an issue, or decide how to behave, or what action to take, or that kind of thing. For example, we can say "Guess the girl's name ... No? OK, think flowers" (meaning we should think of names of flowers in order to guess the name). As another example, there is a road safety slogan "Think bike!" which means we should bear motorcyclists (and their safety) in mind when we are driving on the roads.

You wrote "safety and health" in one place and "health and safety" in another. As has been mentioned, the usual word order is "health and safety" (it is pretty much a set phrase).

Think health and safety

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