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I've been trying to find an answer to this question for some time, and have finally decided to... well, buck up some courage and ask. In sentences like these two "Hello, Mary, how are you?" "Don't touch that, John, it'll explode!" is the comma after the name (Mary, John) a comma splice or not? I can understand that for instances like the following "I can't believe, Howard, that you've put the duck in there." the name is technically parenthetical, but it feels to me like the first two are clearly not. In the first two cases, I'd be much happier if the latter was replaced by a period or had a suitable conjunction added in. It feels to me, here, like the vocative is being used to justify attaching two independent clauses together in a similar manner to a comma splice, and is thus an error. Any thoughts/information on this? I'll appreciate any answers anyone could give me on this, even if they are just 'Duh, that's obvious&#

I am an editor, and a poet whom I work with has included the expression "I ejaculated little prayers" in one of his stanzas, which we all know has the dictionary meaning of "intensely calling out." Since the spiritual act of praying is completely at odds with the sexual act, I know the poet would be absolutely horrified should the reading public immediately think only or primarily of ejaculate's sexual meaning. My question is will people in general only think of the sexual connotation? Thank you!

If I have a sentence that starts with additionally, finally, consequently , etc. do I always have to put a comma after it? Or is there a different rule?

If the tense change of the verb "need" to "needed" is not mandatory, then if it was changed then how would it affect the meaning in the sentences below? If they asked for help, I would provide whatever help they need . If they asked for help, I would provide whatever help they needed .

I was reading a book that had a sentence containing this: ... onetime commissioner of New York... Answer onetime , one-time : former, previous, erstwhile, quondam. So "a onetime commissioner of New York" was a commissioner at some point in the past, but no longer holds that office. I usually see this meaning written without a hyphen. occurring once, e.g. "hopefully, that was a one-time mistake". IME this meaning is more likely to have a hyphen. one time : once, on one occasion. "Yes, I went there one time." once upon a time. "One time, in band camp...". Can also occur in phrases such as at one time ( formerly, at a previous time ; or sometimes, simultaneously ).

"noon" is the term for the middle of the day, round about 12.00 to 13.00, and "midnight" is from 24.00 to 1.00, at night. "midnight" is just basically a prefix added to "night", whereas "noon" is a completely different word. Why is it "midnight", and not some term like "noon"? Is there actually a term for "midnight", that is the equivalent of "noon"? Answer While there is not a one-word term for midnight similar to noon , there are several poetic phrases for the middle of the night such as dead of night and hush of night . And from Longfellow's " The Goblet of Life ", we have the interesting noonday night: And also these fun phrases from " The Two Rivers ": And of course there's this from Shakespeare's Hamlet :

In Finland, there live 5.6 % Swedes ( https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/fi.html ). They have lived there for many generations, being standard Finnish citizens, just inheriting the Swedish language as their mother tongue. Which of the following terms is better for them? Finnish Swedes Swedish Finns Of course you may describe them by some more complicated phrase. What I am looking for is just what should be the adjective and what should be the noun . Note 1 I expect that Americans might feel their citizenship as more important and hence use Finns as the noun, while Europeans might feel their mother tongue as more important and hence use Swedes as the noun, but I may be wrong? Note 2 The interesting (for me as a native Czech) thing is that in English the word nationality has two very different meanings ( http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nationality ): a group of people who share the same history, traditions, and language, and who usually live t

I'm writing an automobile website and some of my paragraphs contain the word "only". I understand the following. As far as I'm aware, this is right: Only the Volkswagen Polo, Golf, Passat, Passat CC and Sharan are available in this country.  This, as far as I am aware means that those Volkswagen vehicles are available, and no other. This is where I'm having my problem, in the following articles: The Subaru Legacy was launched recently here. Sold as a sedan or wagon, it is only available with 2.0-litre/148bhp and 2.5-litre/165bhp 4-cylinder petrol engines, for now. The 3.6-litre/256bhp petrol and 2.0-litre/148bhp turbodiesel may arrive in mid-2011. However, if I rearrange it as such: The Subaru Legacy was launched recently here. Sold as a sedan or wagon, it is available only with 2.0-litre/148bhp and 2.5-litre/165bhp 4-cylinder petrol engines, for now. The 3.6-litre/256bhp petrol and 2.0-litre/148bhp turbodiesel may arrive in mid-2011. or as: The Subaru Legacy wa

There, I did it myself. Instead of asking "Why are some questions written in this funny way?", I produced what strikes me as bad English ever so often: Questions that are formed by starting out with "Why" (or other interrogative words), followed by what seems to be a normal subject-verb-object sentence. A few examples are quickly drawn from some other SE sites (missing question marks included), but this seems to be quite common all across the board: “Why we need SELinux?” “Why ATM and MPLS are at level 2.5” “Why Turn Collate Off” “Why BitTorrent uploads simultaneously?” “Why the letters in keyboards are arranged like this?” I do have the impression that the actual article beneath such a question is often written in quite good English, so the writer is not necessarily a beginner of the language. Therefore my question, mainly aimed at the native speakers of English: Is this considered to be good style? Or do you find it sloppy? What's your impression when you read

A neologism would be fine. I was thinking of “ruglifter”, as in someone who is wont to sweep dirt under the rug. edit: I was aware that using "from first principles" would render the question ambiguous, but I thought my run-on would clarify it. I was partly trying to avoid using a Latinism ("ab initio"), but I guess it is appropriate, so I've edited to use it. Answer I suggest dogmatist or dogmatic . These imply stubborn refusal to acknowledge facts or others’ opinions, as well as an inclination to lay down their own principles as incontrovertible.

For example, I've heard nonsenses , but I've never heard bullshits . Why one is plural and the other is singular? They mean the same thing.

I was watching the 1989 movie "Bill and Ted's excellent adventure" a couple of weeks back and in one scene Bill replies to some statement (I forgot whom he is replying to) with just "Word." What does the word "word" mean when used like this? Is it like saying "amen"? Answer Geneva Smitherman, Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner (1994) has a series of word -based entries in her glossary of "Black Talk," all signifying much the same thing [combined snippets]: WORD!/WORD UP! A response of affirmation. Also Word to the Mother! Word Up is the title of a music magazine published in [Paramus,] New Jersey [and incorporated in 1987]. See also WORD IS BORN! WORD IS BORN! An affirmative response to a statement or action. Also Word! , Word up! , Word to the Mother! A resurfacing of an old familiar saying in the Black Oral Tradition, "Yo word is yo bond," which was popularized by the FIVE PERCENT NATION

Possible Duplicates: Should I Put Myself Last (“me and you” vs “you and me”)? When do I use “I” instead of “me?” Who wants ice-cream? When identifying people in a photo—for instance, John, Valencia, and (I or me). should I use ”I” or “me”? Which one is grammatically correct?

These examples are from CGEL*. a linguistics student a first-year student CGEL says 'linguistics' is a complement of the noun 'student', whereas 'first-year' is a modifier of the noun 'student'. How exactly do you determine the former is a complement and the latter is a modifier? Also, in the following examples of my own choosing, are the words in bold complements or modifiers of the respective subsequent nouns? And how do you reach your conclusion? a college student a police station a tax bill *The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by Pullum and Huddleston (p439)

In AE, a porch is apparently just about the same structure as a veranda, i.e. an open or enclosed gallery or room attached to the outside of a building. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/porch http://www.thefreedictionary.com/veranda Besides, a porch (or veranda) can apparently also be designated in some parts of the U.S. alternately as a "(sun) deck", a "gallery", "a "lanai", a "terrace", and a "piazza". Are any of these regional usages widespread enough to have gotten to flood into mainstream AE? Also -- in dialectal AE -- can a large outback or outfront balcony, i.e. a platform that projects from the wall of a building and is surrounded by a railing, a balustrade, or a parapet (like of those found attached to hotel suites, or serving as restaurant dining area) be referred to alternately as a "terrace", a "gallery", and a "patio"? http://www.thefreedictionary.com/balcony Answer As a native Mid-Atlant

I heard: "It shouldn't break any of your site persay ." I searched for it but cannot find it, not even in a dictionary. What does persay or per say mean? Answer You heard: It shouldn't break any of your site per se . per se is a Latin phrase often used in English. It means "in itself". So the person who said per se could have meant: "It shouldn't break the site, but it could break other things that you care about." or perhaps "It shouldn't break the site, but it could cause problems that are similar to a broken site." Try wordnik for examples of usage.

Can "so as to" be used, and if so in what contexts and in what situations? Can it be used formally and in written documents? Edit: I'm looking more at an IT question for example "You can do 'something' so as to get the variable and process it" Answer This is a very broad question, but to give you a couple of examples: He put on an elaborate ruse so as to deceive her. She tried to look nonplussed so as to conceal her rage. Yes you can use that phrasing formally in writing or speech, although personally, I wouldn't. It has limited applications. EDIT: Yes, based on your edit, you can use that terminology in IT: Ensure that the firewall is properly configured so as to prevent an attacker from infiltrating our network.

I'm planning a trip. My plane lands on the 29th of August. Should I say: I'll arrive on the last week of August. or I'll arrive in the last week of August. Web searches show that both prepositions are used; reading a reference website made me more inclined towards "in", though I am still not sure. Answer According to Google Ngram viewer , "in the last week of..." is much more common. This fits with my feeling as a native speaker, too: in or during for a range of time like a week, month, or season ("in the last week of August"); on for a specific day ("on August tenth"); at for a specific time ("at 4pm").

A polyglot is someone who can speak many languages; something that is polychromatic has many colours, and polysemy is a word or phrase with multiple meanings If polygamy is having more than one wife or husband at the same time, but a polygynist refers only to a man who has many wives. If polyandry is having more than one husband and a polygamist is usually a man who has more than one wife at the same time. What do you call a "multiple father" or "multiple mother", someone who has more than one child with the same partner? And what do you call a parent who has two or more children with two or more different partners? Answer The closest poly-word that I found which has documented usage is the following: polyphiloprogenitive Meaning : adjective: Extremely prolific. Etymology : From Greek poly- (many) + philo- (loving) + Latin progenitive (producing offspring), from pro- (toward) + past participle of gignere (to beget). Earliest documented use: 1919, in a

What does sentence "Fight through the pain" mean? I heard this sentence in XBox360 game Gears of War. Can the sentence be also used with other verbs - can it be simply expressed as pattern "Do something through the pain"? Answer Phrases starting with "Fight through the/it", are telling the subject to stay strong and bear whatever trouble or pain they are enduring. Fight through the pain - means to struggle onward with whatever is being suffered, despite the pain . You can use other words than pain for other difficulties. Occasionally it can be seen with the word bureaucracy , to mean getting past all the obstacles that an infrastructure, forms and procedure put in the way of a goal.

Having looked through the synonymous for researcher and come across the following definition of an investigator as a: person who checks thoroughly is there a word, or phrase that describes a person who checks rapidly without implying sloppiness or inaccuracy. Answer That dude's a whiz at numbers research, a regular math maven . Oddly enough, Urban Dictionary looks to have a better def for whiz than Webster online . 'Whiz' might be a little slangy, but it's been around nearly a hundred years now.

I'm a fairly new ESL teacher. One of my students asked me recently why "...to comply with the rules of grammar" needs a preposition (with), whereas "...to follow the rules of grammar" doesn't. After some research, I decided that the answer is that "comply" is an intransitive verb, so it needs a prepositional phrase, and "follow" is a transitive verb, so it needs a direct object. This is the answer I gave her, but I'm still unsatisfied with it. What is the difference, really? If "comply with" and "follow" are interchangeable in this sentence, why is one instance of "the rules" a direct object, and another a part of a prepositional phrase? Doesn't "with the rules" act as a direct object? When a student asks me "why do some verbs need prepositions and others don't?" is the answer always "intransitive vs. transitive verbs?" Thank you, Lee

I'm used to always hearing or seeing a definite article before certain nouns. Yet on certain occasions the article is totally omitted, and it bothers me. I'm wondering what the justification for omitting the article is, especially when the definite article would seem to be required, or if it is just bad English either on the part of the individual in question or more likely by tradition. The most frequent place I hear this is at the doctor or dentist's office. In every one I have ever visited, the receptionist or assistant always says things like "Doctor will see you shortly" instead of "The doctor will see you shortly." The wikipedia article linked above says this: "A definite article indicates that its noun is a particular one (or ones) identifiable to the listener". In the case of a clinical setting, I know who the doctor is, especially if this is not my first visit. The people in the office know the doctor even better than I, so it would s

What is the origin of the use of the object (it) in the following sentences, and what is its purpose? I like it here! and Did you like it there? In essence, the things we are saying we like are really here (this place) and there (that place) themselves - whence the insertion of the antecedent-free pronoun? Note: I can think of plenty of antecedents you could replace the "it" with, so that's not the answer I'm looking for. Answer It's called a dummy it , and according to Wikipedia it's used "when a particular verb argument (or preposition) is nonexistent (it could also be unknown, irrelevant, already understood, or otherwise not to be spoken of directly), but when a reference to the argument (a pronoun) is nevertheless syntactically required."

I've seen both "study" and "study for" used and I'm not sure which one is more natural. For example: Also, does the sentence "he's currently studying for a M.A. Media Studies degree at University X" make sense? Or is "he's currently studying for a degree in M.A. Media Studies at University X" better? Answer In Europe, it seems either are acceptable. In the US, I have almost never heard "study a Master's degree" used and it sounds incorrect to my ears. I would use "study for" to achieve broader appeal. Google results (searching from the US): "study for a Master's degree" - 998,999 "study a Master's degree" - 168,000 Also of note: The top results for "study a Master's degree" were The Guardian, a .co.uk site, and "studyineurope.eu" When limiting searches to *.co.uk, "study for a Master's degree" still had significantly more hits. Conclusion: g

For example. If I want to quote a passage from a writing, that says The cake is not a lie. and my sentence is: The book by author states that "The cake is not a lie." however studies show that the cake is a lie. Is it OK to replace the period with a comma to make the sentence flow? Relevant: Also what do you do with the capital "T" Are you allowed to lowercase it? The book by author states "the cake is not a lie," however studies show that the cake is a lie. I usually just work around this by switching up the structure of the sentence, but sometimes I really want to phrase something a particular way. Answer The best source for such questions is The Chicago Manual of Style. (By "best," I mean that it is most supportive of my existing prejudices.) 15th Edition, Section 11.8 permits these changes (and others) to quotations: The intial letter may be changed to a capital or lowercase letter The final period may be omitted or changed to a comma

Should I write it like this? O r perhaps like this? Should I write it like this? o r perhaps like this? What about after an exclamation mark or semicolon? Answer Did the sentence end after the question mark? Yes. Then you need a capital letter to start the new sentence, just as usual. No. Then the question mark shouldn't have been there, since it ends a sentence. Right, I should expand on that rather than just be a grumpy old man. The capitalization rule that we care about here is that the first word of a sentence starts with a capital letter, so the question is really about what ends a sentence. The answer to that is easy: terminal punctuation , i.e. a full stop (or period if you're American), question mark or exclamation mark . There's a visual clue in that '?' and '!' are decorated full stops; you just have to remember that a colon (':') isn't really a decorated full stop, not that you'd ever know by looking at it. Colons, semicolons a

What's the difference between "to suspect someone" vs "to be suspicious of someone"? For example, what's the difference between these two sentences: I'm sorry for suspecting you. I'm sorry for being suspicious of you. Answer In many contexts, both forms mean exactly the same. But I think #1 would occur more often. 1: I'm sorry for suspecting you. Strongly implies you suspected someone was guilty of some specific misdeed . 2: I'm sorry for being suspicious of you. May be used in contexts where you had more general misgivings about the moral character or motives of a person, though it can also (perhaps less commonly) be used in the same contexts as #1. Another specific example of a difference; suppose you download and install updated video driver software on your computer, after which your computer keeps going wrong... The driver is suspect (I think it contains bugs that are accidentally causing my problems). The driver is suspicious (I thi

We commonly use the phrase "two dollar word" in our company, but recently I have seen "ten dollar word" and "four dollar word" being used. Which is the most common one, and therefore which should we use? Answer Without hyphenation ten dollar word is the only of those to come up on a NGRAM. Having assumed that this was adjusted for inflation, I added hyphens and plotted a fifty-cent word (the way I've known the expression), too. The resulting NGRAM was less than impressive. But, ten-dollar word seems to be the winner on the NGRAM front. With that in mind: I've always heard fifty-cent words . But, I think the expression stands regardless of the value assigned. 50 cents has a certain throwback charm to the days where a nickel bought you a sandwich, so 50 cents was a small fortune.

In the following sentences from Wren & Martin's High School English Grammar & Composition , the objective form is used. I could not think of the rule that governs this sort of usage. "HER (not she), who had been the apple of his eye, he now began to regard with something like distrust. HIM (not he), who had always inspired in her a respect which almost overcame her affection, she now saw the object of open pleasantry."

I always have problems in deciding whether to use "too" or "also". For example, if the previous sentence is: Peter ate the cake. Which of the following should I say?: He ate the pie too. He also ate the pie. And what about?: He drank the juice too. He also drank the juice. Another scenario: Jack forgot his homework. Which is the correct way to say "me too"?: I forgot my homework too. I, too, forgot my homework. (I have a feeling that "I also forgot my homework." is simply wrong in this case) I guess I can sum up my question as follows: If two sentences share the same subject, should I add "too" after the predicate or add "also" after the subject of the second sentence? If two sentences share the same predicate, should I add "too" after the predicate or after the subject (with the commas)?

During my final year at university, I wrote what I thought was a "bachelor thesis". Right before printing it I stumbled upon several documents stating the name "bachelor's thesis". (Here we do not call it a dissertation just yet, so this question is only about the possessive bachelor's vs. bachelor .) A couple of Google search queries later, I had not found out which of these terms is correct. Which should I use?

I sometimes hear people use "I hope you feel way better","This is way more than I was expecting" and etc. Could you explain this type of usage and what is the difference between "feeling better" and "feeling way better"? Answer It's not the words so much as the metaphors they represent. Very is the usual adjective intensifier, but way, far, and much can also be used, even though they have other uses, because they're representing particular Metaphor Themes . Way is short for a long way , which means the same thing as far . Both of them represent the common Life is a Journey metaphor theme, in which whatever is being discussed (in this case, one's life history) gets mapped onto a Path , in which events are "traversed" in temporal order, so many expressions of physical movement and distance can be used for abstract purposes. Thus, if you've come a long way in recovering, you're way better ; if you've come far

Is there any rule for when it is better to use genitive case or noun as adjective? I'm not sure if there is any difference in meaning in this example: The department of accounting The accounting department Can I also use both forms in situations like: The restaurants of Paris / The Paris restaurants The room window / The window of the room

Expression and idiom are used interchangeably, and so are colloquial and vernacular ; albeit incorrectly. Please advise on differences in meaning and recommend a proper usage. Answer An expression is broader than an idiom. An idiom refers to a type of expression, and is usually not predictable by what it states e.g. Kick the bucket means "die". An expression refers to the way we say something e.g. We say 'get up' to mean to get out of bed. It's not an idiom, but an expression. Vernacular refers specifically to the native speech of a certain place or class of people. It's usually colloquial as well. Colloquial refers to any language that is non-standard or informal. So, vernacular is sometimes informal and colloquial, but colloquial is not necessarily vernacular, because colloquial can refer to slang as well, which is not vernacular. Use idiom only when referring to an expression that is peculiar or characteristic to a language, an expression that

In my native language (Italian) there are convenient abbreviations for compare ( cfr ) and see or refer to ( vd ). Is there anything similar in English? Or should I just use the complete words see or refer to in these cases? I am referring to something that I can use in an informal note, where citations and bibliography seem an overkill. E.g: The method they developed gave better results respect the traditional methods ( cfr “Traditional methods for the task”) The results for those experiments ( vd paragraph “Those Experiments”) show a direct correlation between A and B. Answer In formal, and mostly older, academic texts in English you may sometimes see cf (compare) and vid (see), but they are not used elsewhere.

Why is it that "appreciate" is pronounced as though it were "appreshiate?" Answer In general, English words spelled with "ci", "ti" or "si" before a vowel letter are often pronounced with a "sh" sound /ʃ/ rather than a "s" sound /s/. This phenomenon is called "palatalization," and it is described in the answers to the following questions: The answers I linked to above mostly discuss words like social /ˈsoʊʃəl/ and initial /ɪˈnɪʃəl/ where there is no distinct "i" sound after the /ʃ/. However, there are also some words where "ti" or "ci" before a vowel letter is pronounced as /ʃi/, the combination of the "sh" consonant and a short unstressed "ee" sound (in some older British dialects, the sound used in words like this was more like "ih"). This includes words like associate (v.) /əˈsoʊʃieɪt/, appreciate /əˈpriːʃieɪt/, and initiate (v) /ɪˈnɪʃieɪt

Ages ago, I remember typing snuck into a word processor and being surprised to see it flagged as not a word. My current computer seems to be okay with it and my local dictionary has this in its listing for sneak : sneak — verb (past sneaked or informal snuck |ˈsnək|) So snuck made it into the dictionary as an informal variation of sneaked . A cursory search at Etymonline revealed nothing relevant. Answer It's just an incorrect tense construction of the verb that passed into common usage. Verb tensing requiring a change in vowel is among the hardest area of grammar to create hard and fast rules for. The majority of past participles just add "ed" (or sometimes just "d"), such as walked, soaked, etc. However, when that doesn't work there are really no good rules to say how the vowel should change. There are also some distinctions originally made between various past tenses that have been lost in colloquy; for instance, different conjugations ("it sta

I don't mean something like 'many hardships' or 'several tragedies'. I'm looking for a word or short phrase that would describe just a really rough spot or time frame in someone's life. For instance, [s]he was fired, lost a loved one and/or a friend, a pet died, [s]he wasn't getting much support from those around him/her. How can I describe such a cluster of emotional events in a simple way?

Imagine a scenario where Jim provides a piece of information to Sue. Jim believes this information to be true and correct, but is later proven to be mistaken. Some might say that Jim lied to Sue. I believe this to be the wrong word, because the misinformation was unintentional. Is there a better word for this type of unintentional "lie"? Answer You're right to avoid "unintentional lie", because it's an oxymoron. lie n. 1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood. 2. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression. As you can see, without the intent to deceive, it can't be called a "lie". "Falsehood" technically sounds like it could be the neutral word you want, but most people use it as a synonym of "lie". falsehood n. 1. An untrue statement; a lie. 2. The practice of lying. 3. Lack of conformity to truth or fact; inaccuracy. OK, so inaccuracy is pretty good: the information is wrong, but

I found the article written by Mark Halperin under the title not quite a Haiku in July 13 Time magazine followed by the lines: From a White House pool report about the President’s stop in Virginia Beach: He worked the rope line. Lots of teenagers. There was more screaming. As I was quite unfamiliar with the phrase, I tried to find out its meaning on Google. I wasn’t able to find any definition as I used to find in Google Search, but found a couple of examples of the text headed with the caption, not quite a Haiku : Not quite a haiku : They would never suspect they always have it coming And I'm famous but someone has to do it Clean this world of the rot. ‒ amcon. net Not quite Friday anymore, and not quite a haiku . A little while ago, I was looking for sentences for my RTK2 deck, and while attempting to find something for the character I stumbled across something that is, I suppose, near ... ‒ andorien.wordpress.com From these examples, and in association with Haiku , which is the

When and why did we start using auxiliary verbs, particularly "do" , to ask questions and make negatives?

The usage in the question title seems common enough to me , though it may be more common in Britain. But I can't exactly see what "part of speech" the word friends is here, and I can't come up with any related forms. You'd never hear, for example, John is enemies with Jack . What is going on? Answer We don’t have ‘make enemies with’, but we do have ‘make enemies of’, just as we have ‘make friends of’, so in ‘friends with’, ‘friends’ would appear to be a noun. (The OED has ‘friends with’ under its definitions of ‘friend’ as a noun.) ‘Friends’, because friendship requires two participants as a minumum. It’s not just friends, of course. We can be ‘pals with’, ‘buddies with’, ‘mates with’, ‘chums with’, ‘partners with’ . . .

For instance trichomania is a love of hair, and trichophobia is a fear of hair. But what suffix would denote a loathing of hair? Edit: Maybe I'm looking at the wrong end of the word, and I should be considering the prefix "miso-". Answer With apologies in advance, I offer the following neologism: -odiumic , derived from odium , "quality that provokes hatred; offensiveness" (from Latin odium ) plus ic , "used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning 'of or pertaining to'". Note, it may be that -odious , a suffix carefully derived from odious by prefixing a hyphen, would work better; odious means "arousing or meriting strong dislike, aversion, or intense displeasure." The table below presents some relevant combinations for comparison and gnashing of teeth upon. hirsuodiumic, hirsuodious - after hirsute , from Latin hirsūtus (“shaggy, hairy”). dasuodiumic, dasuodious - after dasypygal , hairy-bottomed, from Greek δασύς (dasus,

Although the word martyr somewhat applies, it includes a nobility not necessarily present. An idiom describing this, in a voluntary situation, would be drawing the short straw, thereby acquiring some unpleasant or dangerous duty. An idiom for an involuntary situation would be getting thrown under the bus. Context Friend: I knew someone would eventually need to refactor this code. I didn't think it would be me. Me: You're our... uh, what's the word?

With on the brink/verge/edge of , is there a distinct difference between these, or do they have more or less the same meaning? Which one is the most informal? Is it all about context? Answer No, there’s no distinct difference between those. All can be used metaphorically or literally. On the edge of may be the most common for a literal meaning, and on the verge of for the metaphoric one, but one can find examples of all. Less-common variants like threshold and cusp are also sometimes seen. There are also physical variants that don’t always work as well when used as metaphors, like margin , limit , or frontier , because these may carry other connotations, like being at the margins of society or the limit of one’s patience.

Daniel runs into Nancy's, his sister's, bedroom. Daniel runs into Nancy's, his sister, bedroom. Daniel runs into Nancy, his sister's, bedroom. Out of the three statements above, which one is accurate? How does one use an apostrophe when introducing a person and their belonging?

Okay, of course I've used different popular online dictionaries and the translation makes sense in the most cases. Sometimes I find usages of 'though' where I don't get the meaning of the word. An example I've found on twitter That face, though. [Image of a dog looking weird] The tweet came without any context or conversation. When I translate this example to my native language - german - this makes absolutely no sense. At least for me. So is the above usage some kind of slang ? What is the meaning of though in this case? For the completeness an example that makes absolutely sense for me Though he tried very hard, he failed the course.

Is “there're” (similar to “there's”) a correct contraction? Since using there's for a plural object would be incorrect, would it be possible to use there're to abbreviate there are ? e.g. I've been told there're many different ways to solve this problem. Answer It's not incorrect, but it's difficult to say /'ðɛrər/, with two /r/s in a row, so mostly nobody does. The purpose of a contraction is to make things easier to say, not harder. This difficulty is one of the forces that has led to widespread use and acceptance of there's as an unchanging existential idiom, like Es gibt in German, Hay in Spanish, Il y a in French, Yeʃ in Hebrew, etc. Another is the fact that, if you think about it, number agreement contributes nothing to the meaning in this idiom, and should not appear at all, since the subject is there , which is a dummy noun that means nothing and is neither singular nor plural by logic, so by convention it should be singular. Tha

As a non-native English speaker, I have a bit of trouble finding the plural of the word 'lettuce'. In my own language (Dutch) it doesn't have a plural at all, and 'lettuces' simply sounds funny to me. Is that just a feeling, or is this word actually not really being used? Would there be another way of expressing the same thing (i.e. bunches/pieces of lettuce), what would be the word of quantity for lettuce? Answer In British English, to say lettuces (and to speak of cabbages and kings and so forth) is entirely conventional. whereas in American English, lettuce is typically uncountable, and lettuces only used when referring to different types of lettuce , in the same way we can say peoples or cereals . For natural units of lettuce, we would say heads of lettuce — for multiple specimens of an entire (iceberg or Romaine-type) lettuce plant. leaves of lettuce or simply pieces of lettuce — for the leaves pulled off of the head. [aside: despite BrE being okay wit

English uses how much/many to ask for an amount or a quantity. Has there been an interrogative word in Old, Middle, or Modern English to convey the meaning of how much/many (i.e., an equivalent to the Spanish cuánto or the French combien )? Answer I'm no expert, but I think the Old English word hwæt had a broad range of meaning and applicability , which did actually include how much .

"Foot" is a curious word in English because it is pluralized in an unusual way; the "oo" in the word is changed to "ee". Did this once use to be a standard way of pluralizing things in English (or a language that contributed to English), which would mean that the plural of "book" was "beek" instead of "books"? Or, is "feet" just a one-off? Answer Whenever you find an O (or some other back vowel like A or U) in one form of an English word and an E (or some other front vowel like Æ or I) in the corresponding place in another, you have two suspects to interrogate. If the two words are not from the same language, but from two separate Indo-European languages, like Latin and Greek (e.g, ped -al from Latin and pod -iatrist from Greek, both roots meaning 'foot' — the p ~ f and d ~ t alternations are Grimm's Law in action), then what you're seeing is E–O Ablaut . Proto-Indo-European often alternated bet

What is the correct possessive for nouns ending in s? When did it become correct to add an 's' to a singular possessive already ending in 's'? I've always heard that when talking about stuff belonging to either a Jones or many Jones, you'd write Jones' (pronounced "Joneses"). But recently I've stumbled upon a book which consistently uses Jones's when talking of a single Jones. What's the correct way of using possesives?

What format of date is appropriate for different contexts (business, personal) in written English, nowadays? 1st of April, 2010 April the 1st, 2010 April 1, 2010 April 01, 2010 another one Answer The context that matters most is where you are located geographically (or which variety of English you otherwise wish to employ). Paul covered the case of the US: "April 1, 2010". That would surely be understood in the UK too, but to my knowledge "1 April 2010" (NB: no comma) or "1/4/2010" would be more common there. Edit : Based on some quick "research" I just did, most commonwealth countries (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) also seem to prefer "1 April 2010", while in Canada "April 1, 2010" would be more common (probably due to US influence). As Paul mentioned, YYYY-MM-DD is pretty good for getting across universally, yet concisely. In my opinion the format often used by airlines – "01 Apr 2010" – is useful too; the

When we talk about nationalities, "Americans" and "the Americans(or the American people)" are two ways of saying the same thing with the latter having a collective sense. The same is true for "Italians" vs. "the Italians(or the Italian people)", "French people" vs. "the French(or the French people)", "Japanese people" vs. "the Japanese(or the Japanese people), etc. Is it perfectly fine to say "the American (as a plural)" to mean the same as "the Americans or the American people"; "the Italian (as a plural)" instead of "the Italians or the Italian people" to refer to them as the nation as a whole?

First of all, I'm not a native English speaker, but in school I learned that these is used if referring to something near, and those is used when referring to something far away (temporally or locally). But now I'm sometimes watching English movies and notice sentences like "Have you seen those boots?" while the boots were only centimeters away. Is this just not correct, or have I learned the wrong rules? Another question is, what if I'm referring to something abstract such as ideas or thoughts so that I can't say if they are far away or not. Should I use those or these? Edit So it can't be really wrong in any case if I use these respectively those? Answer In the 'Have you seen those boots?' example, if meant as an exclamation, there is also a sense of distancing oneself. That is to say if it was meant to imply "Have you seen those boots, they are fantastic/awful", one is indicating the boots are not yours, but belonging to someone els

Is it really wrong to say "How do we call something in English?" instead of "What do we call something in English?"? The former's not unusual in Philippine English at all (probably it's because of the influence of Spanish, which was the national language for almost 400 years). Indeed, it's quite interesting that in many European languages, they tend to say "how". Anyone who can explain this? Thanks a lot.

I'm sure everyone has seen this phrase at the bottom of many e-mail messages. My question is about the combination of punctuation and capitalization. The capitalization of the first word makes me think this phrase was intended to be a complete sentence, but when we get to the end, there's no period, as you might expect when reading a mere fragment. Is this widely considered wrong? It feels they are half in the water and half out.

Consider the sentence "Many a rose bloomed in the garden." If you had to substitute "many a rose" with a pronoun, what would it be? "Many a ..." takes a singular verb. Does that mean it can be substituted by the singular pronoun it ? If you had to add a question tag to "Many a rose bloomed in the garden", what would it be? Is "Many a rose bloomed in the garden, didn't it?" grammatical?

Over the years, I've heard people say 'v-ē-ə' , 'v-ī-ə' , and sometimes the 'uh' is an 'ah' sound. ( edit - It has come to my attention that 'via' was once a 'wee-ah' from Latin, but I don't feel like this helps my question. If anything, that just makes me wonder why there is that variation in the beginning 'ē' and 'ī'.) Now, I'm guessing the difference between 'uh' and 'ah' may just be regional, but that doesn't explain the first part of such a teeny word. This has been driving me nuts for awhile. I've tried online dictionaries , asking English teachers, and they all are the reason (as well as TV and movies) for why I'm still clueless . (As for the English teachers over my years of schooling, all of them agree to disagree with how it is said. I have one teacher saying 'no' to 'vee-uh' and one saying yes to that way and vice versa.) As for the dictionaries, they can