grammar - English compound


Is there a grammatical rule to compound a set of words such as a single one? e.g. word1 word2 --> word1word2 or word1-word2? Bye.




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etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

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etymology - Since when has "a hot minute" meant a long time?

The term a hot minute can be found all over blogs and in casual speech, meaning essentially, "a long time." The term is mostly slang, but seems to have become popular enough to appear on sites as reputable as PBS.org. Delia pretends to be mad about it for a hot minute but gets over it pretty quickly because the love of her life is finally home. I can't find it defined in reputable dictionaries, but The New York Times confirms the meaning in this article about slang uses of the word "hot." Hottie is still bandied about on campus by not-quite-with-it seniors, and a hot minute is defined as “a long time.” There is life left in the cleaned-up meaning of hot mess, which has come to mean “disheveled” or “incompetent,” as in “I was a hot mess this morning before I hit the shower.” The term reminds me of "A New York Minute," which means the exact opposite, "a very short time." So what is the origin of the term "a hot minute," and how lo...
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etymology - Why "silver-tongued" for someone who is convincing?

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usage - "there doesn't seem" vs. "there don't seem"

As an example, consider the two sentences: There don't seem to be any doctors here. and There doesn't seem to be any doctors here. To my ear, the first sounds great, and the second is painfully awkward. So which is correct, grammatically? I've found lots of disagreement on this around the Web, with various sources citing different ways of treating the word "any" (as singular, always, or as either depending on to what it refers). No consensus, however, could I locate. Answer The relevant article in ‘The Cambridge Guide to English Usage’ says: Existential there couples with either singular or plural verbs ( there is / there are , according to the following noun phrase) . . . This formal agreement is strictly maintained in academic writing. But in narrative and everyday writing, there is and especially there’s is found even with plural nouns. The same consideration applies to There don’t and There doesn’t . What it means for your examples is that it all depends ...
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etymology - Origin of "queer as a clockwork orange"

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I have heard a couple of times recently the phrase "don't piss on my boots and tell me it's raining", usually in the context of a heated argument so I've hesitated to ask speaker what exactly he meant by it. Can anyone here help? Answer It suggests that the person you're upset with is harming you, making an unbelievably brazen claim that they are not, and that you have seen through their meagre attempt at deception. There are a few variant forms. There's pee versus piss for varying the level of crudity, and even spit to avoid the subject of urine entirely. The thing being urinated (or spat) on can be a boot, shoe, leg, back, face, etc. Some examples: Gal, you can't spit in my face and call it rain. [spoken to one who is trying to deceive.] Boy, you can't piss on me and tell me it's raining. (from Honey, hush! An Anthology of African-American Women's Humor by Daryl Cumber Dance, 1998, p88) Senator : The war's over. Our side won the ...
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