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I tried to find a single word that means "most important", but I couldn't. I want it to be able to express what's missing below: If you get hurt, the _ thing to do is to stay calm. It would need to describe something as being the absolute, single most important thing as opposed to just very important. I did find the word "quintessential", but I think that word also has another meaning which is used more frequently. I thought about making up my own, but I couldn't find a prefix that means "most". I feel kind of silly, but I think I have been looking for a word based on a concept that doesn't exist in English. I was looking for a word that could never be used to describe two things as both being the most important. I think some of these words, like 'imperative,' express necessity as opposed to importance, but I may be wrong. The word 'key' expresses importance, but it, like 'important,' could be used to refer to mult...

How did this phrase originate grammatically? I’m especially interested in the fragment “for the trees”. See http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/see_the_forest_for_the_trees for its definition. Answer In English, this saying goes back at least to the 16th century: 1546 J. HEYWOOD Prov. II. iv. (1867) 51 Plentie is nodeintie, ye see not your owne ease. I see, ye can not see the wood for trees. — Oxford English Dictionary This is for in the sense of “on account of”, “because of”, which goes back as far as Old English. (“ for ”, Online Etymology Dictionary ) You can read the saying as: Cannot see the forest because of the trees.

What is the difference in meaning of "frustrated at" and "frustrated with" used in sentences like He is frustrated with me or He is frustrated at me When is each of these sentences above are used? Answer Strictly speaking there isn't much of a difference between the two. If you interchanged one for the other no one would correct you. That being said, when placed side-by-side, there is a subtle distinction between them. Being frustrated "at" is directing the emotions toward the recipient. Being frustrated "with" is directing the emotions elsewhere. It is a deflection so small that it requires a heavy emphasis to even notice it. The primary use for the distinction is to associate the perceived solution being something inclusive or exclusive. If someone is frustrated at you they probably think the solution is to remove you from the equation. If someone is frustrated with you they are more likely to think of the situation as the problem — not ...

What is the different between abusive , invective and vituperative ? In the following definitions from Oxford, the last two both contain abusive , which makes me hard to distinguish them. Abusive : Extremely offensive and insulting. Invective : Insulting, abusive, or highly critical language Vituperative : Bitter and abusive The only thing I can say about invective is that it is used only in words, not actions. Answer The way to tell the last two apart is that, these days, "invective" is almost always used as a noun (as it is in the definition you cited). In older days it apparently was used as an adjective. "Vituperative" is always an adjective. As commenters have noted, the noun form is "vituperation". One very rarely hears either spoken. Few Americans know these, and fewer still are willing to speak such a five-syllable word in public for fear of being thought erudite or even pedantic. You could refer to a person as "abusive", but without f...

They clearly look different and they don't have that much in common. Taxonomically, they also belong to different families

I am looking for a word that has a similar meaning to "adjacent," except referring to time instead of space. For example, maybe I'm at a film festival and I'm watching three movies in a row, and I want to refer to the three "adjacent" films. "Subsequent" gets close to the meaning I want, but that word focuses on one thing following another in time, whereas I would like a word meaning "next to," either before or after. Answer How about "consecutive"? Alternatively, "back-to-back".

Which of the following is most correct? The distance of the shortest path must not be higher than 10km. The distance of the shortest path must not be greater than 10km. The distance of the shortest path must not be bigger than 10km. Or is there an even better word? Answer As height is not being mentioned here, but rather distance on a horizontal scale, "higher" would be inappropriate. "Bigger" refers to size, not magnitude, and therefore, in this case, is also inappropriate. It's inappropriate because "distance" cannot be measured in size, but in magnitude. "Great length" not "big length". That leaves, "greater" which is correct. A better phrasing could be: The distance of the shortest path must not be more than 10km.

I know that when you introduce a statement with 'if,' you are speaking in the subjunctive and therefore use 'were' instead of 'was' (e.g., "If I were to do this thing, something else would happen."). And the same is true if a statement is introduced with 'wish' (e.g., "I wish it were warmer."). As it is if you begin with 'as though' (e.g, "He said, as though it were cold."). But it doesn't seem appropriate to use 'were' in all cases of uncertainty (e.g., you wouldn't say "I thought it were cold."). Does saying you thought something was the case simply not qualify as an uncertainty, meaning you shouldn't use the subjunctive? Or is there some subtler logic behind when the subjunctive form is used in English? Answer Subjunctive form is an attitude, not a defined structure. That is why we call it the subjunctive mood . The English language has an ill-defined grammatical structure to denote ...

What is the grammatical name given to, and the function of, the part of the sentence below in bold? Maneuvring a tanker is likewise a daunting challenge.

I'm not a native english speaker, so even though I'm decently proficient at it, I don't really "know the rules" sometimes, and this is one that's been confusing me for a long time. Which one is correct in each sentence? If the movement [was/were] to continue uncorrected, the tower would one day topple. If I [was/were] rich, I would buy a yacht. NOTE: I care not only about the case of "I", but also "she", "them", "it", etc, as in the example of the tower. Would it be any different if instead of the tower, it'd be me who'd topple if uncorrected? I'm pretty sure it's "were" in both cases. That's what they taught me, I think. I started to doubt when I saw a lot of "was", but it sounded like the typical intentional mistake used "stylistically". ("If I was a rich girl...") Then I saw it some more and thought it came down to an American/British English difference (I ...

This cropped up when I was in a conversation with a friend. I guess fatal must talk of something which has necessarily resulted in death, while lethality is more about potential to cause death. Yet I am not convinced by this explanation, because lethality is associated with specific agents of death, like injection, dosage of medicine, weapons, etc. Could someone pin the exact difference in usage between these words? Are the following sentences alright, for instance? He has been diagnosed with a lethal type of cancer. He died after getting hit by the fatal weapon. Answer Your understanding is already close to the mark. There's a discussion of the synonyms for fatal in the American Heritage Dictionary: Fatal describes conditions, circumstances, or events that have caused or are destined to cause death or dire consequences: a fatal illness. Deadly means capable of killing: a deadly poison. Mortal describes a condition or action that produces death: a mortal wound. Lethal refe...

I had an English exam today. One of the questions was fill in the gaps. It was like: Doctors diagnosed him with/ for hyperactivity. So should the gap be with or for ? I checked Google and there are a lot of examples of each. Answer Diagnosed with is by far the most frequent and it is what I, as a speaker of British English, would use. The Corpus of Contemporary American English has 3,215 records for diagnosed with and 20 for diagnosed for . I haven’t looked at the contexts in which diagnosed for is used, but they clearly must be quite exceptional.

Consider the sentence: "She sees him not so much as her uncle as her friend." Is this sentence correct? I feel something is missing, or perhaps I am disturbed by the extra 'as'. Compare with: "He is not so much her friend as (he is) her uncle." What do you suggest? Answer ‘She sees him not so much as her uncle as her friend’ is a perfectly normal English sentence. So, too, is ‘He is not so much her friend as her uncle’. If you want to insert he is between as and her uncle , you can, but it's not necessary.

I once took a multiple choice exam where there was a section with all possible answers being made up of a single word, an -ly suffix adverb followed by a comma at the beginning of the sentence. According to my own judgement, I answered correctly, but for some reason I failed that portion. What do you call this type of sentence? Are there in-depth resources about this topic so that I won't fail again when faced with the same problem? Answer Sentences like these use disjuncts A specific type of disjunct is the sentence adverb (or sentence adverbial), which modifies a sentence, or a clause within a sentence, to convey the mood, attitude or sentiments of the speaker, rather than an adverb modifying a verb, an adjective or another adverb within a sentence. Here are some examples (note: the disjuncts that follow are 'sentence adverbs'): Honestly, I didn't do it. (Meaning "I'm honest when I say I didn't do it" rather than "I didn't do it in an hones...

I see some domain names have "icanhaz" in them. I think there must be some story behind it. Do you guys know? Answer It's part of the Lolcats meme, originally given as "I can has cheezburger" .

I have a malfunctioned speaker, its sound does not come out normally but is like being stuck, which word(s) could I use to describe a speaker with defected sound? Thanks in advance. Answer I would be tempted to describe the sound the speaker makes. There are lots of ways a speaker could be broken, The sound could be: tinny cracked distorted warped garbled

I know I learned the difference between the usage of farther and further in school, but I can never remember where each one should be used. Can someone help me out here? Answer English originally had "further" as the comparative form of "fore" and "farrer" as the comparative of "far." "Farther" came later, presumably as a back-formation, and has been interchangeable with "further" throughout most of the history of the written language. The differentiation between "further" and "farther" seems to have been invented ca. 1900 by grammarians. It's not a distinction that has ever been widely accepted, and it's not worth fighting to maintain it because it doesn't enrich the language. Because it has never been a natural part of the language, there is not widespread agreement on what criterion should be used to distinguish them: figurative versus literal, or addition versus distance. There is no clea...

[a] It makes the tree grow. [b] I never heard him speak. I’m wondering why causative and sense verbs ( make, hear ) license bare infinitives for their complement, instead of taking to infinitives? What semantic difference is there between bare and to infinitives? I glimpse a clue that this adjective complement is “more immediately or directly visible (CGEL,p.263)” in ‘she looked happy ’ than in ‘she looked to be happy ’; to infinitives have meaning of modality, change, and potentiality (CGEL, pp.174, 1242, 1243). And I guess those verbs would take bare infinitives to denote concurrence of matrices and complements' actions. But I’ve not found any accounts of this. Why do they license bare infinitives? (I've read the difference between their taking infinitive and gerund, in ELL and CGEL (p.1236-7): the verbs have the "whole event" of the infinitives and "a segment of" the gerund.) Answer It was not always thus...see the following http://www.kingjamesbible...

What does actually "I am not feeling up for it" mean? Is it ok to use this phrase when somebody ask you to do lunch sometime and you actually do not want to go but want to be polite? If you actually do not want to give the option of doing Lunch another time, what is the best way to say "no" politely without hurting this person's feelings?

Why is it "your Majesty", but "my Lord"? Answer First, some etymology. I'll try to keep it short. Lord has deep Germanic roots. Etymonline says : lord M.E. laverd , loverd (13c.), from O.E. hlaford "master of a household, ruler, superior," also "God" (translating L. Dominus , though O.E. drihten was used more often), earlier hlafweard , lit. "one who guards the loaves," from hlaf "bread, loaf" + weard "keeper, guardian, ward." Majesty was borrowed, ultimately from Latin and together with its meaning. Etymonline says : majesty c.1300, "greatness, glory," from O.Fr. majeste "grandeur, nobility," from L. majestatem (nom. majestas ) "greatness, dignity, honor, excellence," from stem of major (neut. majus ), comp. of magnus "great." Earliest Eng. sense is of God, reference to kings and queens (late 14c.) is from Romance languages and descends from the Roman Empire. W...

What is the word for someone trying to seem/be deep and intelligent, but really they are shallow, and not at all being insightful. Pedant is about rules, so that is disqualified, the closest I could find is pseudointellectual, but that feels like cheating and clumsy as it is a simple compound word. Answer It's not common, but sciolist seems to have the required definition. One who exhibits only superficial knowledge; a self-proclaimed expert with little real understanding. I prefer this to sophist, which I think has a suggestion of deceit rather than just ignorance or error.

But if you insist there be someone being judgemental, it's you,not her. (Is that correct, or I should use “there is”, and why thank you!)

As a non-native English speaker without a classical education, it took me quite some time to appreciate the "e.g." and "i.e." abbreviations. What is wrong with "f.e." ("for example") and "t.i." ("that is")? Answer It certainly wouldn't have been impossible for some alternate history version of English to have ended up with those abbreviations. However, we need to consider the things that lead to abbreviations happening at all. The need for them has to be relatively common and they have to actually shorten significantly. If neither of those is true, nobody will bother to create the abbreviation. To take root the need has to be relatively widespread. There is also a tipping point effect; up until a certain point the greater likelihood is that the abbreviation will just die out, but beyond that point so many people are using it that it becomes self-sustaining (the same as with any other term). For the same reason, an abbrevi...

(Circled in red) Is there an official name for the portion of road between the road and an exit? What is it called? Answer Gore (road) : A gore, gore point, or gore zone is a triangular piece of land found where roads or rivers merge or split. When two roads merge, the area is sometimes referred to as a merge nose . Gores on freeways in the United States and Canada are frequently marked with stripes or chevrons at both entrance and exit ramps. the term is more commonly used among "insiders," such as road construction crews, police, traffic engineers, and so on. (Wikipedia) Gore : a triangular tract of land, especially one lying between larger divisions . (Random House Dictionary).

See the linked question on Math SE: https://math.stackexchange.com/q/1781353/187867 The OP and others were confused about whether "the number of people who do not know an odd number of people" refers to People who know an even number of people, or People for whom the number of people they do not know is odd. I'm aware that option 1 is the correct choice, and I answered the question without thinking twice. But someone whose first language wasn't English had no idea how to interpret it, and I attempted to explain why option 1 was correct. My attempt was poor. Can anyone here do better? Answer You knew it was true because of your background; you understand the question in the context it is given. Thus while there is nothing conclusively guiding you to one interpretation or the other in the grammar and syntax itself, you intuit the probable meaning based on the grammatical and syntactical formulations common to the context of the question. Your past experience informs y...

In a few days, I have to do a class presentation project about the 1920s Harlem Renaissance. I want to say that the movement's original name was the "New Negro Movement," but I'm not sure if that's okay. I'm white, and I really don't want to offend anybody in my class. Is it all right to say this word in context? Or, should I ignore its original name, and only refer to it as the Harlem Renaissance? Answer Is it okay to use the word “Negro” in a historical context? Yes, absolutely. If that was term used, even in a pejorative sense, in the context of serious research you can always include things that are true and relevant. I'm white, and I really don't want to offend anybody in my class. That is impossible to answer even if the members of this forum were in your class. It is entirely possibly you could offend somebody. Whether or not your report or talk will offend someone should be the least of your concerns if what you are writing or saying is w...

I'm not sure how well known Tangier Island is outside the Chesapeake region. To make a long story short, Tangier Island is an isolated fishing community in the Chesapeake bay. It has been mostly isolated for hundreds of years. You constantly hear that the accent has remained unchanged since the 17th century. This accent is often cited as an example of what an Elizabethan accent would sound like. My question is — without audio recordings, how can one make conclusions about how the accent has changed? What do we truly know about the Elizabethan accent that we can use to infer that the Tangier accent is very close? Is it actually close or has it just evolved down its own line? Answer Here's how you could possibly tell. Get someone from Tangier Island to read Elizabethan poetry. If everything rhymes then the rumour about the accent may have some truth. I believe this method is used to deduce how period accents may have sounded.

We're building a feature for a website and trying to think of a hypernym for clients , partners and members so that the feature remains generic enough for re-use later on other websites. Answer Stakeholders would be the term. Stakeholders : A person, group or organization that has interest or concern in an organization. Some examples of key stakeholders are creditors, directors, employees, government (and its agencies), owners (shareholders), suppliers, unions , and the community from which the business draws its resources.

In America, it's pretty much universally pronounced "moll" but in the UK, I have heard a few different ways of pronouncing it: Mall (rhymes with pal) Maul (rhymes with ball and hence the American pronunciations match up) Moll It may depend on accents but which is the correct way? Answer There are a couple confusions at work here. First, there are different " lexical sets " the word could fall into: TRAP, LOT, BATH, CLOTH, PALM, THOUGHT, NORTH, FORCE. For the most part, most speakers and dictionaries of English agree that mall is either pronounced with the vowel for THOUGHT or with the vowel for TRAP, the TRAP pronunciation usually only in the context of pall-mall . No dialect pronounces all those lexical sets with distinct vowels, but each dialect may merge them in different ways. American English generally merges TRAP-BATH, LOT-PALM, CLOTH-THOUGHT, and NORTH-FORCE. This means that Americans use the same vowel for TRAP as for BATH, the same vowel for LOT as fo...

A word for something you didn’t know you’d like I thought delight might be it, but the various dictionaries I checked make no mention of the sense of surprise or unexpectedness, defining delight as simply heightened or extreme pleasure. To clarify, I'm referring to the pleasure arising from some unexpected thing, not encountering pleasure contrary to expectations . For example: you book into a cheap hotel and have low expectations for a good experience (dirty linen, no room service, noise, etc) ... but then you discover that your favorite band is doing a gig there. Or: you book into an expensive hotel, and figure there will be the usual roll call of luxuries perfectly executed to make your stay a pleasure ... but then you discover that your favorite band is doing a gig there. So, a different sense from: "Here, have a bite of this foul smelling fruit" , or the unexpected outcome of combining strawberries and balsamic vinegar , or strawberries combined with peas .

Reading this article by the fantastic Douglas Adams I came across this interesting quote: ‘[I]nteractivity’ is one of those neologisms that Mr Humphrys likes to dangle between a pair of verbal tweezers, but the reason we suddenly need such a word is that during this century we have for the first time been dominated by non-interactive forms of entertainment: cinema, radio, recorded music and television... We didn’t need a special word for interactivity in the same way that we don’t (yet) need a special word for people with only one head. This got me thinking — not just about what that word might be (unikef? monocap?), but also how new words are constructed. My two first thoughts above were that the word would be constructed from either Greek or Latin roots (mono and uni, respectively), and I assume that most newly constructed words would follow a similar structure. That is - they would take previously prescribed pieces of a language (classical or otherwise) and shape those pieces to fi...

Consider the following sentence (modified from here ): It is now widely accepted that an archaeal host likely gave rise to the cell proper . (Talking about eukaryotic origins.) What exactly the grammatical role of "proper" is here? Is "cell proper" standing for the concept of "a proper cell" and thus "proper" is a postnominal adjective ? Or is it an adverb meaning "properly"? I have the feeling that the former is closer to the truth. I understand that words representing attributes can be positioned after the noun, for example: money unspent heir apparent people unharmed star visible people responsible though it seems to me that these are mostly verb derivatives that perhaps are shorthands for e.g.: Every star ( that is ) visible ( by an anonymous grammatical subject ) is named after a famous astronomer. Clearly, "proper" is not a verb and does not behave in this way. I'm sure I've encountred similar cases with other n...

Would "mid-to-late" and "low-to-mid" be hyphenated as compound modifiers? Examples: Temperatures are expected to be in the low-to-mid 60s. Joe, I think, is in his mid-to-late 80s. He was in his middle-to-late 40s. She was in her middle-to-upper 60s. Temperatures are expected to be in the lower-to-middle 70s. Are all correct? Thanks!!!

I always thought that the word experience is only singular, but I see people using it as a plural. Does word experience has plural form and in which cases it is proper to use it? Answer It depends on what meaning of experience you are using, as some meanings are countable nouns while others are uncountable. It's not clear which meaning you are asking about in your question, but we can look at the two major meanings. If you are talking about how much experience you have (e.g. work experience), it is an uncountable noun and it does not have a plural form. You can't say * I have a lot of experiences as an accountant. … if what you mean to say is that you have worked as an accountant for a long time. This meaning of experience is uncountable, so you instead would say I have a lot of experience as an accountant. (This usage is similar to the usual meaning of the word money : “You have a lot of money”, “I have no money.”) By contrast, if you are talking about experience meaning...

Which one is correct in a sentence? He don't He doesn't I guess "he doesn't" should be correct because he is third person singular but I've seen some people using do with he . Which one is correct? Answer He doesn't is correct, because it is the contraction of He does not . He don't is incorrect, because it it the contraction of He do not . Subject-Verb agreement requires that he goes with does . He don't , however, is slang and certainly used in many places, but you would never see it in professional writing, because of Subject-Verb agreement.

In Christianity, there is the doctrine of the "trinity" of God. What would be the name of the corresponding doctrine if the number three were replaced with two, four or five? Answer To the best of my knowledge, owing to various heresies and schisms in the Christian faith we presently have the following forms of monotheistic doctrine: Unity - Espoused by the Unitarians, who reject the consubstantiation of God and hold that He is strictly a single person. Jesus is regarded by Unitarians as a prophet who is not a part of the godhead. Binity - Advocated by the Binitarians, who believe in the co-divinity of Jesus the Son and God the Father. What I find particularly interesting about them is that they believe Jesus was fully divine and co-eternal prior to becoming human, but that he fully surrendered his divinity while in human form, only to regain it in resurrection. This differs from the standard mainstream trinitarian view that Jesus the man was both divine and human. So to m...

I followed the discussion of the use of "Most" and it is evident that if the noun is plural, the verb takes the plural. Most companies are .... But in the example above "Most information and knowledge are false" sounds wrong.

The apostrophe has a lot of jobs. It makes things possessive, it indicates the omissions of letters in contractions and numbers in dates, it is used to indicate strange accents in dialog, and it indicates plurals of words and letters. To complicate matters, it looks almost or exactly the same as the single-quote in many fonts and in handwriting. I have read of proposals to use a distinct mark of punctuation for each task. What are some of these proposals?

If I ask Are you available tonight for a drink? does tonight refer to this evening and/or this night ? If not, what would be considered the beginning of the night and the end of the evening? Do they overlap? Answer I would say that this really depends on the context and common understanding between speaker and hearer. Are you available for a drink tonight? I would understand tonight as starting after work (if asked by a coworker) and lasting through something reasonable, like midnight nowadays. If the person asked works in a bar at night, it might mean "right now", no matter whether it is 6pm or 5am. Asking Where will you sleep tonight? Tonight will denote the normal sleeping period. Best is to further specify if necessary.

In a scientific paper, I am using a phrase that is something like ‘the condition that all the numbers be positive’. I was wondering what kind of construction this is (the ‘be’) and how it compares to ‘all the numbers are positive’. My impression is that both are correct, but ‘be’ is perhaps more formal. Is that correct? Answer According to Grammarist (all the quotes in this answer come from this linked document), ... the subjunctive mood is used to explore conditional or imaginary situations. There are several uses of the subjunctive mood, one of which is: It’s used to make statements of necessity: It’s essential that they be heard … [ Alternet ] This is of the same construction as your first example. Your second example, "all the numbers are positive", is in the indicative mood.

Cherry picking A quick Google search yields the following definitions: Definition One Cherry picking is the act of pointing at individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. Definition Two To pick out the best, or most desirable items from a list or group, especially to obtain some advantage or to present something in the best possible light My Question: Does the term cherry-picking necessarily imply that one is ignoring significant data? Or does it merely imply that one is selecting the best items from a list or group?

When it's OK to omit "where?" For example, is it OK to omit it in the following sentence? This is the one of the few places (where) you can breathe real air. In which situations one's not allowed to do this? Answer You can generally omit where when the head noun suggests a place:  1a. This is the one of the few places [ where you can breathe real air. ]  1b. This is the one of the few places [ you can breathe real air. ] Here, the head noun is place , which of course suggests a place. However:  2a. This is the web page [ where the claim was first made. ]  2b. *This is the web page [ the claim was first made. ] Example 2b is ungrammatical because web page is unlikely to suggest a place. (Examples 2a and 2b are taken from "A Student's Introduction to English Grammar" by Huddleston and Pullum, page 185.) In this answer, * marks a sentence as ungrammatical in standard English.

I have a friend from the southern U.S. who uses the phrase “might could” quite often. He’ll say, for example: I might could do that this weekend. When I first heard him say this, it made me do a double-take. I wasn’t sure whether it’s incorrect, or correct but just not idiomatic outside the southern U.S. Answer This is a construction that is restricted to certain dialects of US English. In Standard English, it is not grammatical. (This construction is also often stigmatized, which means you would want to be especially careful before using it — you could be judged!) However, this construction is used systematically in certain dialects of American English. To describe it clearly, I want to define a few linguistic terms I will use to sort out a crucial three-way distinction: grammatical : A usage is systematic and acceptable within a certain dialect, standard or not. (Often, "grammatical" is used outside of linguistics as shorthand for "used in Standard English". Not...

I've encountered different usages of preposition + Home and I want to learn which of them are correct. Some examples: Back home Back at home Back to home Answer As a native speaker of American English, I would only ever say "back home" and never insert a preposition between the two. I would say, "I'm going back home" when someone asks, for example, how I will spend my vacation. In this case, "home" refers to where I was raised. If I just say "I'm going home", this could just mean the place I live now OR the place I was raised. You can use "at" with "home" as in, "I am spending the night at home" or "Cooking at home is less expensive than eating out." If you want to use "back to" in the above context, you might tack "my house" on the end of it. Q : Where to you want to go after dinner? A: Let's go back to my house. You can also use at in this context: Q: Where did y...

Ordering a gravestone and want to make sure the suffix is used correctly. While the last name is on the bottom to be shared by spouse, I need to put Edward H. II up top. The proper name is Edward H. Jones II.

One stereotypical name for a dog is Fido , from the Latin for faithful. Another stereotypical dog-name is Rover . How long has Rover been a common name for a dog in English? Does it have anything to with the the famous Sea Dogs from the dawn of the Age of Sail, who would often do battle with sea rovers , if not indeed become such themselves? Were ships’ sea-dogs the first ones to be named Rover ? Another way to phrase the question is, during what period of English literature did Rover first begin to appear as a common dog’s name? 1300s? 1900s? There should be a discrete answer here. Answer The earliest dog named Rover I found is in a 1718 list of common names for hunting dogs. Etymology Rover was a common name for a hunting dog in 1718, along with other names such as Bouncer, Fiddler, Gallant, Lively, Ranger, Ruffler, Soundwell, Trouncer, Traveller and Wonder. The name is most likely from rover , n.2 in the OED, specifically sense 2a: A person who travels from place to place witho...

Speakers often add “quote” or “quote, unquote” before quotations. But when a quotation is preceded by the article “an”, how should that article be pronounced? As I understand, the choice between “a” and “an” is determined by what phonetically follows the article. When “quote” or “quote, unquote” is inserted between “an” and the quotation, the extra “-n” becomes unnecessary. So should I really pronounce “a” instead? Answer The morphology of articles is entirely a matter of phonology (i.e, sound ). It's very simple and completely general. The indefinite article allomorph a is used before a consonant, and an is used before a vowel; similarly, the definite article allomorph /ðə/ is used before a consonant, while /ði/ is used before a vowel. Whatever sound follows the article determines the allomorphy; never mind whether it's what the article modifies. And since consonants and vowels are the only two kinds of speech sound, this exhausts all possibilities. Parenthetical words the...

When is it correct to create a contraction of words followed by is ? For instance is who’s a correct short form of who is ? Answer The word "is" can always be contracted, provided it is not stressed - though this is considered somewhat informal. So, in informal contexts, Fred is taller than Jim. can be shortened to Fred's taller than Jim. ...it doesn't depend on what word comes before "is". But if the is is emphatic: Fred is taller than Jim. then it would be wrong to contract that to * Fred 's taller than Jim. That is probably fairly obvious - if you are stressing a particular word, it doesn't pay to shorten it. But there are also other situations where the is has the emphasis, for instance I don't know what it is. cannot be contracted to * I don't know what it's. even though I don't know what it is doing. can be reduced to I don't know what it's doing.

Egypt and Tunisia have both taken steps to form a new government after the overthrow of Mubarak and Ben Ali respectively. In this context, does respectively describe the steps that have been taken, or the overthrow of Mubarak and Ben Ali? Answer Respectively shows that Egypt has taken the steps mentioned after the overthrow of Mubarak, and that Tunisia has done so after the overthrow of Ben Ali. As for your headline question, adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs, as well as a number of other word categories.

What word would describe someone who doesn't generally leave much of an impression on people? Answer "Bland" or "nondescript". Both have a connotation of not being memorable. Of course, you could just go with "forgettable."

The country name Djibouti has no etymology listed on both Etymonline and Wiktionary. I do know that's it named after the city for sure, but where did that come from? I tried to research it, but all I could find was an unreliable forum listing it as named after a French general (Somalinet.com) and an unhelpful Quora answer ambiguously and without detail explaining it as either Egyptian or Afar. I don't have the OED; what does that say? Is there any reliable research on this? Thanks. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Djibouti https://www.somalinet.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=233866 https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-pronounce-Djibouti-What-is-the-etymology-of-this-word https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091209152826AA7vbd0 http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=djibouti

I read this on a news website: 'Mr Osbourne wants a golden age in British politics, something that is sorely missed'. Would a semi-colon, a colon or a dash not be much less clunky?

When someone is suffering from fever, at some point in time when it stops or it starts getting better, we say the fever has broken. His fever broke last night. He's going to be alright. What's the etymology behind "break" used in this manner? I couldn't find any other instances of illness or symptoms which use "break" in this manner (except for actual physical breakages). Answer I think it's based on definition 5 : [NO OBJECT] Undergo a change or enter a new state When a fever breaks it changes from existing to not existing, or from severe to mild. Based on just the definition, I suppose it would also be possible to refer to the opposite change as breaking as well. But it's just not how the word is ever used. Several of the senses of this definition are similarly one-directional, e.g. the clouds broke means they dispersed, never that they increased.

Why is it that the "ow" in now makes the /aʊ/ sound while "ow" in snow makes the /oʊ/ sound? Has this always been, was it spelled differently and then changed, or was it spelled this way but the sound changed?

Please help me in choosing the right preposition in this sentence: The returned values seem a bit confusing on/in its semantics, Here I'm talking about returned values of a computer programming function, after reading its expected behaviour. Which one should I use and what is the difference about using in or on ?

In semi-poetic writing, I have had occasion to deviate from the standard prose list practice (interpose commas or semicolons between items, with an "and" preceding the final item), by utilizing a second or third and to separate three or four items. That is, Bob likes beer, wine and liquor. The variant would be: Bob likes beer and wine and liquor. Now, the usage is obviously nonstandard and should be avoided in formal writing, but for those instances where poetic variation may be justified. What is it called? "Emphatic And" is the best I can coin on my own, but I wonder if there is a more established name for this variation. Answer It's called polysyndeton , and creates a polysyndetic co-ordination. Polysyndeton is the use of several conjunctions in close succession, especially where some might be omitted (as in "he ran and jumped and laughed for joy"). The word "polysyndeton" comes from the Greek "poly-", meaning "many,...

Is "there is no longer enough natural resources to support economic growth" correct? Should it be There are no longer enough natural resources as verb should agree with noun "resources" which is plural.

Let's say that A and B are two different kinds of foods. Which is grammatically correct? A goes good with B. A goes well with B. If they're both correct, then which is better?

The standard linguistic analysis of the NP a box of apples is that we have a determiner ( a ) which acts on (modifies?) box of apples . (For an example of standard analysis, see e.g. Fig. 6 here ). CGEL refers to box of apples as a nominal , though I understand that others would prefer to call it an NP'. Then box of apples is further parsed into box being modified by of apples . In other words, we have My question is: what is the evidence against the following alternative parsing: a box being modified by of apples ? In other words, why does a [ box [ of apples ] ] make more sense than [ a box ] [ of apples ]? Equivalently: why is a taken to modify box of apples rather than of apples taken to modify a box ? What is particularly impressive (or surprising) is that, on the standard analysis, the parsing seems to be completely independent of context. It is simply never the case that a box gets modified by of apples ; it is always box being modified by of apples , and then ...

I have to make an invitation to some people. Is it correct to say "come check out our products" or "come check our products"? Answer Definitely the first one - "come check out our products." "Come check our products" comes with the sense that you want them to examine or critique your products in some way, or make sure they're up to some standard, rather than to come as customers with genuine curiosity.

On ELL a user has asked how to parse the emphasized -ing form in this sentence from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone : Harry swung at it with the bat to stop it from breaking his nose, and sent it zigzagging away into the air. I am puzzled how to answer. Zigzagging could be taken as an adjectival participle modifying it ; certainly if you delete zigzagging you're left with away into the air as the ordinary complement demanded by send : you send something somewhere . But that isn't how the semantics work for me. Send here seems to me to be a causative and zigzag a non-finite verb, which could be paraphrased with an infinitive: He sent it zigzagging away into the air = He caused it to zigzag away into the air. He sent him riding away to London. = He caused him to ride away to London. He sent him packing. = He caused him to pack [ i.e. , to hurry away]. Thus it zigzagging away seems to me to be a full clause. But I have not found any formal description of subo...