grammatical number - On the grounds that



Which is correct: "on the grounds that" or "on the ground that" if only one 'ground' is given?




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

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First floor vs ground floor, usage origin

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

As an example, consider the two sentences: There don't seem to be any doctors here. and There doesn't seem to be any doctors here. To my ear, the first sounds great, and the second is painfully awkward. So which is correct, grammatically? I've found lots of disagreement on this around the Web, with various sources citing different ways of treating the word "any" (as singular, always, or as either depending on to what it refers). No consensus, however, could I locate. Answer The relevant article in ‘The Cambridge Guide to English Usage’ says: Existential there couples with either singular or plural verbs ( there is / there are , according to the following noun phrase) . . . This formal agreement is strictly maintained in academic writing. But in narrative and everyday writing, there is and especially there’s is found even with plural nouns. The same consideration applies to There don’t and There doesn’t . What it means for your examples is that it all depends ...
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pronunciation - Where does the intrusive R come from in “warsh”?

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

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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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meaning - What is synonyme of "scale"?

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