Blog

I have skimmed through the part on modals of a classic grammar book (Murphy's " Grammar in Use ") and picked up all the structures that look strange to me. Could you, please, explain how often they are used and how do they sound in the contemporary British and American English ? [Lately added] This page explains some of the usages: British and Am. English: Differences in usage 1) I should ... / I shouldn't ... to give somebody advice: —Is it cold? —Yes, I should wear a coat. (It is not a misprint! " I " refers here to another person.) I shouldn't stay up too late. You 'll be tired tomorow. 2) might to ask for permission: I have finished my work - might I go home? 3) will for present habits: Every morning I will get up early. I've tried everything - the car just won't start. 4) Using should after a number of adjectives (strange, odd, funny, typical, interesting etc.): It's strange that he should be late . He's usually o...

When I teach -ed endings I tell the students that there are three ways to pronounce it: /t/ (when the preceding sound is unvoiced, e.g. matched ) /d/ (when the preceding sound is voiced, e.g. played ) /ɪd/ (when the preceding sound is /t/ or /d/, e.g. hated ) However when I demonstrate this to students with the word phoned , I aspirate the final sound. To me it sounds more like a /t/ than a /d/. If I try to make a clear /d/ sound, it sounds unnatural and forced. Everything I've found says I should be pronouncing it with a /d/, but that's just not what I actually say. Is my pronunciation idiosyncratic, or is this common? (I'm from the south of England.) If it's common, what implications does that have for the way we understand and teach this pronunciation point? Note If the word following this begins with a vowel sound, and we link them, for example, phoned a lot of people , the final sound of phoned is clearly a /d/: /fəʊn də.../ Answer Short Answer The /d/ at the en...

I've recently noticed that a few people I know, all native American English speakers in their 50s-70s and originally from the Midwest, use "would have" and related forms when talking about factual events that happened relatively long ago. Here's a made-up example of what I mean: Upon seeing George Washington's house, one might say "This is where Washington would have lived." instead of "This is where Washington lived." Another example: "I would've been born in that hospital." as equivalent to "I was born in that hospital." This sentence, however, isn't an example: "I would have had lunch with her every day last week." It doesn't work because it's insufficiently far in the past. As @Cascabel notes, it's better to have real examples than made-up ones. So, I hopped on the phone and asked one of the "would have" users a history question (he's a baseball historian) without mentioning ...

My professor tells me that the word i.e should be written with a brace and quotations outside it For example: "(i.e)" is that the correct way? Answer It is not required, perhaps it is your professor's style. i.e., should be written with a period after each letter and should always be followed by a comma.

This is in very common use on the internet. I just read this: "[The] hotel employee walks in, I say "uh, puppy" and she just NOPEd the [heck] out of the room." This is often done by adding 'd to the word. Answer I think the term you are looking for is "verbification": Verbification, or verbing, is the creation of a verb from a noun, adjective or other word. Verbification is a type of functional shift. It is also a form of derivation, and may involve any of the various derivational processes. This is a process of conversion of a word to include more word-classes for the lexicon. This applies to any non-verb, even "proper nouns": Proper nouns can also be verbed in the English language. "Google" is the name of a popular internet search engine. To google something now means to look it up on the internet, as in "He didn't know the answer, so he googled it." That's a favourite, "google" is.

I want to use the following line in a poem: "Will he roll the dice, and follow it to Vegas?" A couple of things to note; firstly, obviously I'm using "roll the dice" in both a figurative/idiomatic sense (as in taking a risk), and in a somewhat more literal sense (painting the image of the person actually following the dice that have been rolled to Las Vegas). That being said, my confusion here is if I can get away with using "follow it" or if I need to say "follow them" .... As I've read online "dice" traditionally refers to more than one die (i.e., the plural of die), but in the modern usage, "dice" can also be used to refer to the singular (i.e., just one die). So, it seems like if I was referring to the image of just one die, then the way I phrased it could be correct. However, the image I'm trying to paint is the one usually associated with the phrase "roll the dice" (i.e., rolling two dice)... So cou...

Where a noun ends with the letter x , is it proper for the possessive form of the word to end with 's or simply ' ? Example 1: "It is Xerox' position that it owns the patent." vs. "It is Xerox's position that it owns the patent." Example 2: "The ox's tail was short." vs. "The ox' tail was short."

When are we meeting, dear, I am hungry? or What time are we meeting, dear, I am hungry? Please elaborate on the semantical differences. Answer The main difference is that the latter is really only answerable with some kind of wall-clock time answer, while the former can be more vague. This makes sense if you think about it. If the question is "What time ...?" then the answer would have to include a time , right? For example, if I ask a teammate, "When is our next game?" then "Next Tuesday" is a perfectly acceptable answer. However, if I were to ask, "What time is our next game" , then "Three PM." would be an acceptable answer (although he should probably include the "next Tuesday" part too, unless our games are usually on Tuesdays). However, both of those phrases read as two sentences to me. If I were writing them I'd put a question mark after the word dear and a period at the end. As formulated, they both kind of loo...

I have been singing a lot of children’s songs lately, and this afternoon in the car I noticed three songs that add an ‑o to the end of words: “He had many a mile to go that night before he reached the town-o ” from The Fox (no relation) “A rare bog, a rattlin’ bog, the bog down in the valley-o ” from The Rattlin’ Bog “ Day-o , me say day-o, daylight come and me wanna go home” from Day-o This is not used for engineering a rhyme. I had considered two other possibilities. One is that it is used to extend closed consonant sounds, but this obviously doesn't hold up for valley and day . My other theory was that it was for fitting meter, but this seems doubtful. You could substitute a comparable word to fit the meter ( village instead of town , for instance). Also, valley could easily be stretched to fit. And finally, in the song “Day‑o”, there is a part of the song where the ‑o is dropped, but otherwise the line is the same: “Day, me say day, me say day, me say day‑o...” Aside from...

This is a subquestion to my "And lead raptivity captive" question. As I understood from a comment by RegDwight, it was incorrect to ask: What mean raptivity and phrase "And lead raptivity captive"? Do I miss something or I incorrectly memorized the lessons of: Update: The anwers do not address my question Are the answers in given above link correct or not? Answer The main problem: you are missing the fact that it makes a difference whether the WH-word is the subject or the object in the sentence. Let's start with a sentence with no questions: John saw Mary yesterday. In this sentence, John is the subject and Mary is the object. Now, if someone doesn't know about John, they might ask: 1) Who saw Mary yesterday? This sentence has the structure that you are using, where the main verb comes after who . But this is true only when who is the subject. When it is the object, things are different — now let's imagine that the asker doesn't know about Ma...

Imagine yourself – a man – sitting next to someone you want to talk to – a woman – on a bus, train, plane, etc. After a while you say: 'One of us has to start talking / break the ice, don't they? / doesn't he? / doesn't she?'

While browsing the internet I found several cases in which people argue what the correct way to pronounce .gif is. There are two sides in this argument: People pronouncing it with a hard g as in gift . Argument for this is that since it is an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format it should be spelled as g in the word graphic . People pronouncing it with g as in giraffe . Apparently the creators themselves stated in the documentation for the file that it should be pronounced as JIF , as quoted from Graphic File Formats FAQ : Choosy programmers choose "gif" or "jif"? The pronunciation of "GIF" is specified in the GIF specification to be "jif", as in "jiffy", rather than "gif", which most people seem to prefer. The question is which side is right? Answer Wikipedia says: The Graphics Interchange Format (better known by its acronym GIF; /ˈdʒɪf/ or /ˈɡɪf/ ) is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987...

Does anyone use 'normalcy'? It is ridiculed in Britain as an American affectation, especially since there is a time-honoured word which means exactly the same thing i.e 'normality'. Answer The OED lists normalcy as a headword with "Chiefly U.S." There is a telling citation: 1929 G. N. Clark in S.P.E. Tract xxxiii. 417 If..‘normalcy’ is ever to become an accepted word it will presumably be because the late President Harding did not know any better. The earliest citations are from 1845, in a strictly mathematical sense (the condition of a line being normal [perpendicular] to another). Normality dates from a similar time, but has the sense of "what may be usually expected". British English has retained that distinction.

I appreciate your fantastic supports as always. When reading a text, I encountered this word: complacency And its synonyms are lined up as self-satisfaction, smug. Since I didn't know the word "smug", I looked it up the dictionary and found the following definitions: It seems to me the definition 2 and definition 3 are contradictory. Or does definition 2, where it says "giving an impression", means "giving deceptive" impression (though the quote by W.W. Jacobs below does not seem so at all)? For further additional info, according to Merriam-Webster Unabridged, "scrupulous" means. Thank you. Answer Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary (2003) gives three shorter but similar—and in this case quite helpful—definitions of smug : smug adj. smugger; smuggest {prob[ably] mod[ification] of L[ower] G[erman] smuck neat, fr[om] M[idle] L[ow] G[erman] smucken to dress; akin to O[ld] E[nglish] smoc smock} (1551) 1 : trim or smart i...

I could have asked this question personally to my respected colleague who gave me a valuable answer to the question, “Is the ‘tame the infinite becoming an idiom or a popular phrase,” which I posted yesterday, but I thought this deserves an independent question. He, the answerer gave me the comment saying, “(It’s) 10-4. Copy. That's a good example of how the phrase could be applied, and would be well-understood," to the question, “Can I say ‘the Palestinian territorial issues is an effort in trying to tame the infinite’, “which I added to the yesterday’s question. I saw the word “ 10-4 copy ” for the first time. So I searched for its meaning on Google, and found a certain clue from the following text in www.answerbag: “A lot of the 10 codes are different from city to city and state to state. For example a 10-50 in Indiana is a traffic accident, but in Texas it's a murder. I personally mix and match; sometimes I say "10-4", other times I say "clear ". I...

Federal agencies and Wal-Mart are investigating the charges; C. J.’s Seafood did not respond to The Times’s request for comment. In this statement, what is the effect of semicolon in the meaning and what would the change in meaning be if we used full-stop (period) instead of a semi-colon? I would like to know a general rule for how the meaning changes, how it would affect similar sentences, etc. If you know of tutorials on this subject, I'd be most grateful. Answer There's a lovely and beautifully self-demonstrating description of how punctuation marks work stylistically in Lewis Thomas's little piece on Punctuation . Here's the paragraph on semicolons: I have grown fond of semicolons in recent years. The semicolon tells you that there is still some question about the preceding full sentence; something needs to be added; it reminds you sometimes of the Greek usage. It is almost always a greater pleasure to come across a semicolon than a period. The period tells you tha...

We should find a Way of long peace instead of living just for today. On one hand, we have to prevent the community from coming apart and suffering the disasters caused by it, on the other hand, to find a way of long peace for the society. (my own translation of a Chinese article) An American friend told me that we should sift through more the original structure of the Chinese sentence in order to give a fluent translation. ALthough correct, it is awkard in English.The main problem, he says, is "on one hand..on the other hand". This is really a big problem for me, because in the article I am going to translate, there are abundant "on one hand..on the other hand". I am aware that it comes from English. But now in Engish it has become a cliche? Whereas in Chinese we desperately need it to clarify the logic in our thinking. It seems to me, "on the other hand", if used independently, is acceptable. But when being used together" with "on one hand"...

Cancelled or Canceled ? Which one is right? You have successfully canceled the registration or You have successfully cancelled the registration Answer The past tense of cancel is strictly cancelled in British English ( BrE ). In American English ( AmE ), however, it is spelled ( BrE spelt!) canceled . Note that cancelled is also acceptable in American usage. There are many other verbs whose past tenses and present participles follow a similar pattern: worship : worshiped ( AmE )/worshipped ( BrE ) • worshiping ( AmE )/worshipping ( BrE ) travel : traveled ( AmE )/travelled ( BrE ) • traveling ( AmE )/travelling ( BrE ) label : labeled ( AmE )/labelled ( BrE ) • labeling ( AmE )/labelling ( BrE ) libel : libeled ( AmE )/libelled ( BrE ) • libeling ( AmE )/libelling ( BrE ) devil : deviled ( AmE )/devilled ( BrE ) • deviling ( AmE )/devilling ( BrE ) There are some notable exceptions in which the last consonant is always doubled in the past tense and present participle. Examples:...

Are these two totally synonymous? Can one be used in place of the other anywhere? Are there any differences in nuance, or anything at all? Answer These two are not equivalent. Even though is used to introduce a condition which currently is true, while even if introduces a hypothetical condition that is not yet true. I'm going to the park even though it's raining. This means that it's raining right now, but I'm going to the park anyway. I'm going to the park even if it's raining. This means that it's not yet raining, but I will go to the park even if it starts to rain. Note that in this case the present progressive I'm going actually indicates a near future action.

This following sentence is puzzling me. Neither can I understand the meaning, nor can I reason the grammatical soundness of the sentence. Some symbols acquire a multitude of meanings, some widely shared, others personal, some contradictory, conflicted, or ambivalent . Please help understand the meaning and grammatical explanation.

From what I've learned, special names don't get definite articles. (I should admit that the use of articles in English is very tricky) For example, we say Apple but not the Apple to refer to the company. But I've seen in many places people use "the ipad" to refer to the tablet produced by Apple. for example, in the sentece which I've taken from wikipedia "The iPad has two internal speakers reproducing left and right channel audio located on the bottom-right of the unit." Why can't we simply say iPad? Do product names always take definite articles. Answer Names of countable physical objects, including manufactured goods, customarily accept an article: I bought an iPhone for my sister-in-law, but she wanted the Samsung Galaxy S III instead. The article is omitted if the subject is uncountable, e.g. She prefers Pepsi-Cola to Coke but She would rather have a [bottle of] Pepsi than a [bottle of] Coke. In fact, quite a large proportion of names take ...

I need to refer to the attribute of a button that describes whether it is enabled or disabled. "Enablement state" sounds awkward and clunky. Answer I take it you mean a word for whether or not a button is "grayed out", not for whether it has turned something "on" or "off". If "state" or "mode" are too general or in use, then I suggest availability , which could have values "enabled" and "disabled".

There's a reason "J" is worth 10 points in Word feud, it's a quite uncommon letter. According to Lewand, arranged from most to least common in appearance, the letters are: etaoinshrdlcumwfgypbvkjxqz Lewand's ordering differs slightly from others, such as Cornell University Math Explorer's Project, which produced a table after measuring 40,000 words. Here's a graph measuring the frequency of "J" in words: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:English_letter_frequency_(alphabetic).svg Here's a graph measuring the frequency of "J" in names: http://home.uchicago.edu/~jsfalk/misc/baby_names/images/initial_all.png Sure, there's a lot of words with a "J" in them (not many relatively), but there's very few words starting with "J". Yet, there's an abundance of names starting with "J". Here, I'll list as many as I can from the top of my head. Name starting with a J: Jack, Jackie, Jackson, Jill, Janet...

I need to know a word which means: "negligence shown by a person in performing a duty, or a responsibility, or any given task." or, "A person who is negligent in performing their duties/responsibilities." One possible choice is the use of word "delinquent". Is there any other word? Please provide the usage of suggested word in a sentence also. Answer The words you're looking for are: dereliction (of duty) From oxford : The shameful failure to fulfil one’s obligations As in, "the prosecution team were guilty of dereliction of duty for failing to disclose evidence" and derelict From oxford : chiefly North American Shamefully negligent of one’s duties or obligations EDIT: Although derelict does have other meanings, as noted in the comments.

Chutzpah is a term common to both Hebrew and Yiddish, and has been imported into English, at least for Jews. It means approximately audacity, nerve, insolence. Is chutzpah also used by non-Jewish English speakers? I think I have only seen it once outside of Jewish publications / communities. Answer Yes. I was brought up knowing the word, not coming from a Jewish background at all. I don't think this is uncommon. From Wikipedia : Judge Alex Kozinski and Eugene Volokh in an article entitled Lawsuit Shmawsuit, note the rise in use of Yiddish words in legal opinion. They note that chutzpah has been used 231 times in American legal opinions, 220 of those after 1980. In the movie Haider (2014) by Vishal Bharadwaj , a modern-day interpretation of Hamlet set in the backdrop of Kashmir conflict, the protagonist uses the word chutzpah to describe India and Pakistan's way of treating the people of Kashmir since the beginning of the conflict.

I am not sure about what is right: I can start my career at an international company. or I can start my career in an international company. For me at sounds appropriate?

I'm editing an essay about the two founders of a software company, and there is a sentence that currently reads: They have made it their live's work..." This looks and feels wrong, but I'm having a brain fart and need some help. Should it be: Their life's work Their live's work Their lives work Their lifes work What's the correct way to write this? Please reconsider opening this question, which was closed for being off topic. The "specific source of concern in the text" has indeed been identified, it's been highlighted clearly and several alternatives have been offered by the OP. And as FumbleFingers commented: ...it seems pretty obvious from the comments here that we're not dealing with a trivial issue that could have a single obvious answer .

My question was retitled: What is this function called? Originally my title was: How is this function called? I still think that my version was correct; I always state such questions this way. Which one is really correct? Answer What do you call...? should be answered by a noun. Q. What do you call your dog? A. Lucky How do you call...? should be answered by an action. Q. How do you call your dog? A. By whistling

Consider this sentence: You're missing posts only available to members. I think it should actually be You're missing the posts available only to members or at least You're missing the posts only available to members The second sounds the best to me, but friends say the first one sounds best. This is going to go on a website for the people to see. I do not know how to justify it, but I think there should be a the before posts . Does taking it out make it okay? If so, can someone please explain? Answer Although the modifier "only available to members" makes "posts" more specific and thus would seem to require the definite Article, it still hasn't made the Noun completely specific. You can say "posts" is halfway from being general to being specific. This is often confusing. Consider this other "middle" example. This is correct: Ex. I like people who have initiative. (not all people, but still general) In your example, not adding an...

What do you call a man who loves and tries to have many sexual relationships with girls and usually doesn't fall in love with any of them? To clear what I'm looking for, Suppose a guy at work/university who tries to have sexual relationship with many girls and changes his choice continually one after another! Answer I suggest Lothario defined by Wikipedia defined by as an unscrupulous seducer of women . It's from the name of such a character in Nicholas Rowe's 1703 tragedy The Fair Penitent dictionary.com adds the definitions rake, libertine and synonyms Romeo, Don Juan, Casanova . The Office Romeo is a well-worn term, but I don't often hear Romeo on its own. To my ear, Don Juan and Casanova have become rather quaint 'literary' clichés much overused by the mass-media, but somehow Lothario still seems to have a certain freshness. Maybe using it gives the impression you're well-read, rather than getting all your words from popular tv dramas.

A small number of words used in English have the derivational suffix "-ker" (maybe actually "-tiker"?), which appears to attach to words ending in "-sis". The only one I can remember off the top of my head is eidetiker = "one who is eidetic" (cf. eidesis ), but I'm certain I've heard other instances. Two questions: Where does this suffix come from? It feels rather German to me, but I don't know any German, so I'm just spitballing here. If you are a native speaker of English, do you feel that this suffix is productive today? A little while back ( here ), I used (coined?) the word "psychokinetiker" to mean "one who has the ability of psychokinesis", so clearly I feel that it's productive, but I suspect I might be idiosyncratic in this respect.

I asked my bank to close my account on 12th of May. Also I expect the account to be closed [?] 12th of May . What preposition should be there? I think about by or due. Also if I want to ask someone a question: What date was your account closed [missing preposition?] Answer If you mean that you expect the account to be closed no later than 12 May, then the preposition you need is by . The preposition to use in the question would normally be on : ‘On what date was your account closed?’, but you could also say simply ‘When was your account closed?’

There is a saying commonly used in Turkish, which goes something like: "serving the syrup according to the arteries" (quite literally translated). The meaning behind it is to adapt what you are saying/doing so that it fits the audience and does not irritate or annoy them. Are there any counterparts in English that convey the same or a similar meaning? I seem to recall that there was one such saying I learned at some point, something with "sail" and "wind". PS: If the meaning of the original saying does not make immediate sense, think along the lines of syrup being very sweet and heavy, or somewhat lighter and watered-down. And if you have someone that's not well trained and have clogged arteries a heavy-syrup might not go down very well, so you adapt what you serve. (That's how I make sense of the saying, at least) Answer Perhaps trim one's sails to the wind make changes to suit one’s new circumstances. The phrases are also used to mean to per...

Is there one trick that is the oldest? I understand the Oxford definition of the idiom but when was it first used and what did it refer to?

Was a little surprised I couldn't find a previous question asking about the phrase "Ain't Seen Nothing Yet". I try to decode its meaning every time I hear the song of the same name by Bachman Turner Overdrive. If you process each word by itself it seems (to me) that the message is "You have not seen nothing; therefore, you have seen something"; but I don't think this is the intent of the phrase. Maybe I've over-analyzed this too much? The addition of "yet" even further complicates things. Music Lyrics snipplet for the unmusical: I met a devil woman She took my heart away She said, I've had it comin' to me But I wanted it that way I say that any love is good lovin' So I took what I could get mmh, mmh, mmh She looked at me with them brown eyes And said, You ain't seen nothin' yet B-B-B-Baby, you just ain't seen n-n-n-nothin' yet Here's something that you're never gonna forget B-B-B-Baby, you just ain't...

I’d like all of you to please consider the following sentence: It must be him with whom you enjoy doing your assignments, not me . I have known that after 'to be' verb pronouns words take the subjective form. For example: It is he who was absent yesterday. So, can I say that the first sentence is erroneous? Would it be correct to write It must be he with whom you enjoy doing your assignments, not I .

I recently learned on the brink in context of to teeter on the brink of disaster . Now, when I want to mention that something is marginal or borderline I remember on the brink . This question is on the brink of off-topic. The testimony is on the brink of truth. Are these acceptable, or does on the brink only refer to negative circumstances ? Note: The latter example works very well in my native language whereas the first one is awkward. Answer Your first example is grammatically dubious ( off-topic is an adjective, which is uncomfortable in the situation), but on the brink of being off-topic is unexceptionable. The second example is interesting. I would regard on the brink of as a metaphor rather than an idiom, meaning 'one step more would fall into'. If this is right, on the brink of truth is difficult to understand; you don't stumble into telling the truth. On the brink of falsehood is clear precisely because it is possible to push the truth to the limit, and also...

Where did the word "umpteenth" come from, and why is it a "teen", if it is supposed to represent a very large number? Answer Umpteenth comes from umpty , meaning an indefinite number. Etymology Online says "umpty" is derived from "Morse code slang for "dash," influenced by association with numerals such as twenty, thirty, etc." And I think the "teenth" insert is to make the "th" easier to pronounce for the ordinal formation, but it might be also to add emphasis by way of lengthening the word. Also, it might be because of the teen/ten connection I mentioned in my comment above: an indefinite number of tens. And this source suggests that Morse code slang word "ump" is imitative in origin, so I gather that means that that's what a dash sounds like in Morse code. It occurred to me that this means something like _th times, then, or the equivalent of nth times (to the nth degree?)—although a single dash is...

This question seems to indirectly ask the question, but the upvoted answer says "the actual sentence is...". So my question is this: Are commands considered to be grammatically sound, complete sentences in the English language? Some examples: Go. Add a note. Do work. Answer The upvoted answer there actually says: The subject (you) and helping verb (can) are implied So yes, the above would be complete sentences. See also this question, in particular the upvoted and accepted answer for shortest complete sentence: Go People can nitpick about conversational colloquialisms and academic prose but most uses of a command will be understood as complete.

"I would feel happy if we become friends." (become) or "I would feel happy if we became friends." (became) or "I would feel happy if we were to become friends." (were to become) Update: or "I would feel happy if we could become friends." (could become) Perhaps related, I noticed a comment on another answer saying that imperatives are always in present tense. Is "become" an imperative in the examples above? Answer You are suggesting a conditional (hypothetical) type of pairing. The usual example starts with the if phrase: If we were to become friends, I would be very happy. Reversed, it still holds it's form. I would be very happy if we were to become friends. The other sentences are certainly understandable, and basically mean the same thing. But there are some guidelines. I will be happy if we become friends. I would be happy if we became friends. I don't know anything about the need for imperatives. The imperative might ...

What do you call a person who keeps reminding others of one’s favors for them? When you fight with a person who then keeps telling you I did that I did this for you and so on. I want to tell them that it's inappropriate to remind others of the favors you did for them, especially if I appreciate those favors and try my best to return them.

I would like to know how to use the verb to be and its past participle. For example: The rain is gone. Is is present perfect tense here?

My wife from Wisconsin and her family use the phase "it's a horse apiece". This is used in place of something like "it doesn't matter either way" or "both are the same". Where does this come from? Answer It dates at least from the late 19th century, as found in the St. Paul (Minnesota) Daily Globe ( March 27, 1893 ): "What did Emperor William say to you when you approached him, Kelly?" asked McKenna. "He didn't say a word until I approached him," answered Kelly. "Then he told me to keep quiet because the president of France was listening to our conversation. I didn't care a d—m for the president of France, so I said to William: 'He can't hurt me. Let him listen. It's a horse apiece , for I'm the King of China.' When I saw the Prince of Wales I asked him for a chew of tobacco, and kicked because it wasn't the brand I was used to chewing. He tried to get back at me by saying no man of my nat...

Both are in dictionaries . I've heard people insist "requester" is correct for a person who requests something, and that "requestor" is wrong there, leaving me to wonder how it is used. Requestor happens to be marked as an error in my browser's spellchecker. COCA for requester/requestor indicates that requester is used for people and requestor is used in technical senses like a part of a program. A google ngram for requester/requestor shows that requester is also a bit more common. Some online discussions suggest requestor may have a meaning in law or be more common there, but I can't find that. What's the difference in usage? Should requester be used for people, or is it more nuanced than that? Note: These related questions discuss "creator" and "updater" and discuss -er and -or endings overall . Answer With one exception 1 I don't think there is a nuanced difference here but rather multiple formations of the same...

ᴛʟᴅʀ : Which regions say the word experiment with its stressed syllable sounding like the word spare , and which regions say that word’s stressed syllable like the word spear ? PLEASE NOTE: This is NOT a survey question! When it comes to pronouncing the word experiment , there appear to be two dominant North American pronunciations that are rather distinct from one another. Many people have the SQUARE vowel, as though the word spare were embedded in it. Discounting the rhotic, this appears to be the FACE vowel. (But sᴇᴇ ʙᴇʟᴏᴡ if you don’t merge merry–marry–Mary .) Some people have the NEAR vowel, as though the word spear were embedded. Discounting the rhotic, this appears to be the FLEECE vowel. (I’ve used Wells lexical sets here instead of the International Phonetic Alphabet in the hopes of making this question more accessible to a broader readership.) Is there any geographic data on the distribution of these various different pronunciations? If not, can we surmise or infer any...