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I have come across this word in a book; it gives the example: If a layman says “I now pronounce you man and wife,” it doesn't make the couple husband and wife. But when the same words are spoken by a priest, it makes them husband and wife. The word possibly starts with either "i" or "l".

Since "amn't I" is so clunky, is "aren't I" grammatically correct? Or is the only way to say this "Am I not"? Answer The NOAD reports that aren't is the contraction of are not , and am not ; in the latter case, it is used only in questions. Why aren't I being given a pay raise? The Collins English Dictionary says the same, but it says that using aren't as contraction of am not is informal, and chiefly British.

Beowulf , the Old English epic poem, uses a characteristically Germanic style of poetry in which the number of strong beats per line is what counts. Instead of counting syllables, strong beats alone were counted. There were always exactly four such strong beats per line, and there was always a pause (called a caesura ) between the two pairs. These strong beats may have made it easier for the pre-literate bard to recite long verse, and for one to pass along these unwritten minstrel poems to later generations. Other Germanic verse from the oral tradition also followed this scheme, such as the Norse Eddas. However, today this form of poetry is virtually never seen in English any longer. Instead, as our language grew explosively in vocabulary through the admixture of Romance terms, many with stress patterns that were alien to Old English, we also began to adopt a more Romantic style of composing our poetry, whether written or oral. Now it is only with training that the old forms are even r...

Today I saw an idiomatic road sign: "Pretty Muddy". I found this lack of strict English on a road sign unusual (on par with my "Dead Slow" official speed limit sign in Leeds, pic below), but as it turned out it's a charity race and the signs were merely directions. This got me thinking however, how do words like "pretty" and "dead" as intensifying adverbs end up in English? Taking "pretty" as an example, when did this first appear? I wonder how fast you have to be going before they stop you. How would this hold up in court? Answer The OED’s earliest citations for the word as an adjective are from the Old English period, when it meant ‘cunning, crafty’ and subsequently ‘clever, skilful, able’. It was only in the fifteenth century that it came to have meanings associated with pleasing appearance. The earliest citation for its use as an adverb meaning ‘to a considerable extent; fairly, moderately; rather, quite’ is from 1565.

I see an example in Longman dictionary. For the word of "toolbar", it says, "a row of small pictures at the top of a computer screen that allow you to do particular things in a document". I am confused about it. The subject is "a row of small pictures" while its clause goes like "that allow you..." I think it should be like "that allows you..." Being a famous dictionary, it should be grammatical correct, even when offering a phrase instead of a complete sentence. I see in some small dictionary, an example is, "The first row alone consists of five rooms." Why Longman dictionary says that way?

When I went to school I was taught that when asking for something you use "may I (have/do something)". "Can" was used only when asking if you are "physically capable" of something. These days I have a feeling that you can also use "can" where we would formerly use "may". I know the rules on "can/may" hasn't changed formally, but has there been a change in usage of the two? Do schools still teach pupils to ask for things with "may"? Answer The enforced usage of "may" instead of "can" is old-fashioned and school-marmish. In all but the most stilted conversations, people ask for permission using can instead of may . Can I get a little help here? Can I borrow your car? Can I take you to dinner Friday night? All those are fine usages, and no one but a ninny would attempt to correct you for using any of them. On the other hand, May I get a little help here? May I borrow your car? May I take you to...

What words change meaning when the first letter is capitalised? The only word with this property that comes to mind is polish / Polish (the pronunciation also changes in this case, but that's not a necessity part of what I'm asking for). Answer I can't think of any other word that changes its meaning so completely. Most often, a word changes because a noun becomes a proper noun, usually either a brand or a place where something commonly known originated. The Polish/polish pair is different; the proper noun (adjective actually) has nothing to do with the common noun. For instance: "china", uncapitalized, is a plate. "China", capitalized, is a country. "comet" is an astronomical object. "Comet" is a cleaning powder. "burgundy" is a color, and a wine of that color. "Burgundy" is the French region that produces the wine. Similarly, "cheddar" is a cheese, and "Cheddar" is an English city where the ...

I can't think of the word and it's driving me nuts. I'm looking for a word that can be used when some technology is discovered, way of thinking, or even event happening that causes a big change in society. Examples might be: discovery of electricity, industrial revolution, nuclear power / bomb, the internet. Some similar terms I can think of are: dawn of a new era, a new age, or paradigm shift. EDIT: I just want to add that I'm thinking of a lesser used word, although revolutionary fits it's not specific enough nor the word that I'm looking for. Answer Besides revolutionary (“something that portends of great change”), which it seems de rigueur to mention, consider terms like: • scientific/social/cultural upheaval (“a sudden violent upset, disruption or convulsion”), • groundbreaking (“Innovative; new, different; doing something that has never been done before”), • radical (“Thoroughgoing”), • breakthrough (“Any major progress; such as a great innovation ...

In sentences like "All he can think of is this moment," all is taking singular is . However, in sentences where there is more than one subject, does all still take singular is ? All he can hear is the wind, the sound of the rain, and the thunder. All that's present at the end of the hall is the storage and another room. Do both these sentences take "all...is"? Could this be explained with a grammatical rule? In these sentences, is all referring back to predicate nominatives?

I would tend to say Sara (and all of us) have a lot to think about now. ...but it occurs to me that if I remove the parenthetical it's clearly incorrect. Is it proper to say Sara (and all of us) has a lot to think about now. ...that sounds really strange to my ear. Also, does it change the rules in any way if I use an em dash, e.g. Sara–and all of us–have a lot to think about now. Answer (I encouraged @Yoseph-Baskin to expand his comment into an answer as I believe it's correct. Since he hasn't, I'm going to make it one myself.) "Though the parens should allow us to remove its contents to test what remains, this is different. The 'all of us' amends the singular subject by expanding it to plural. If you can see it that way, the subject changes to plural and takes on a plural verb: A single grape—make that two—are what I need right now."

I should place parentheses after a space or without any spacing? Which one of below sentences is right? We adopted DM (Data Mining) in this lecture. We adopted DM(Data Mining) in this lecture. Answer The first. Parentheses should have spaces on either side, just like words. For example (taken from The Punctuation Guide ): Parentheses (always used in pairs) allow a writer to provide additional information. The parenthetical material might be a single word, a fragment, or multiple complete sentences.

To my knowledge, There is no single word that describes a "person who has lost a child." We have "widow" and "widower" for a person whose spouse had died. We have "orphan" for a child whose parent or parents have died. Source According to the quora question, the closest word is in Arabic: ثَكْلَى (thakla) which translates as "bereaved mother." Though bereaved does not adequately describe 'loss of child' as it's definition is: [to] be deprived of a loved one through a profound absence, especially due to the loved one's death. My questions are: If there is a word, what is it? If there is not a word, what word would Shakespeare have made up to convey the idea?

Washington Post (May 22) reported the victory of the 35-year-old Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky Democratic primary to position her as the challenger to 72-year-old Senate’s GOP leader, Mitch McConnell in November election. It says; Alison Lundergan Grimes says it everywhere she goes. She said it at dozens of stops in Kentucky over the past week. She said it at her victory speech here Tuesday night after securing the Democratic nomination for Senate. And she plans to say it again all the way to November. She’s not an “ empty dress .” “ I am not an empty dress , I am not a rubber stamp, and I am not a cheerleader,” she said in a speech Tuesday night after she and McConnell each easily defeated primary opponents and officially began what is shaping up to be one of the year’s most heated political battles. - Source None of OED, CED, Merriam-Webster carries “empty dress.” Google Ngram shows existence of the word since mid 19 century, but at a very low incidence ratio (0.0000002% in 200...

In conversation, it's normal to say: What time do you have to be at the train station by ? Note: What time do you have to be at the train station vs What time do you have to be at the train station by , mean 2 completely different things, right? 1) The question in the title 2) Whether by is a preposition or not. Winston Churchill once said "That is the sort of thing up with which I will not put! Answer In informal registers, when a wh-interrogative pronoun is the object of a preposition, it is common for the preposition to shift to clause-final position : What book are you interested in ? Who are you baking a cake for ? What school do her children go to ? Who did he come to the dance with ? If a “heavier” sentence element like a prepositional phrase intervenes, one can also hear: Who did he come with to the spring dance? In more formal registers, stranded prepositions such as these might be considered out of place, but simply slapping the preposition in front of the interroga...

In a movie that I watched recently, I heard- for aught I know, for aught I care. I work with a lot of native speakers, and they all told me it's not in formal or informal usage anymore. What's the ground reality? Answer Yes, it survived, but it is commonly spelled owt . The original spelling of aught , meaning anything , as used in the OP's question, is archaic, (Dictionaries: Oxford , Chambers ). An alternative meaning is "zero" (derived from nought .) This meaning is used when naming rifle cartridge sizes, and in Norfolk. citation needed , and see @WS2 's answer. Both meanings under discussion (anything and zero) are alternatively spelled ought . (Oxford dictionary: ought-3 aught-2 . Not in Chambers) It remains current in Northern English with the newer, apparently 19th century, spelling of owt (Again in Oxford but not Chambers.) There it retains the meaning of "anything" , opposite of nowt ("nothing".) As you can imagine, the pronu...

I read this sentence somewhere today, but I think that the of would fit better here than for , don't you think? The cause for the original problem will be analysed in the normal maintenance hours. I find myself sometimes thinking when I should use for and of and I cannot reach a conclusion. A few guidelines on this subject will be appreciated. Answer This ngram would suggest that cause for is not as frequently used as "cause of". "Cause for" seems to mean "a valid reason for", as in "cause for alarm". "Cause of" implies a causal relationship, as in "this is the cause of that". I personally can't think of many contexts where "cause for" would be appropriate other that "cause for alarm" and phrases similar to it. As Daniel says, similar phrases are "cause for concern", "cause for panic", etc

Is there a difference between pretension and pretentiousness ? Merriam-Webster gives the latter as one possible definition of the former. Is one more recent than the other? Is there any reason to use one rather than the other when both seem appropriate? Answer They're pretty much synonyms, but I would argue that the longer word is actually more readily understood by the general populace (at least in America), despite what NGrams may tell you. First of all, pretension is a more bookish term, so it would not surprisingly show up more in books. That does not mean it shows up more in speech or casual writing (especially online writing). Second, pretentiousness is a noun made from the adjective pretentious , which virtually everyone knows and understands. You will hear the word used everywhere from literary soirees to shopping mall get-togethers to trailer-park barbecues. Now, it is likely that most people would understand pretension if they stopped to think about it. They just wo...

Proofing a manuscript, I found this in the middle of a chase scene: Spotting an opening, I dived into it and was horrified to find it was a dead end. Is “dived” a valid past tense of the verb “dive”? I've always used “dove”, but I'm not certain what the use is in UK English. Cambridge shows “dived” as a valid past tense of “dive” , but which is more common? Do “dove” and “dived” have different shades of meaning, or are they used differently in different contexts? Answer Wiktionary indicates that dived is the standard British English past tense of dive : The past tense dove is found chiefly in North American English, where it is used alongside the regular (and earlier) dived , with regional variations; in British English dived is the standard past tense, dove existing only in some dialects. As a past participle, dove is relatively rare. (Compare Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary ; The American Heritage Dictionary ; The Cambridge Guide to English Usage )

What would be a single word to mean: "to do something positive to someone because they have done or said something positive to you", when you want to return the favour with something equal or better. I Googled it and I found some odd results like "forgive" and "sympathize". Answer Reciprocate does it for me. There is also requite . But this is much less common, and slightly archaic, and mainly only seen as a negative past participle in unrequited love . I wouldn't recommend it for general use.

Why is 'present perfect' present if it happened in the past? And why is it 'perfect'? This is a mystery for me. Why do we say perfect in tenses, for example present perfect continuous. present and continuous is very obvious but what is perfect?

I wrote a sentence for our web site that was submitted for proofreading. The proofreader "corrected" my sentence. I asked how sure he was that he was correct and that I was incorrect. He explained that there are two schools of thought on what's correct and he chose his way as the right way. I suggested that there were certainly two schools of thought: the right way and the wrong way. School One: There is a large number of companies. School Two: There are a large number of companies. Can you tell me which is the correct school of thought and why? Update. I think I should be able to reverse the sentence and still have it makes sense. When I attempt that, it works only with one of these sentences: The number of companies is large. The number of companies are large. This suggests to me that the correct sentence uses "is". Does this make any difference? Answer Garner in Garner's Modern English Usage (2003) belongs to School Two. He writes (p559): A. ... but a ...

Edit : I am looking for a particular linguistic term for this process (which here uses terminal palatalization to indicate such) of turning passive verbs like drink into active verbs like drench . I know one such term exists, because I have seen John Lawler use it, but I cannot now find his posts where he did so. The OED does not mention this general phenomenon in the related etymologies. For all I know, it may be older than OE, perhaps even going back all the way to PIE. English has a bunch of verb-pairs where the first one ends in a stop and the second in a palatal, usually with vowel-modification, like these: cling, clench drink, drench hang, hinge meng, minge (now dialectal) stink, stench tint, tinge wring, wrench What is going on there? It seems like some hidden regularity of some sort. What does it mean? For words that seem to be missing one of the pair, did those once exist? I’m thinking of words like quench : what happened to * quing ? Does this have anything to do with these ...

I cannot understand why there is "in" in the sentence "I grew up in the east coast..." - why it is not "on"? Google search provides results for both with quite high number of hits.

As a non-native speaker, couldn't find a way to find this clause on the web, and need either links or explanation. I often see this: This is too rigid a procedure. He is too good an ordinary worker. Is this equal to "of a" clause ( too rigid of a procedure )? What are other ways of using, besides "too X a/of a Y"? When did these constructs appear? This seems to appear quite often, but in the 14 years I was learning English at School and University, it hasn't been mentioned ever. Answer In UK English I usually hear "too good a." In US English you will find both "too good a" and "too good of a." There is still a preponderance of the former. The expressions are equivalent. As for the history of the phrase, look here .

I'm looking for a way to describe a small shop that sells single items to few customers, such as pieces of art, antiques, etc. Is there any umbrella term for this kind of business? Answer I'd suggest boutique 1.a. A small retail shop that specializes in gifts, fashionable clothes, accessories, or food, for example. 1.b. A small shop located within a large department store or supermarket. 2 A small business offering specialized products and services: an investment boutique; a health-care boutique.

One very common phenomenon in north-American English is T flapping when the T comes between two vowels (or semi-vowels, like the R sound) on an unstressed syllable. This "rule" is almost mathematical, I didn't hear any T pronounced as /t/ in this environment until I heard north-Americans say the word relative(s) . I went to youglish which gives you youtube videos according to some word and dialect, and so far all of the speakers from America say /ɹɛlətɪv/ with an un-aspirated /t/ sound. My questions are: why isn't the T flapped? does /ɹɛləɾɪv/ sound weird? are there other words which apply to the T flapping rule but the T isn't flapped? Thanks! After @Araucaria gave his answer, I decided to try more speakers, and here I found some: https://youtu.be/AchISJUKfH4?t=706 https://youtu.be/bS45Ml30h9g?t=279 https://youtu.be/tbuLHSzBzZk?t=2175 In conclusion, most of the Americans don't flap their T in "relative", they pronounce it either aspirated or n...

Today I saw an instance of a proper noun (Google) being used as a verb in the following question on EL&U: I read an article recently where the author used "substract" instead of "subtract". I'm more familiar with the latter word but after doing a bit of googling , it seems that both words are being used, … This reminds me a bit of the story made by Mitt Romney’s campaign in March. He made a slip of tongue by likening the shift of his boss’s political tactics to an "Etch A Sketch." “Despite Mitt Romney's big win in Illinois, his campaign is on the defensive after one of his senior advisers told CNN: "I think ... It's almost like an Etch A Sketch - you can kind of shake it up and we start all over again”. – NPR Mar 21, 2012 I saw the case of Blackberry being used as a verb too. Can I use “ Etch A Sketch ” as a verb to mean ‘flip flop’ in such a way as “My boss always etches a sketch his words”? Is it understood by many or few Americans?...

Is there any difference in usage between these two sentences? Which do you like best? Which do you like most? I've read there is a slight difference in usage - a subtlety - and would like to hear what native speakers have to say about it in 2014. Answer I don't know what you've read, but I can give you a native speaker's take on it. Which do you like best? I would use the above to ask for someone's advice on which they preferred of three or more choices, where the 'ranking' might go from least preferred to best. ( this one, not at all, these two are ok, this one is very nice, but this one I like best. ) In other words, good Most seems to me to connote a larger sample from which to choose. It is also asking more (to my way of thinking) for shades of interpretations instead of an authoritative opinion. Best limits the choices and the answer seems final. What kind of books do you like most? I can see an answer like, I like sci-fi and mysteries. However, I thi...

What are the little wells (dimples?) called that occur in a waffle. These correspond to the raised areas inside of a waffle iron. Answer The indentations in a waffle are called "pockets".

The meaning of cf. has already been addressed in this question , but not the right way to pronounce or translate it when reading aloud as has been done for i.e. and e.g. in this question . Can anyone enlighten me? If the answerers want to explain the particulars of the pronunciation of other abbreviations, they are welcome. Answer In addition to "compare with" you can also say "confer" but that's probably perceived as a little bit pedantic.

The Japanese have a term for something that appears simple but is actually very complex in detail: Shibui . It should be said that this is only one aspect of Shibui , as with many Japanese words/concepts. Is there a term for the opposite: something that appears hopelessly complicated, but in actuality is quite simple, whether this is because it follows a subjectively unknown pattern, or because of the subjective perspective of the person? Answer In OP's context, everything is either simple or complex , and for any given thing, either it's obvious which applies, or the appearance is deceptive. Things that both appear to be, and really are, simple are hardly worth mentioning. Nor is it normally worth saying that something which appears complex really is complex. So the only cases worth mentioning are things that look simple but are actually complex, and things that look complex but are actually simple. As others have noted, the first case is often called deceptively simple . ...

I was okay with the following sentence the first time I read it: "...a selection of films that explore..." Then I realized that the subject of this sentence is probably "a selection" and not "films". However, "...a selection of films that explore s " sounds klunky to me. Which is correct (or more correct)?

You have a person who has an incredible talent, whether it be cooking, writing, sports, whatever. This person briefly showed this talent but then is living their life without fulfilling their calling in life. I would like a noun and I would hope it would not only convey that the rest of the population is missing out on that person's talent too. Note: The Will Hunting comment is a good one. 1 out of 5 movies seem to be about this type of person.

First, this is not a dupe of: "Not bad either" versus "not bad neither" nor a dupe of: "Neither Michael nor Albert is correct" or "Neither Michael nor Albert are correct"? So on to my question... I'm not a native english speaker and there's something that I always find very strange when I read sentence containing the following construct: "and try not to be shocked or overreact if..." Isn't something using "neither/nor" better, like maybe the following: "and try neither to be shocked nor overreact if..." To me the first sentence can be interpreted in two ways: you should either try not to be shocked or you should overreact (wrong of course, this is not what the writer meant but in other case it is not that obvious that it is a wrong interpretation you should try not to be shocked and you should also not overreact while with the second sentence, there's no room for interpretation (once again, in this...

I want to use 'audience' in the following sentence. In what form should I use it? Is it a singular or plural noun? How the audience demotivate players in the NBA. How the audience demotivates players in the NBA. Answer Singular if you want to emphasise its homogeneity, plural if you want to emphasise its component parts.

Today in a UK court Mr Justice Cooke, in passing judgement over three disgraced cricketers, said The image and integrity of what was once a game but is now a business is damaged in the eyes of all, including the many youngsters who regarded you as as heroes and would have given their eye teeth to play at the levels and with the skills that you had. I understand that giving your eye teeth means that you want something a lot, but what is the origin of the expression? (As a native English speaker, I had always thought the expression was "hind teeth" — as in the ones at the back that are painful to extract. It seems that I was wrong in this.) Answer Eye-teeth I had thought the term was hind teeth as well, but eye teeth it is. Wikipedia says: In mammalian oral anatomy, the canine teeth , also called cuspids, dogteeth, fangs , or (in the case of those of the upper jaw) eye teeth , are relatively long, pointed teeth. ... In humans, the upper canine teeth (popularly called eye t...

Why is transferred written with two R's? I am a native speaker of Dutch, and in my point of view this isn't logical; there are other words like coloured and endeavoured that only have -ed added after the verb. Answer The verb was borrowed into late Middle English as transferren , either from Old French transfer(r)er or directly from Latin transferre . It was stressed on the second syllable, as it is for many speakers today. Verbs ending in stressed [ɜ:] (non-rhotic varieties) or [ɝ] (rhotic varieties) typically double the final r in forming the past tense and the participles: occur ~ occurred , infer ~ inferred . Transferred is simply following the same rule. The complete rules for doubling final consonants in this context are complicated and riddled with exceptions; I’ve mentioned only the one that is most relevant to this specific question. In general Middle English stress and vowel length are the most important factors, with doubling tending to occur after stressed...

I was struck today by the difference between the sentences: Ladies, are you ready to order? and Lady, are you ready to order? The first (at least in my idiolect) is clearly respectful, while the singular borders on disrespectful, yet the only surface difference is that one is singular, and the other plural. How did this come about, and are there other, similar words?

Is it correct to say: I don't know which boy you meet. For me which here makes sense but grammatically I think there is something wrong by using which to refer to the boy.

I can't think of the word to describe it. Something similar to "wanderer" or "roamer". It's often used to describe people that don't stay in one place... not "migratory"... Answer I think you're looking for nomadic , which describes a group (or person) that has no permanent home. Nomadic tribes often follow herds of game animals, for instance, so they would have seasonal camps.

I'm trying to write something for my blog, and I need an idiom that will replace me saying, "I've heard people say that all the time, it's the same old story."

Just unsubscribed a bunch of emails and found a lot of sites would finally prompt "unsubscribe successful". The meaning is very clear and the expression is very concise. However, a verb + an adjective seems not grammatically correct here. I saw a few would say "...have been successfully unsubscribed" though. So, why is this expression okay to use on most sites? Convenience overrides grammars? EDIT: Exception: ' Unsubscription ' found! Answer Unsubscribe was probably intended to be perceived as a noun here. Read that way, unsubscribe successful does not violate any rules of grammar. (It is admittedly not a grammatically complete sentence, but brief messages of this sort are generally not expected to be complete sentences.) Whether such new nominalizations should be embraced or avoided is a matter of opinion. People whose jobs require them to frequently refer to a process of unsubscribing are likely to find it convenient to use unsubscribe as a noun. On t...

I am new here and I don't really know how to post, so please forgive my mistakes. My question is this: Is a sentence like " everybody has to obey their own parents " nowadays completely acceptable under a grammatical point of view or it is still preferable, in written form, to use " everybody has to obey his/her own parents "? Thank you very much and sorry if this has been asked before. Answer As has been confirmed here in the discussion of previous posts, it is perfectly alright to use 'their' as a singular pronoun. This is especially helpful when you either do not know the gender of the person, or where something is written to people in general, as this is. The 'singular their' has a long and honourable history in English.

I want to write that I have handful of somethings. Which of these is the correct form? There is a handful of somethings. There are a handful of somethings. Are both correct? Answer Rimmer correctly identifies phrases like a handful of . . . and a pack of . . . as premodifying elements in a noun phrase, rather than as the subject of the clause and, for the same reason, Mustafa is right in saying that a number of . . . is followed by a plural verb. However, there is a tendency, particularly in speech, for There’s . . . rather than There are . . . to be used regardless of the number of the noun that follows, as in, for example, There’s a few people who believe my story. In the words of the ‘Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English’ (the stripped-down version of the magisterial Longman Grammar), ‘in conversation . . . the verb is likely to be singular even when the following notional subject is plural’. And as ‘The Cambridge Guide to English Usage’ says, [ There’s ] see...

I understand the word 'phobia' to mean an irrational fear of something, tracing its roots to the Greek word ῾φοβια᾽ associated with flight, dread, or terror. How then did this word ever come to embody 'dislike' or 'hatred', as in the word homophobia (I'm struggling to think of others... perhaps this says something)? I see that the word aversion seems to have similar issues, a word originally meaning to avert or avoid now somehow connoting a strong distaste or antipathy towards something... Thoughts? Answer Phobia: (Etymonline): "irrational fear, horror, aversion," 1786, perhaps on model of similar use in French, abstracted from compounds in -phobia, from Greek -phobia, from phobos "fear, panic fear, terror, outward show of fear; object of fear or terror," originally "flight" (still the only sense in Homer), but it became the common word for "fear" via the notion of "panic, fright" I think that the meaning...

Was it specifically mentioned as part of their teaching or they have just happened not to have killed anyone? Do I need have there? Answer You do need the have , but it’s because you need inversion: Was it specifically mentioned as part of their teaching or have they just happened not to have killed anyone?

Definite article with proper nouns, titles followed by a common noun Using the definite article with acronyms and initialisms When I listen to major news programs, often I notice that they seem to intentionally omit "the" before the name of the government organizations. For example: We contacted E.P.A. for comment but they refused our requests. or Others consider the actions of treasury to be detrimental to the economy. These just sound wrong to me. I think it should be "the E.P.A" or "the treasury". However I most often hear this on very credible news programs (The PBS News Hour and Frontline come to mind) so I am sure they know what they're doing... Is it proper to use "the" before the name of a government organization, or is it optional? Answer There are several reasons to drop the article. One is that some institutions, governmental or not, are never referred to using the definite article. Another is that the article can get dropped as a...

Why is PhD read as /piːeɪtʃˈdiː/ (from Oxford Dictionary ) and not, for example, like /fˈdiː/ , while diagraph ph is read as /f/ in Latin and Greek words? Why do we write Ph if not to represent the /f/ sound? There are questions about writing ( like this ) but not pronouncing. EDIT : Thanks for answers. To be clear. I asked this because of it is not the three letters P.h.D. Why we read it not as /ɛf diː/? Answer PhD (or Ph. D.) is a bit of a frozen expression or idiom. The expression doesn't abbreviate the English phrase "Doctor of Philosophy". If it did, then it would be something like "DP" or "DoP". Instead, PhD retains the structure of the medieval Latin Philosophiae Doctor , which dates from the 17th century . As to why the Latin abbreviation for "Philosophiae" was "Ph" rather than just "P"? "Philosophia" was a word borrowed into Latin from the Greek, and in Greek the word is spelled "φιλοσοφία",...

When I pronounce the phrase: "Look, it's the first day. I don't wanna be late." I think that the /t/ in the words "first" and "don't" can be deleted. Am I right? I'm talking about casual speech. Below is the phonetic transcription. I stressed the content words (the bolded words) without shifting stress for special meaning. I deleted the /t/ in both words, though. lʊk , ɪts ðə fɜrs deɪ . aɪ doʊn wʌ nə bɪ leɪt . Answer The dropping of /t/ or /d/ in English is technically known as alveolar plosive elision . This phenomenon is completely different from the substitution of a classical /t/ with a glottal stop. In cases where we use a glottal stop, the stop can be considered an allophone, in other words an alternative form of /t/. In the case of elision, there is no substitute sound. The sound disappears altogether from the word. Alveolar plosive elision As a rule, when the sound /t/ or /d/ occurs at the end of a syllable (and a morpheme bound...

What is the origin of the word earthling ? Are there other words with a similar meaning ( marsling , venusling )? Answer As reported on Etymonline : Old English yrþling "plowman" (see earth + -ling ); the sense of "inhabitant of the earth" is from 1590s. Earthman was originally (1860) "a demon who lives in the earth;" science fiction sense of "inhabitant of the planet Earth" first attested 1949 in writing of Robert Heinlein. Earlier in this sense was earthite (1825). However, I found this too: Ælfric (955–1020) Teacher :hwæt sægest þu yrþlingc hu begæst þu weorc þin

Why not brew wine and make beer? Non native speaker so I can't fully discern the difference. Thanks. Answer It seems to me that the difference has to do with the technical process. Beer is boiled, steeped, mixed with wort, cooked and so on. Liquor is distilled and wine simply ferments. Unless you boil and sweeten the wine with spices and such. Then, wine is mulled. Tea is brewed also because the process of infusing and boiling and steeping is part of what it is to brew.

The recent United States political cycle has been using the term "dog whistle" a lot. From a recent Rolling Stone headline: Trump's Assassination Dog Whistle Was Even Scarier Than You Think And their article: Stated differently: Trump puts out the dog whistle knowing that some dog will hear it, even though he doesn't know which dog. I assume that the meaning is something similar to double entendre where a statement can be interpreted a few different ways. But why use "dog whistle", specifically? And where did the term first originate? Answer It appears to be an expression of the late '80s according to journalist Willian Safire, but its origin and common usage is mainly Australian from the late '90s. The allusion is to sheep-farming where a farmer uses a whistle which is audible only to a dog. By analogy, a specific political message can be registered only by those to whom it is directed: Dog-whistle politics : According to William Safire, the te...

While reading a recent Ken Follet novel, I came across the following, spoken in a gay bar set in early sixties London: "I am queer as a clockwork orange, a three-pound note, a purple unicorn, or a football bat." Previous to this, I had thought that "clockwork orange" was a phrase made up by Anthony Burgess to describe something that is impossible as a title for his 1962 novel. Checking further, I found that Burgess had actually borrowed this phrase from something he supposedly overheard in a pub. From the 1986 introduction " A Clockwork Orange Re-sucked " I don’t think I have to remind readers what the title means. Clockwork oranges don’t exist, except in the speech of old Londoners . The image is a bizarre one, always used for a bizarre thing. “He’s as queer as a clockwork orange” meant he was queer to the limit of queerness. It did not primarily denote homosexuality, though a queer, before restrictive legislation came in, was the term used for a member o...