Expression: "Standing ovation"

[Paul]

Test No. incompl/advan-4 "Newspaper Headlines", question 9

At the end of the speech the whole assembly gave the speakers a standing ..........

(a) ovation
(b) applause
(c) cheering
(d) support

Test No. incompl/advan-4 "Newspaper Headlines", answer 9

At the end of the speech the whole assembly gave the speakers a standing ovation.

Correct answer: (a) ovation

Your answer was: incorrect
At the end of the speech the whole assembly gave the speakers a standing applause.
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please explain why ovation not applause

Tks
Paul

[Torsten]

Standing ovation is a fixed expression. It means that people in an audience stand up to clap their hands at the end of a performance or speech because they liked it very much. It's more than just the ordinary applause.
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Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Tom]

Hello Torsten

Mrs. Google (By the way, who are we to decide whether Google is married or not?) gives more than 10,000 hits for standing applause.. Here is one, for example!

STANDING APPLAUSE

Tom

[Torsten]

Hi Tom, you have to put the expression in quotation marks in order to check how often it occurred on the web. "Standing applause" is not a fixed phrase while "standing ovation" is.

Regards,
Torsten
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Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Alan]

Hi Tom,

Standing ovation is the one you want. Standing applause sounds very weird to me.

A
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English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story A day in the life of a policeman

[MrPedantic]

The question implies "a standing applause"; for which there are also many googles.

But I think the indefinite article gives it away: you say "There was applause", "loud applause", "prolonged applause", etc., but not "there was an applause".

On the other hand, you do say "a standing ovation"; which suggests to me that "a standing applause" is simply a common miscollocation. Sometimes we can't quite reach an uncommon word, and take down the nearest thing instead.

MrP

[Alan]

Satisfy my curiosity, do. What prompts this late night discovery of a post from 2006? Then again Tom picked up the post two years before in 2004. Fascinating! Is it insomnia perhaps?

Alan
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English as a Foreign Language
You can read my EFL story Prepositions

[Yankee]

Hi Alan

I can't help but wonder why you didn't ask chokyi, for example, the same sort of question. Surely your tests are not to be seen as off-limits to certain people, off-limits at certain times of day, and off-limits for comment or explanation by anyone but you and Torsten?
.

[MrPedantic]