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To add emphasis to a normal verb, we use the emphatic "do": He does run fast. Do come in. Do brush your teeth. Obviously, with modal verbs this would be a grave mistake: (*) He does can run. (*) You do may come in. (*) I do should brush my teeth. Of course, you can just stress the modal verb itself or introduce an adverb. In the case of "should" you can also cheat by replacing it with "have to": He surely can run. You may come in. I do have to brush my teeth. But are there other possibilities to add emphasis to a modal verb? Which solution is the most elegant? Do any manuals of style address this?

Funnily enough, food is often used metaphorically to describe someone's eccentricity or level of sanity. We have nuts Slang . a foolish, silly, or eccentric person. an insane person; psychotic. adj. "crazy," 1846 , e.g. to be off one's nut , "be insane," (1860), from earlier be nutts upon "be very fond of" (1785) Meaning "crazy person, crank" is attested from 1903 , (British form nutter first attested 1958; nut-case is from 1959) crackers adjective 1. (postpositive) ( Brit) a slang word for insane. Also, he was plain crackers [ 1928+ ; formed with the British suffix -ers, like bonkers , preggers , etc] fruity adjective Eccentric; odd; nutty, weird ( 1930s+ Teenagers) fruitcake Slang . a crazy or eccentric person; meaning "lunatic person" is first attested 1952 . bananas adj. "crazy," 1968 ; esp in the phrase go bananas , earlier (1935) it was noted as an underworld slang term for "sexually perverted."...

Is there any difference in meaning or usage when pronouncing "blessed" with two syllables rather than one syllable? Two: bles -id [blɛsəd] One: blest [blɛst] Answer We reference the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary . Blessed can be an adjective meaning holy , in which case it is pronounced with two syllables: Blessed is the name of the Lord. Blessed can also be the past tense of the verb bless , in which case it is pronounced with one syllable: The priest blessed the bread.

Today while speaking to a colleague of mine I said "Had you studied well, you would have cleared the exam ". I was rebuked for not using the third conditional correctly. I was told that the correct way to express this is " if you had studied well, you would have cleared the exam". My question here is can I not use the third conditional without an "if". Even if i say had u studied well, it means the same thing.

Milk from goats is available in supermarkets. On the shelves of our local store in England, I have found cartons boldly labelled all three of Goats Milk Goat's Milk Goats' Milk Most brands use no apostrophe at all, which does not seem right. Brands which use "Goat's" seem to imply that the milk comes from precisely one goat, which seems unlikely. Brands which use "Goats'" may have it right; however, every molecule of milk in the carton did, originally, come from precisely one goat, a molecule of a goat's milk. Is there any hope of finding a "correct" position for the apostrophe in this case? Must we forever live with this example of the greengrocers [sic] apostrophe? Answer I think it's useful to substitute "child" and "painting" because child is a word where the plurals and possessive forms are more obviously different. What would be the correct label for a picture drawn by several kids? Children Picture Child...

I was just about to write and print a small poster for a month-old baby as he is about to be baptized soon. I wanted to put a "Happy Baptism [name]" when I felt the urge to double-check because it didn't sound right. And it turns out, "baptism" is not the right description of the event but "Christening". What is the etymology of why this split occurred between the event for a baby and the similar event for an older child / adult? The following entries on the Online Etymology Dictionary say that the terms are equivalent, but don't say how the terms are used differently at different ages. Christen (v.) c. 1200, from Old English cristnian "to baptize," literally "to make Christian," from cristen "Christian" (see Christian ). General meaning of "to name" is attested from mid-15c. Related: Christened ; christening . - etymonline baptize (v.) c. 1300, from Old French batisier (11c.), from Latin baptizare , fro...

My mom and I are having a dispute on much more easy versus much easier . For example, consider the sentence: It's [much more easy]/[much easier] to do action X than action Y. I say that much easier is correct and that much more easy is grammatically incorrect, while she says that both are okay. I understand that both are acceptable colloquially, but which is grammatically correct here? If you could explain why, that would be even better!

In "(India)" english, there is a word "prepone" , which is the opposite of "postpone". It's interesting that this word appears in a non-native dialect of English (although that's debatable given the prevalence of English use in India). This word appears to be an invented word, as a natural extrapolation of root Latin prefixes. Is there a word for such an invented word, that plays upon classical etymological origin? Is there further still a name for invented words in a language when being used by non-native speakers?

I regularly find myself confused by phrases of the form "x if y". For example, in the 2010-10-22 issue of his newsletter, Paul Thurrott writes: Well, if you're Wall Street Journal technology maven and Apple lover Walter Mossberg, you simply write an unfair review that ignores the product's best features and harps on obvious if little-needed functional miscues such as the lack of copy and paste. Here's another example, from a TV guide article : Best known in the U.S. for formulaic, if handsome, genre films like Mimic (1997) and Blade II (2002), del Toro The usage of 'if' in these examples confuses me. What is the intended meaning of these sentences? Can I just substitute "if" with "though"? Answer Ah awesome word! It fits under defintion 3 at dictionary.com (the World English Dictionary part) and definition 4 at Merriam . I like Merriam's better: : even though : although perhaps; an interesting if untenable argument I think it c...

On a Physics specification, it says: 6.7 Know how to use two permanent magnets to produce a uniform magnetic field pattern. Isn't it "produce an uniform magnetic field", or is the existing "produce a uniform magnetic field pattern" correct? Answer The word uniform begins with a palatal approximant /j/ . The palatal approximant is a consonantal sound, even though the letter itself is a vowel. Since we use the pronunciation of the word following the article to determine whether we use "a" or "an", and because it is pronounced starting with a consonant, we use "a". Thus, the original sentence is correct. Just for the sake of completeness, the letter "u" can also have a vowel sound, such as in the word "umbrella", which begins with an open-mid back unrounded vowel /ʌ/ .

In Tamil, we have a proverb that roughly translates into English as If the mother-in-law breaks the pot, it is just clay . But if the daughter-in-law breaks the pot, it is made of gold! Background This proverb is funnily (and sometimes very sarcastically) used to highlight the conflicts/difference of opinions between mother-in-laws and daughter-in-laws in the very early stages of a marriage. In South India, arranged marriages are the norm and in such a setting, the bride typically takes considerable amount of time to adjust into the groom's family. Suppose, if there are any confrontations/ disagreements very early in a marriage between the bride and her mother in law and if the groom is highly supportive to his mother (and his family), this saying is used by outsiders/family members of the bride. In essence, they are accusing the groom for not taking the neutral ground and showing partiality towards his mother (the girl's mother-in-law). Unfortunately, my research for an Englis...

I was wondering if anyone could confirm if this sentence is correct? It somehow doesn't sound or feel correct but I saw it written today. Can anyone give me any insight if it is right or wrong? 'But for my father, I wouldn't have achieved anything.'

Could please help me to figure out the difference between talk to or talk with someone? Thanks a lot for help)) Answer There is rarely a difference. Talk with does imply that both people are engaging in conversation. In some specific cases talk to may be more correct if the object/person being spoken to isn't sentient or responding. I can give my phone a voice command; in that case, I would say I am talking to my phone but the phone isn't really having a conversation with me, so I wouldn't say I am talking with my phone.

I constantly see "everyday" being used in cases where the writer really means "every day". For example, here's a sentence from Google's eBooks documentation: "New titles are being added to Google eBooks everyday." There is even a supermarket chain that has a large sign saying, "Low prices, everyday!" Could someone, for the record, state the rule on this?

My point of view clearly influenced her thinking. I had no idea she was a * (person who will fairly evaluate points of view that conflict with her own).

What does 'gotcha' mean? When would you use it? Answer Gotcha actually has several meanings. All of them can be derived from the phrase of which this is a phonetic spelling, namely "[I have] got you". Literally, from the sense of got = "caught, obtained", it means "I've caught you". As in, you were falling, and I caught you, or you were running, and I grabbed you. It's a short step from the benign type of caught to the red-handed type of caught . Thus, gotcha is often used when you witness someone doing something naughty. Again, it's a short step from I-caught-you-doing-something-you-oughtn't to Surprise! I tricked you! This sense of gotcha is used when someone falls for a practical joke, for example. A somewhat-natural progression from the "I tricked you" meaning is gotcha used as a noun: this is a feature of a system (e.g. a programming language) which trips you up or catches you off-guard. And finally, from the...

I didn't find the difference between them by googling Edit : Thx litterally, authenticate, means prove its identity, which is a just a subprocess of global access authorization btw I forgot to mention "Sign In", that's another confusing term for me ;) Edit 2 other useful answers: https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/1080/using-sign-in-vs-using-log-in

I found this sentence in my programming book: You might be better off thinking of the block and the method as coroutines, which transfer control back and forth between themselves. What does be better off mean? Answer The NOAD reports that the meaning of "be better off" is "be in a better position, especially in financial terms." The sentence you wrote could be considered equivalent of the following sentence. It would be better to think of the block and the method as coroutines, which transfer control back and forth between themselves.

I was wondering if there was a sentence that contains a country name (or generally a proper noun) that has a plural word in it - e.g., the United States or The United Emirates - how do we treat it? (Sorry if I sound non-technical, as I'm not exactly very good at language). The United States of America have done something. OR The United States of America has done something. which one is appropriate? Usually, I've been using "has" for countries (treating it as one entity). Answer There are many cases where an entity that's made up of plural words is singular. Obviously, the United States of America is a single entity, so "has" is right. This isn't an exception; this is the rule. Unlimited Designs, a Delaware corporation, has gone out of business. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a great way to style your webpages.

There are tables and figures in a document, uniquely identifiable by their numbers. We want to refer to them in several places. Which one is preferable in academic English writing and why? In figure 1 ... In the figure 1 ... With the help of table 1 ... With the help of the table 1 ... Lemma 1 helps ... The lemma 1 helps ... Answer Do not use an article in such a case. This is a common error made by non-native speakers. You do not use articles with proper names. For example, you would say "I went to a grocery store", but "I went to Smith's Grocery Store". Numbered figures or tables are generally treated as proper names. So, "See the second figure below" — descriptive, not a proper name; but "See Figure 2 below" — a proper name.

The phrase "to break a butterfly on a wheel" is very evocative, but I can't bring myself to use it: I find the "wheel" too disturbing. So: what are some good alternatives? (For those who are unfamiliar with this expression, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable defines it as "to employ superabundant effort in the accomplishment of a small matter". [ link ]) Answer Use a sledgehammer to crack a nut. to do something with more force than is necessary to achieve the result you want When he sent ten men to arrest one small boy, he clearly used a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Better yet: Use a sledgehammer to swat a fly! idioms.thefreedictionary.com

In a film I thought I heard a man say "And I you." I wondered if it were OK because there seemed to be no verb? Another man said to him "I like you my buddy". So why did he not reply "So do I buddy"?

Can all verbs have "re" attached to the front of the word? I play Scrabble with a friend who feels that in the English language you can put "re" in front on any verb, and not just the ones listed in the dictionary.

I am not a native speaker, nor do I know the proper grammatical name of this kind of words to look up this question. So please excuse the possible duplication or simplicity. But as far as I know, the words mentioned in the subject cannot be used in plural, although they have a grammatical plural form. So you don't say These two parts have different reflectances. This document describe radiations reflected from different parts of the machine. but rather reflectance and radiation . Am I correct? What is the proper explanation for this? I need to tell it to a colleague. How can one determine if this rule applies to a specific word or not, besides the gut feeling? Answer "Reflectance", like other measurable quantities like "speed" and "area", may be used as countable or uncountable. So I measured the speed of the cars (could be "speeds", but "speed" is more natural, at least to me). but The cars were all moving at different speeds. ...

In some scientific papers, we see that some professors write "University of Bla" on their papers, while others write "Bla University". What is the difference between "University of Bla" and "Bla University"? Are there any differences at all?

In the following article from English today there is a survey about the usage of the erroneous, but apparently rather commonly used expression “have went” in place of “have gone”: ... several speakers, all of them American teachers aged between 55 and 64, informed us that they regularly ‘hear[d] people say have went, not have gone’. One of them specifying that she ‘teach[es] in Oklahoma’ noted that ‘[s]ome of my students also say, and write, “I have went”’. A much younger informant, aged 27 and also a teacher, even indicated that she used have went herself. Interestingly, Google Books shows a fair amount of usage examples in books and publications, such as: And I didn't even realise that when I got a knock-back from art school, so I might have went to uni instead of college.” (Dorothy ... (from Losing Out?: Socioeconomic Disadvantage and Experience in Further and Higher Education , by Alasdair Forsyth and Andy Furlong, 2003) wondered if it were me, would I have the restraint Mr....

/ˈkwestʃən/ or /ˈkwesʃən/ or both? The dictionary says that it should be pronounced like "kwes+chun", but our teacher says "kwes-shun", and insists that both pronounciations are acceptable. He does the same for "suggestion". Is that really true?

Which one of the following should be used if I am asking about an event or a meeting: Are we meeting today? Do we have a meeting today? Are we going to have a meeting today? Are we going to meet today? Will we have a meeting today?

The words are supposed to be there but have been left due to any reason. Is there a succinct term to describe such words? Answer There's some disagreement going on here that can be attributed to differing interpretations of the question. If the text was once there but is now missing or illegible, it is a lacuna . If a word or phrase was left out unintentionally, it is an omission or elision . If a word or passage has been intentionally removed, it is a redaction .

Which one of these two statements is correct? Our staff do ... Our staff does ... And is staffs ever correct? Answer In British English, one can say "our staff do", because they use plural verbal agreement to emphasize when an entity is made up of a group of people, whether this entity itself is marked as plural or not. This is also true of companies, bands, sports teams and other things which are commonly used in plural forms as well as singular forms. The verbs are usually plural for one band or many bands ("Many bands play at the festival" as well as "Radiohead are a band"). In American English, one says "our staff does", because in our grammar, we are not concerning ourselves with whether an entity is made up of many people or not. Since staff is singular, we treat it grammatically as singular. It is no different for us than a stick-staff in terms of grammar. As RegDwight pointed out, this was discussed previously with regards to company n...

Prior to the invention of rockets, was there a phrase equivalent to: "it's not rocket science"? If so, what was it? Here I am looking for a phrase that makes a comparison with a difficult job/task, so "easy as pie" wouldn't work. I'm also looking for a phrase that would also have been used before modern medicine. Thus, something different from, "it's not brain surgery". To clarify: I'm looking for a phrase that was actually used in the English language. It could have been used in any English speaking country. Any time prior to when the expression "it's not brain surgery" might have been used, so earlier than probably 1930 or 40. Answer You need not be a wizard . wizard: a person who practices magic; magician or sorcerer. a person of amazing skill or accomplishment: a wizard at chemistry. ( Random House ) But one need not be a wizard to foresee by now that the outbreak of a revolutionary movement on the Communist order, in...

I want to say something along the lines of "obscure", such as "He obscured the details" but I want it to capture the idea that the obscurity lies in the ambiguous nature of his description. Answer A good word for this is obfuscate : he obfuscated the details. It implies intentionality, as well as hiding "in plain sight". From vocabulary.com : Some people are experts at obfuscating the truth by being evasive, unclear, or obscure in the telling of the facts. The people who are good at obfuscating would include defense lawyers and teenagers asked about their plans for Saturday night. Although the verb obfuscate can be used in any case where something is darkened, less clear, or more obscure, it is most frequently used in reference to things like ideas, facts, issues, or the truth. The usual implied meaning is that this obfuscation is done deliberately. Politicians often obfuscate the truth about the issues to win support for their positions so they can win ...

I have few confusions regarding the usage of very and very much . 1 . From OALD I found this usage guide - It states that very can be used with past participles used as adjectives, but not with past participles that have a passive meaning. Now here comes the confusion. How to distinguish between past participles used as adjectives and past participles that have a passive meaning? Looking at the examples - I am very pleased to get your letter and Your help was very much appreciated - it seems like both the past participles - pleased and appreciated - can be used as adjectives as well as the one with passive meaning. So how to distinguish between them so that I can use very correctly with past participles? 2 . From OALD I found this usage guide - It is clear that very is used with adjectives, but it is apparent with the exception mentioned in the guide that not all adjectives is used with very*, some take **very much to make correct usage. There are other such examples I found...

Which is most grammatical? It's still cached to your phone. It's still cached in your phone. It's still cached on your phone. I find myself gravitating towards "to" but I'm not sure - I feel like "cached" implies some kind of attachment. Answer To cache something means to store it away, so I think the most natural preposition is in . Cached on is also fairly common. Cached to is very uncommon, but appears to becoming more popular in software contexts. I suspect this is because non-software caches usually require you to be close to them, but software caches are often remote so that the act of caching involves sending data to another server. Because your phone is not a remote server cached to is an unnatural choice. You can see the relative uses of these prepositions with Google Ngrams .

In Tamil, a south Indian language, there is a saying which roughly translates into English as: Lavish outside home, starving inside of it. Background : This proverb has a mocking tone and indicates people who project themselves to be very rich and appear to spend lavishly on property and things, making their neighbors and the community around them envious of their stature. But in reality, whatever they are spending (or appear to spend) is because they have borrowed huge sums of money from other people and financial institutions. So much in fact that they are unable to feed their own family, probably skip a meal every day but when they step outside their home they try to appear posh and well-to-do. Some close friends and relatives who know what's really going on with these people use this form of expression. Generally, I tend to find equivalent English proverbs that have the same tonality and convey the meaning as is but this particular one has been eluding me for long. Any suggesti...

Let's say, your name is Kate and you say "I'm a whole new Kate!" Now, can you drop "a" and say "I'm whole new Kate!"? Or is it mandatory to keep it?

I have seen the following sentences in a book given to us during our training period at The Regional Institute of English, Bangluru I got married to Priscilla. I got married with Priscilla According to the book, the first sentence means "I married Priscilla" and second sentence means "I and Priscilla married at the same time. I married a different girl." It was also mentioned in the book that even if a person says “I am getting married with my sister” we need not raise our brows since the speaker and his sister are getting married at the same time. I would like to know your responses regarding the information given in the book. Do native speakers really understand the sentences in the same way? Answer In this situation the object of to refers almost exclusively to who the subject is married to. A Corpus of Contemporary American English search turns up 5778 collocations of "married to," and all of the ones I've looked at identify a married couple. ...

Here's a quote from a CNN transcript, wherein a consumer psychologist says the following: "What is relatively new are shoppers turning on other shoppers." If "what is relatively new" were the subject, she would have said "is" as opposed to "are". Hence, it's an inversion having "shoppers" as the subject. Am I right? If I'm right, then the question: why use an inversion in this particular case? Specifically, why use "are" instead of "is"? For the whole transcript, see: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1211/22/cnr.03.html I did some follow-up research on what-cleft construction and would like to update my question by adding the following: Swan says in Practical English Usage at 130, "A what-clause is normally considered to be singular...a plural verb is sometimes possible before a plural noun in an informal style." And Swan shows this example: "What we want is/are some of those cakes....

I know that a friend of mine is a used phrase, but is the phrase also used with other personal possessive adjectives? I met a friend of his. Answer Here are some stats from the Corpus of Contemporary American English , the British National Corpus , and Google: COCA BNC Google a friend of mine 1227 230 33.90M a friend of his 274 53 25.30M a friend of hers 130 20 7.63M a friend of ours 82 13 13.10M a friend of theirs 25 3 1.82M Average number of incidences per million words in different contexts (COCA): SPOKEN FICTION MAGAZINE NEWSPAPER ACADEMIC ...mine 6.08 3.10 3.30 1.35 .52 ...his .95 1.06 .56 .48 .18 ...hers .32 .73 .3 .14 .05 ...ours .51 .23 .15 .05 .02 ...theirs .08 .12 .02 .04 .04

As a unit admin I’m often typing award certificates. The last line of the award citation usually goes something like this: Private Joan Smith actions reflect great credit upon herself , the 120th Jumping Jacks Company, the 13th fighter Battalion and the United States Army. It was recently pointed out to me that this is correct: Private Joan Smith actions reflect great credit upon her , the 120th Jumping Jacks Company, the 13th fighter Battalion and the United States Army. The first way is what I’m used to seeing and it looks right to me, but has always sounded awkward when reciting it. When I say the other way out loud it sounds better, but both seem to work. Which is correct? Answer Her is correct here, and not herself : Private Joan Smith's actions reflect great credit upon her, the 120th Jumping Jacks Company, the 13th fighter Battalion and the United States Army. Use a reflexive pronoun where the subject of the verb is also the object. In this case, the subject is Private Joa...

Let's say examples of negative emotions are sadness and despair, and example of positive emotions are happiness and pride. So is there a word that describes a person who has total, complete control over his negative and positive emotions? I'm talking about someone who can manage his emotions in a long-lasting way, not just temporarily. Generally speaking I'm looking for an adjective, but a noun will also be useful. Example Sentences : 1. When images of scenes that normally trigger strong emotions were shown to him he demonstrated no emotion 2. His face did not display any emotion despite the [sad]news just relayed to him. Answer Equanimous from Wikipedia: "(Latin: æquanimitas having an even mind; aequus even animus mind/soul) is a state of psychological stability and composure which is undisturbed by experience of or exposure to emotions, pain, or other phenomena that may cause others to lose the balance of their mind."

I frequently see statements that refer to something later in the text that use a phrase such as "the below information". Is it more correct instead to say "the information below" (or "the following information")? Answer As a preposition, "below" would be written after "information" as a stranded preposition . While typically prepositions would precede the noun, stranded prepositions can occur "in interrogative or relative clauses, where the interrogative or relative pronoun that is the preposition's complement is moved to the start". We see such a stranded preposition in the case of "the information below," and therefore the preposition follows it. By contrast, in the case of "the following information", an adjective is used to describe the noun and therefore may precede it. In short, "the below information" is not generally accepted to be correct, because "below" is not universal...

I have heard several sentences in which there was a prominent double negative, but the double negative "sounded right". Is this ever true, or is it just a misleading feeling? Edited to include an example: "Did you enjoy the movie?" "Well, I didn't not enjoy it, but..." I suppose that may just be bad grammar, but sometimes it seems to be the quickest way to say it. Answer Double negatives can be perfectly fine in English. If their sum is supposed to be negative , double negatives are very informal or slang in modern English. This usage is frowned upon by many people even if used in speech, unless ironically. 1.) I don't see nothing . (= I don't see anything.) If their sum is supposed to be positive, it is generally acceptable in all registers: 2.) I suppose that is not impossible . However, it seems far fetched. Here the double negative expresses a weak positive, a very common construction. 3.) Not bad, not bad at all! You have just saved ...

In French, we have an idiomatic expression to say that something was done for no reason. For instance, if a guy passes by and insults or spits on someone in the street for no reason, we would say "c'est gratuit" (literally "it's free"). It means "wow, that was for no reason" or "wow, he didn't ask for it". I was told Spanish people say "por la cara" (literally "by the face") in this situation. Is there an idiomatic expression in English to express that? EDIT: I understand most of the answers, but I feel like there is something missing. I had forgotten it in my question, but when we say that in French, there is also the idea that the poor guy didn't deserve it . He asked for nothing, and this happens. It is not actually for every situation where there is "no reason" to do something. Answer You may consider: Gratuitous Which is a very good fit to the original French. The definition at dictionary.com i...

Are there any specific words for the first events and first things like the first rain, the first fruit of a plant, the first grey hairs, etc.?

I'm trying to write a personal statement in which I've to account for my past educational experiences. One of my courses is from a prestigious institute in my country, where its difficult to attain admission for that particular program. How do I say so, without mentioning that in explicitly (As space is a requirement, and also I don't want to look too smug - after all, the institutes I'm applying to are leaders in their fields, and might view it as arrogant of me) ? If I say "enrolled in the program", it may mean I simply paid the tuition fees, which is incorrect (all the students receive full scholarship by default if they pass the multiple rounds of exams, making it a much difficult feat to secure entry).... Answer You can say that you were selected for the program. This implies that there was some difficult selection process to go through, after which you were a part of it.

What is the basic difference between "made of" and "made from." Both expressions are used in English. For instance, "This chair is made of wood," and "Cream is made from milk." Though the question is quite simple, I often confuse the two expressions. How do we differentiate them and what is the rule or logic behind their use?

What is the difference between the following two sentences? She goes to the forest three times per week. She goes to the forest three times a week. Answer A in that sense is a preposition meaning the same thing as per . Any dictionary will have that as a definition for a ( Dictionary.com ): preposition each; every; per: ten cents a sheet; three times a day. Oxford Dictionary Online and Merriam-Webster have similar entries. So there is no difference in meaning between your examples. As to usage differences, per is characterized as being more formal and careful, so you would see it more in academic or legal writing or precise instructions, while a would be more common in speech and normal writing.

Please explain to me (non-native speaker) what the word "cinemaddict" means. What synonyms does it have? Answer "Film buff" is fairly common term for a person who is a fan of cinema. A few years ago there was a documentary Cinemania , but I've never heard the terms cinemaddict or cinemanic.

Is there any difference of meaning between the 3 following sentences? We only have 2 possibilities. We have only 2 possibilities. We have 2 possibilities only. I have already read Correct position of "only" and I know that the position of "only" and written/oral emphasis may change the meaning of some sentences, but I am not sure if it does here. Note: It is clear that "only we have 2 possibilities" has a different meaning. My question is restricted to the sentences above. Answer Since only (like even, too, and also ) is a word with a focussed constituent elsewhere in the sentence, its placement has to coordinate with that focus. The rule for only is that it has to go either immediately before the focussed constituent or immediately before any constituent that contains the focussed constituent or at the end of the focussed constituent (especially if that's the end of the sentence, too). In this case, the verb phrase have 2 choices is a constitu...

I'm Soumya, an author from India. A reader has challenged me about the use of the word 'hairs' in my book. I have used, 'a few hairs' and that's justified, as hair is a countable noun in that very phrase. But I'm at a confusion for some other sentences. Could you kindly tell me if I'm wrong grammatically? "The evening zephyr ruffled their long flowing hairs - the Indian village girl's shiny, black hair, and Audrey's curly blonde hair." "They had golden or brown or ashen hairs." "His black and white hairs had now turned into complete white." Could you please help? Thank you!

Is there a certain size for each of these terms? Answer Historically in the UK. A village had a church, a hamlet didn't, a town had a market and a city had to have a cathedral. Now it's decided by various local authorities so there were some new cities created recently, while there are places with a population of only a few 1000 (village size) which are cities because they were important in the middle ages. Metropolis isn't really used in the UK - except for London, hence Metropolitan police (London's police) or the Metropolitan line (tube)

Do and and or have any particular precedence as they do in programming languages? What does the following sentence mean? Will it be cold and rain or snow today? Will it (be cold and rain) or snow today? Will it (be cold) and (rain or snow) today? Is the sentence completely ambiguous? Answer There is no "operator precedence" notion in English regarding "and" and "or": those are programming or mathematical concepts. To make the precedence explicit (i.e. to avoid ambiguity) you would make one group a parenthetical, usually with commas, extra words, or a change in word order: It will be cold and rainy today, or it will snow. It will be cold today, with rain or snow. And so on.