meaning - "I can't seem to" vs "I can't"


I am wondering why would someone say "I can't seem to" instead of simply saying "I can't". Is there any specific difference between the two? Is the former usage informal? Is it correct to say that the following two phrases are equivalent?



I can't seem to do something.
It seems that I can't do something.



Some sample sentences:



I can’t seem to subscribe to a Google Reader ‘starred items’ feed that I’ve created.
I can't seem to stop arguing with my partner.
I can't seem to make friends.
I can't seem to transfer my videos directly from one playlist to another.
Client: I can’t seem to find the search box, can you please make sure it’s working? Me: The search box is in the top left hand corner of every page. Client: Is that on your left or my left?




Answer



The use of seem to is usually a hedge, or a softener. The examples above are suggesting that the person feels they should be able to do something but cannot find the right way to do it successfully. The same person wouldn't say, "I can't seem to speak Korean" because they have no reasonable expectation that they should be able to speak Korean.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

What is the origin of the phrase shit eating grin ? How did it come to mean showing smugness or self-satisfaction of an individual's actions? Answer From the Urban Dictionary: ...these uses are documented in the Oxford English Dictionary no earlier than 1957 There have been similar expressions used quite far back: In Book XXI of his History of Rome, Livy describes a Carthaginian sect of coprophages, the risus faecivorus, or shit-eating grin, being commonly displayed by its adherents. Although, its origin is undetermined, they may have been incidents which caused the invention of this phrase. Below is an excerpt: "1944 Jrnl. Nerv. & Mental Dis. XCIX. 959 Among demented patients in advanced stages of their illness,..it is not rare to see some of them grasp their own feces, chew them and eat them often with great pleasure and satisfaction (coprophagia).
Read more

First floor vs ground floor, usage origin

Ground floor – First floor: In British English, the floor of a building which is level with the ground is called the ground floor. The floor above it is called the first floor, the floor above that is the second floor, and so on. In American English, the floor which is level with the ground is called the first floor, the floor above it is the second floor, and so on. (Collins COBUILD English Usage) Though there are exceptions to the above-mentioned usage,( and exceptions are not the issue here) in public buildings in the U.S., for instance, it’s also possible to call the street-level floor the ground floor, like in Britain, but how come that in the UK and Europe the ground level floor and the first floor are respectively referred to as the first floor and the second floor in the U.S. (and so on for higher floors) . Was it a custom imported into the U.S. from a different culture? Related: "Ground floor" vs. "first floor" .
Read more

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 ...
Read more

pronunciation - Where does the intrusive R come from in “warsh”?

My grandmother, who grew up in western Pennsylvania, pronounced wash and Washington with an intrusive R : “warsh” and “Warshington.” Where does the intrusive R come from in that dialect? It doesn’t seem to be produced by the same mechanism that changes law and order to “lawr and order” in non-rhotic dialects (plus, my grandmother’s dialect was rhotic, if I recall correctly). Answer According to John Kelly of the Washington Post ( Catching the Sounds of the City ), he claims: "warsh" is the predominant characteristic of what linguists call America's midland accent. The accent can be found in the swath of the country that extends west from Washington, taking in Maryland; southern Pennsylvania; West Virginia; parts of Virginia; southern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; most of Missouri; and Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, much of Kansas and west Texas. With the help of Barbara Johnstone, of Carnegie Mellon University , he traces it back to Scotch-Irish immigrants at ...
Read more

Abbreviation of "Street"

I know that Street is abbreviated as St . But does the t in St represent the first t or the last t in Street ? Drive is abbreviated as Dr , which means it could be the first t , but Road is abbreviated as Rd , which means it could be the last t , if we were following the same pattern. (Please note that this question is not opinion based. By looking at the patterns of other common abbreviations we can conjecture as to, or even deduce, the origin of St .) Answer The "t" in "st" should be taken as the first "t" of "street." Consider that abbreviations of common nouns (especially in the domain of roadways) beginning with a consonant-vowel pair usually take the first consonant and the last consonant (or strategic consonants which appear throughout), as evinced by: road --> rd lane --> ln point --> pt cove --> cv view --> vw highway --> hwy parkway --> pkwy boulevard --> blvd doctor --> dr Abbreviations of common nou...
Read more

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...
Read more

meaning - What is synonyme of "scale"?

What is the meaning of the word "scale" in both cases? http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/scale I couldn't find the appropriate meaning in the dictionary. “For any new table reservations product, no matter how good it is, it’s very hard to get businesses to adopt the product at scale for two reasons. First, it is hard to scale a sales team without massive funding. Answer The word scale can have many meanings and can act as both noun and verb. Source 1 In your case, for understanding the meaning of at scale in the first sentence, see this thread . In the second sentence, it is being used as a phrasal verb ( Source 2 ) and in this context, it means to increase the size of the sales team .
Read more