terminology - What term can be used to describe Yoda's speech?


What is Yoda's speech called? Is there a particular name for it (such as "dangling...")?




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

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First floor vs ground floor, usage origin

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meaning - What is synonyme of "scale"?

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punctuation - Is "et al" always accompanied by a period?

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grammatical number - "My wide range of abilities have/has helped"

Please consider the following: My wide range of abilities have helped my team succeed. My wide range of abilities has helped my team succeed. Microsoft Word identifies the first as a subject-verb agreement error. However, from my perspective, the "wide range" is not the subject, but rather a descriptor of the abilities. Are either of these sentences wrong, and is one preferred? Answer In such cases, ‘. . . when there are agreement options, the singular verb seems to invoke the set, whereas the plural verb makes us aware of the individual items in it’ (The Cambridge Guide to English Usage’). That leaves the choice of both available to the writer, depending on the aspect to be emphasised.
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