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I came across the word "pratfall" in this journalistic piece: eHuffington Post: Donald, you are not in Manhattan anymore But the first pratfall ― cancelling the vote on the bill after insisting it would go forward ― is not a good sign. At first I thought it might be a typo for "pitfall," or an example of journalistic license based on the derogatory slang word prat, but was surprised that to find that the term, while modern, seems to be established. A Google search yields this: Can anyone shed light on the origin of this word? If it is derived from "prat," then what is its origin? I have asked another question relating to the same paragraph from which this was taken. Answer Merriam-Webster (whose definitions you cite in your question) dates the term pratfall to 1930. However, a Google Books search finds an example that is a bit earlier. From Lee Wilson Dodd, The Great Enlightenment: A Satire in Verse, with Other Selected Verses (1928) [text not visib...

Should I use present tense in reported speech? I have both sentences and not sure which one is correct: (1) Peter mentioned that the formula A is based on formula B. (2) Peter mentioned that the formula A was based on formula B. Should I use present tense here as it is a fact (always)? However, it also makes sense by using past tense in reporting speech. Also, can the "that" be omitted? Thanks! Answer Use the present if what Peter was trying to convey is about something being true in general or persistently (regardless of whether that something is in fact true in general...). This example is clearer, I think: Peter said the sky is blue -- vs -- Peter said the western sky was a particularly bright orange when the sun hit the horizon that evening . Yes, you can remove that " that ". But the sentence can be easier to understand, esp. by some non-native English speakers, if you leave it in. And esp. since you do not use " the formula B" here, you can say ...

I understand the use of circa / c. as it applies to approximating dates. However, I have a writer who (over)uses the word in other contexts. Examples: ... from circa early 1990's up until circa 8 years ago ... ... said population is circa 92-94% ... ... making one stop circa Pacific Coast Highway ... ... cost of circa $300,000 ... ... Rarely was I at either bar past circa 10:00PM ... ... circa 5 car widths from ... Is this just my hatred of obfuscated language that's annoying me when I read this, or is it always appropriate to use "circa" when you mean "approximately?" Answer I wouldn't say it's always appropriate. Typically you only see it for dates (for example, "she was born circa 1920"). The Wiktionary article on 'circa' implies (but doesn't explicitly state) in the usage notes that it's used for dates and measures, so your examples of “circa Pacific Coast Highway” or “circa $300,000” appear to be incorrect. And it d...

Which is correct, and why? some days we went on adventures — him maneuvering our scooter, me resting my chin … or some days we went on adventures — he maneuvering our scooter, I resting my chin … Answer They are examples of absolute constructions : Absolute construction From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: In linguistics, an absolute construction is a grammatical construction standing apart from a normal or usual syntactical relation with other words or sentence elements. It can be a non-finite clause that is subordinate in form and modifies an entire sentence, an adjective or possessive pronoun standing alone without a modified substantive, or a transitive verb when its object is implied but not stated. The term absolute derives from Latin absolūtum, meaning "loosened from" or "separated" ... Example Usages: Being a word, phrase, or construction that is isolated syntactically from the rest of a sentence: “this being the case, let us go” "The referee having...

At my business most of the employees use the word inactivate frequently. Is this proper grammar? I've always used deactivate . Answer There are 88 examples of inactivate in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and 102 for deactivate , showing they occur with about equal frequency. Most of the examples for inactivate , though, are used in a biological context, talking about inactivating viruses, genes, and “potent mutagenic compounds”, for example. So inactivate appears to be a term of art in the science of biology.

A group of people who regularly attend gym classes or work-out. What are they called? Is there a single-word for this particular group? Apart from my calling them fanatics , mad (BrEng)/ crazy (AmEng), body-obsessed , vain or dull . Seriously, what are they? Devotees ? Learners ? Practitioners ? I'd also appreciate any equivalent popular/recognized expressions that haven't yet entered any standard dictionary but have been buzzing around for a few years. Trivia In Italian, a gym is called palestra . Italians are very body conscious and tend to look after themselves very well, in fact it is true to say that it's quite difficult to find overweight, unattractive, or unfit men or women who attend these almost daily sessions. The men, in particular, can get carried away and so the expression palestrato has been coined in the Italian language. A palestrato is someone who frequently attends the gym , but is also an exhibitionist, self-obsessed, extremely vain, and very very m...

For those of us not familiar, the verb to know once had an archaic sexual sense, often found in the Old Testament, and as illustrated in the following story found in Genesis 19 : 4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house. 5 And they called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them." 6 Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him, 7 and said, "I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly." 8 "Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please. Only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof." This story is used Biblically to illustrate why Sodom was truly a wicked city and deserved to be destroyed: Despite Lot's offering his daughters to the evil men of Sodom to fulfill their rape ...

Can a phrase starting with "if" always be replaced with a phrase with a phrase starting with SHOULD? It doesn't seem like we can make a direct substitution. For example, we say If he askED you to move to Italy, would you do it? But Should he ask you to move to Italy, would you do it? Why is this, and what is the rule for the substitution?

I'd like to understand the logic behind uncountable nouns, such as "water", "meat" and others, specially "bread", for example. I don't understand why can't we count them, since there are different kinds of water (e.g.: still, tap, sparkling, etc.), meat (e.g: beef, pork, etc.) and bread (baguette, bun, etc.). Sorry if my question seems silly, but I'm not a native speaker.

Is there an English word or idiom that describes a person who's blissfully unaware or oblivious to their surroundings? I always thought this word was "aloof," but "aloof" seems to hold a rather negative connotation, whereas the word I'm looking would almost connote a positive, like "living in a fairy tale" - or something along these lines. Is there a word for this, or is "oblivious" as close as we get? Answer A Lotus Eater . Classical Mythology. a member of a people whom Odysseus found existing in a state of languorous forgetfulness induced by their eating of the fruit of the legendary lotus; one of the lotophagi. a person who leads a life of dreamy, indolent ease, indifferent to the busy world; daydreamer.

I am not looking for explanations of why "I seen it" is wrong (though with sight there's an unfair grammatical burden that doesn't impact the other senses, whose past tense and past participle are the same - hear, heard, heard... feel, felt, felt... et cetera). I want to know from the snoots here: in which circumstances might you actually say "I seen it."? By way of explanation: my work sometimes takes me to places, and to people, where and to whom "I have seen it" would stand out as strange. So do I conform (let me hear you descriptivists!) or do I stand out (shout it out prescriptivists)? Okay, I'm adding to my question here because there's been some negative feedback (some even calling the question "dumb"). I think it's a valid sociolinguistic question, not just one about what is said in certain dialects or which dialects use a certain expression. It's related to the issue of prestige (regular and covert), code switchin...

How can we express the "intentional ignoring" or someone in one word? Particularly if someone is ignoring others by his/her behaviour, showing that he/she isn't interested in talking or communicating, etc.

I'm currently taking a grammar class and the professor gave us this phrase to ponder upon. She said that there was a problem with it. I can't seem to find the problem nor the solution. Manolette met Julette when he was leaving the airport. (consider both Manolette and Julette MALE) Ashley told Lama that she has the smallest room in the dorm. Both sentences have the same problem... but have a different solution. I think the pronoun "he" and "she" is unable to identify both their antecedents in both sentences?

Recently I was told that when since is used in a present perfect tense sentence, the time point after it should be specific. He further points out that the sentence "The restaurant has been here since my dad was alive" is wrong. Is it true? Any opinions or advice are welcome Thanks in advance

Reduplication - noun - A word formed by or containing a reduplicated element. An act or instance of reduplicating as a grammatical pattern. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/reduplication Is there a term for the kind of reduplication where the two words are exactly the same but the first one narrows a category that could otherwise be interpreted more broadly? e.g. Do you mean Indian Indian or American Indian? It is common both in Irish English and English English . Do you mean cable television? No, I mean television television . To be clear, I'm not looking for a term to describe reduplication for the purpose of intensification, as in: "They have been together for a couple of weeks now". "You mean "together together"? That kind of reduplication has already been covered . Answer It's called contrastive focus reduplication in a paper on the exact construction by Ghomeshi et al (2004). Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 22: 307–357, 2004. EDIT Th...

For my research paper, I have multiple sources with the same title. I have 3 different sources all named "The Treaty of Versailles", with no author. They are all from internet sources. One is from the U.S. Senate website, another from the British National Archives, and a third from an online encyclopedia. How would I write the internal citations for this? I hardly think that writing ("The Treaty of Versailles" 1) for all three sources would be acceptable. Thanks for your help! EDIT: My teacher told us that we can use internet sources without listed authors. He said I definitely could use the sources because two of them are from respectable organizations (US Senate and British National Archives). He forwarded us to this website: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/ On this site, it says, Include in the text the first item that appears in the Work Cited entry that corresponds to the citation (e.g. author name, article name, website name, film name). And...

In the following sentence, the pronoun I is written capitalized, even if it is not at the beginning of a sentence. Why? What kind of questions can I ask here? should I capitalize all the pronouns? Answer This Wikipedia article says the following, about why I as pronoun of the first singular person is always written capitalized: There is no known record of a definitive explanation from around the early period of this capitalisation practice. It is likely that the capitalization was prompted and spread as a result of one or more of the following: Changes specifically in the pronunciation of letters (introduction of long vowel sounds in Middle English, etc.) Other linguistic considerations (demarcation of a single-letter word, setting apart a pronoun which is significantly different from others in English, etc.) Problems with legibility of the minuscule "i" Sociolinguistic factors (establishment of English as the official language, solidification of English identity, etc.) T...

What is the grammatical interpretation of the phrase? I don't understand what verb tense or voice is used.

Consider this part of a sentence: [...] the development of neurodegenerative and neuroinflammatory disorders. I'm wondering if it is acceptable to omit the "neuro" prefix before "inflammatory" and put a hyphen (-) before "degenerative" to indicate that the next word also begins with this prefix (this is to save space). Saving space is actually important as this is for a grant proposal with limited number of pages/words allowed. Therefore I want to know if this sentence is grammatically correct: [...] the development of neuro-degenerative and inflammatory disorders. I hope this is not a duplicate I did not know how to properly search for that situation. Answer In some cases of dangling hyphens, the hyphen is put (back) into a word that used to commonly have it or occasionally still does. For example "inter- and intra-species". You may be able to do something similar in this case: "neuro-degenerative and -inflammatory". If you couldn...

Can we use both would have and would in non conditional past statements? For example: Last year during the summer, I would go home on weekends. past habitual Last year during the summer, I would have gone home on weekends. Last year during the summer, I would have completed three projects every month. What are the differences between these usages? And how to differentiate if it's conditional or not? Answer Last year during the summer, I would go home on weekends. As OP correctly says, past habitual - he usually/always went home on weekends. No problem. Last year during the summer, I would have gone home on weekends. As TimLymington says, native speakers might be tempted to interpret this as an incomplete statement, with the unstated continuation "...but because of [some excuse] I didn't" . But that's only because we're struggling to find any way to make sense of a rather unlikely utterance, so I suggest we consider a simpler one... Last Friday night I wou...

“These cookies are fun to make and especially fun to eat.” ( source ) Semantically, these cookies is both to-infinitves’ object; and to-infinitves seems to be the semantic subject of both funs, as is in the sentence of "It's fun to take a walk". Is this right understanding? Or do the to-infinitves become semantic object of both funs? Answer These cookies are fun to make and especially fun to eat . As the OP suggests, this is a Conjunction Reduction of These cookies are fun to make and these cookies are especially fun to eat. Let's just take one of these, OK? It's the same structure in both conjoined clauses. These cookies are fun to make. The OP also notes that these cookies is the Direct Object of the infinitive to make and normally what one expects to be moved or missing from an infinitive is its Subject , not its DO. And indeed the subject of each infinitive is missing, but that's normal for indefinites. The real question is how the infinitive make ...

What do you call a person who started something that is later followed by everyone? For example, someone started to stay late at night till 8 p.m. and later everyone started to stay till 8 p.m.. Answer A trend-setter or trendsetter : someone who starts a trend, or makes one more popular The other answers on this page have a couple other fine suggestions — and a thesaurus lookup turns up more suggestions still —, but be aware that some of them require additional quali­fication. For example, it's typically "a harbinger of something ", or "a precursor to something ". So you won't be able to just say "he is a harbinger" and leave it at that; likewise, "he is a pre­cursor" will only raise questions if no further context is supplied. "He is a trendsetter", on the other hand, is perfectly self-explanatory and self-sufficient.

The title is the literal translation of a south Indian proverb, used to describe situations where a person who's already guilty will be proven so, if he voices himself against something. Examples: From the literal saying : A thief entered a house at night, and a scorpion stung him. He cant shout out loud, otherwise he'll be caught. He just has to bear it. A student skipped school on the day of a field trip to a local hospital, unbeknownst to his parents. The parents later found out that there was a break out of some disease at the said hospital and decide to get him a preventive vaccination for it. He doesn't like injections, but cant tell his parents that he didn't actually visit the hospital. Answer I think you are referring to " திருடனுக்கு தேள் கொட்டின மாதிரி "(this is the original Tamil saying that I am aware of. It could exist in other Indian languages too) You can say that the thief found himself between a rock and a hard place . He could either shout...

I'm describing a situation that happened in the past. To explain it, I want to use a description that is both true now and true when the situation happened. Specifically, I want something like: She touched me where my neck met my collarbone. Since my neck is still attached to my collarbone (thankfully), I'm wondering if I shouldn't use the present tense here instead: She touched me where my neck meets my collarbone. Which is preferable, and why? Answer [I believe this question already exists somewhere else on this website, but I can't for the life of me find it.] In short, though the present tense is also possible, the most natural choice would probably be the past tense: She touched me where my neck met my collarbone. The main clause happened in the past, while the subordinate clause is a timeless fact; that is, it was true in the past and it is true now. Which tense to use in the subordinate clause? General rules about the sequence of tenses shouldn't normally b...

I'm trying to understand the grammar of this sentence: I like climbing mountains. Here's what I've got so far: "I" is the subject "like" is the verb I believe "climbing" is a participle Maybe "mountains" is the direct object? Is that right? And are "climbing" and "mountains" both acting as nouns? Or is the noun "climbing mountains" and "climbing" is an adjective? I'm getting lost. Can anyone clarify this for me? Answer tl;dr : The part of speech of mountains is here a noun . It’s the direct object of the verb climbing . How we know that climbing is a verb, though, is more work. That’s because it might instead be a noun or an adjective. It’s a verb as just mentioned, but let’s look at all three cases just to make sure. We’ll assume that for parts of speech, your possible choices are one of noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. Parts of speech like conjunction, preposition, determiner, interje...

Why the use of 'would' in the following When we tell a joke or narrate a story in simple present can we use 'would' in some cases? For example: He goes up to this man and punches him in the face. The man looks straight into his eyes and tells him that he will take revenge He goes up to this man and punches him in the face. The man looks straight into his eyes and tells him that he would take revenge Answer This is clearly related to your other question about would . In this case I’d say that ‘will take revenge’ would be the more likely construction. That, I think, is because of the different nature of the two narratives. The story about Paul is clearly set in the past, in spite of the use of the present tense to make it sound more vivid. ‘Paul will later transfer . . .’ would have been possible, and even, perhaps, more consistent with the present tense, but the sense the reader has of the text being about past events makes would permissible. In the case of a joke, th...

I want to make a question having an answer as follows: 5 is the third prime number . The bold part is the answer. How to phrase the question?

I don't know which sentence is grammatically correct. 1 or 2 friends is enough. 1 or 2 friends are enough.

Why do we use up as adverbs for verbs? For example, 'wake up ', 'throw up ', etc. Answer "wake up" and "throw up" are phrasal verbs . A phrasal verb is a combination of a verb and a preposition, a verb and an adverb , or a verb with both an adverb and a preposition, any of which are part of the syntax of the sentence, and so are a complete semantic unit. Sentences may contain direct and indirect objects in addition to the phrasal verb. Phrasal verbs are particularly frequent in the English language. A phrasal verb often has a meaning which is different from the original verb. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verbs Notice that "throw up" and "throw" have different meanings. "Throw up" means to " vomit ", while "throw" means " to propel through the air by a forward motion of the hand and arm ". And "wake" means " to be or remain awake ", while "wake up" mean...

I am confused about the selection of in, of or to I want to explain that "changes in hydrological variables and changes in landscape variables in wetlands can change the populations of waterbirds" Here are some options, I am not sure they are right or not. Can someone please help that which one is explaining it best and why? 1) Changes in wetland hydrological and landscape variables can alter the population dynamics of waterbirds. 2) Changes of hydrology and landscapes in wetlands can alter the population dynamics of waterbirds. 3) Changes to hydrology and landscapes in wetlands can alter the population dynamics of waterbirds. 4) Hydrological and landscape changes in wetlands can alter the population dynamics of waterbirds.

I would like to download an English dictionary -- not just a word list -- in a structured format such as TXT, XML, or SQL. Specifically, I need phonetic pronunciation and parts of speech (definition is not required). Surprisingly, I can't find this online anywhere. Wiktionary is available for download , but it only the mediawiki articles themselves. Crawling all articles and extracting the phonetics and parts of speech would be a huge exercise. Is this available anywhere? I don't mind paying. Note: cross-posted on StackOverflow .

My question is whether there is a name for the phenomenon, and also if there is a body of literature including popular exposition about it, of which the paragraphs below exhibit examples. "Nativity" is a fancy word for "birth", and what makes it "fancy" seems to be that it's derived from Latin. English-speaking people tend to regard words obviously derived from Latin or Greek as more hifalutin than words of Germanic origin. "Substance" is more dignified than "stuff"; "decay" more formal than "rotting"; "predict" more scientific than "foretell". When Arthur C. Clarke wanted to make the names of two characters in a story set in the very distant future seem futuristic, he called them Eriston and Etania, which seem like ancient Greek names (Or do they? I now find something on the web saying "Eriston" is of English origin and means "son of Eric", but I am doubtful). It seems at ...

Probably one of the most important decisions a writer can make is to decide on (and stick to) a narrative voice through which to tell the story. The narrative voice will include two elements, each of which must be consistent throughout the story-telling process. The first is point of view, and the second is verb tense. I recently read the above paragraph, and I'm confused about why the author used "will" in the above paragraph. Is the above paragraph written in narrative mode? If I had to write the paragraph, I would write the following instead. Would my choice of verb in the paragraph below be incorrect? Thank you for your help! Probably one of the most important decisions a writer can make is to decide on (and stick to) a narrative voice through which to tell the story. The narrative voice includes two elements, each of which must be consistent throughout the story-telling process. The first is point of view, and the second is verb tense.

Which one is considered correct? I say "math", however I believe I heard somewhere that "maths" is correct. Also, should it (and "mathematics") be capitalized or not? Answer This is simple: Math is American English. Maths is British English. It is a common noun and should only be capitalized at the beginning of a sentence.

There's a word I thought I knew at some point, but can no longer remember what it was. I tried looking up various thesaurus websites to no avail. Similar words to what I'm looking for, but not quite: Elaborate: too neutral -- I'm looking for a more negative connotation. Elucidate: too positive a connotation. Ruminate: The direction is correct, but it is about "thinking about something in too much detail" vs actually describing it so. Describe ad nauseum: 3 words, and awkward sounding. Example sentence: "He began to _ _ the topic" To clarify, I'm looking for a verb. Answer It could be expatiate : from the OED: To speak or write at some length; to enlarge; to be copious in description or discussion. from Merriam-Webster : to speak or write at length or in detail

Pluralization rule for “five-year-old children”, “20 pound note”, “10 mile run” Is it correct to say "This is a forty foot drop" or "That is a forty foot telescope" Shouldn't it be "forty feet"? And what if it is "This is a thirty nine foot drop" instead? Are both correct? Does it depend on the context? How does it work? Answer The forty-foot drop is correct. Compare this: 1) He's a 10-year old. 2) He's 10 years old. In the first example, a 10-year old stands as a noun (notice the article preceding it). In the second example, it's not a noun, therefore no article. Therefore: 1) It's a 40-foot drop. 2) This drop is 40 feet in height.

From one of the Futurama episodes: Farnsworth A: You people and your slight differences disgust me. I'm going home. Where's that blue box with our universe in it? Farnsworth 1: Oh, you'd like to get back to your evil universe, wouldn't you? And destroy your box with our universe inside it. Farnsworth A: Nonsense! I would never do such a thing unless you were already having been going to do that ! The part in bold: is it grammatical, or is it just an intentional word play by the scriptwriters to emphasize time travel? Answer It is indeed an "adjustment" of English grammar having to do with the complications of time travel. When causality in the future has its effects in the past, conditional statements become complicated. Perhaps the best comedic exploration of the effects of time travel on language was by Douglas Adams in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe : One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your...

I used the book "Grammar and Style" and one example confused me: He was the better/ best of two players. The answer was the better but learners wonder how is it true since we use best after the definite article, the . Was the answer given above correct?

I overheard a mother correct her child who said something to the effect of There was a new kid in my class today and I friended him. The mother said befriended and I was inclined to mentally agree (given the kid was maybe six or seven, it's unlikely that he was referring to social networking). However, with a little Googling, I discovered an article from The Atlantic which suggests that 'Friend,' as a Verb, Is 800 Years Old . "Make no purses, for to friend yourself therewith." -- the Guide for Anchoresses, early 13th century "And after soon friended were the King David of Scotland and Stephen, king then of England." -- Andrew of Wyntoun, Chronicles , c. 1425 This answer regarding the be prefix offers: The general form is: be + [quality] and the corresponding meaning is: to turn into + [quality]. So, I guess my question, then, is what is the difference between the verbs to friend and to befriend? Was the kid right? Answer Friend as a verb is ver...

As a spin-off from this comment : If a human exclaims something like "ouch!", I believe it's considered an interjection. But if a pig exclaims "oink!", what is the part of speech? And if a bell goes "bong!", what is the part of speech? You could speak of "an oink" and "a bong" as nouns, but I mean in a context like The man went "ouch!", the pig went "oink!" and the bell went "bong!" Are interjections only for humans? Answer According to the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, "the general definition of interjection is that it is a category of words that do not combine with other words in integrated syntactic constructions, and have expressive rather than propositional meaning." It seems to me that oink and bong fit that definition. Onomatopoeia is not one of the parts of speech listed in CGEL or any other grammar I'm familiar with. This is, of course, limited to actual words. E...

1. If the sun rise in the west, I would give you ten dollars. 2. If the sun rises in the west, I would give you ten dollars. 3. If the sun rose in the west, I would give you ten dollars. 4. If the sun were to rise in the west, I would give you ten dollars. Which is the most common and natural? What are the subtle difference between them if any? Answer "Were to" seems most fitting. In your options, the first one is wrong (singular subject "sun" needs an s on rises). The second one doesn't express the subjunctive mood like you're looking for; "rises" is more indicative. The third of those options gets at the subjunctive mood, but isn't specific to the future tense. The fourth is the best of what you've listed. You might also consider: 5: If [only] the sun would rise in the west, ... which has more of a wistful sense about something you don't expect to happen but really wish it would. That doesn't fit your "then I would give you ...

Dictionary.com lists eight meanings of gay , with “merry, lively” as the first entry. Microsoft banned an Xbox user for listing Fort Gay (a real place) as his hometown: Xbox Live considered the term gay absolutely inappropriate in any context. As a non-native English speaker, my question is whether in contemporary English, does gay always mean homosexual ? Are British and American English the same in this respect? Answer I would say that the word gay means ‘homosexual’ only, with two caveats: A lot of people, especially young people, use gay as a generic adjective meaning ‘bad’ or ‘lame’. This is, of course, considered inappropriate and rude by polite society, but use of gay in this way is pervasive in situations where there are a lot of young people, such as video gaming communities (like XBox Live). People are definitely aware that gay used to mean ‘happy’, ‘merry’, or ‘lively’. The theme song to The Flintstones talks about a gay old time , and many people know that this us...

Is there a word (or phrase) for phrases that are examples of what they describe? For example, "You the verb" to tell someone they forgot a verb in an online posting, or "spacesmakethingseasiertoread". Answer The most common, and most commonly understood, term is self-reference , or self-referential if you're after an adjective. A subset of that is autograms , "sentences that describe themselves in the sense of providing an inventory of their own characters". Examples are "This sentence has exactly six words" or "This sentence employs seven e's". For single words rather than phrases, there's also the term autological . Textbook examples of this include "polysyllabic", "pentasyllabic", "short", "sesquipedalian", and "noun". Lastly, there's the term iconicity that generally describes "the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign (linguistic or other...

Feminism is generally seen as a good thing. It means something or other about achieving equality of the sexes; of treating people of different sexes the same or as well as each other. Racism is generally seen as a bad thing. It means something or other about not achieving equality between people of different races; of treating people of different races differently and badly. Why is there this difference between -isms ? Where did it come from? Answer Oxford defines the suffix -ism as denoting an action or its result: baptism exorcism denoting a state or quality: barbarism denoting a system, principle, or ideological movement: Anglicanism feminism hedonism denoting a basis for prejudice or discrimination: racism denoting a peculiarity in language: colloquialism Canadianism denoting a pathological condition: alcoholism There is no inherent good or bad about these uses (except possibly the disease definition). The source, according to ODO is from French -isme, via Latin from Greek -is...

I'm looking for a word for when you have a collection A and a collection B and they have no overlap. In mathematical terms: the relation between two sets where the intersection is empty. Like in this Venn diagram: The word that keeps popping up in my mind is disparate sets , but I don't feel that completely covers the meaning when I look at the definition, because that doesn't seem to preclude overlapping sets that are different: disparate 1. distinct in kind; essentially different; dissimilar: disparate ideas . Answer You want disjoint , as in " disjoint sets ". From Wolfram Mathworld: Disjoint Sets Two sets A 1 and A 2 are disjoint if their intersection A 1 ∩ A 2 = ∅, where ∅ is the empty set. Disjoint sets are also said to be mutually exclusive or independent.

Back in the day, I used to do a lot of CAD drafting. There is a well known phenomena whereby your ability to see mistakes, errors, omissions or plain nonsense in your drawing diminishes sharply after working more than a couple of hours on the same drawing or draft. Our engineering department even had a policy, that required every drawing, no matter how simple, had to be reviewed or "Redlined" (used a red marker on a printout to circle mistakes) by at least one peer drafter before submitting it to your supervisor, This saved a lot of embarrassment to everyone, especially the company (it saved a lot of money too) since simple mistakes were caught even before hitting version control or structural assessment, even production line assembly, let alone the final customer. Most of the errors caught by peer re are simple, basic omissions like a missing dimension, missing notes boilerplate required by specification, etc. Sometimes glaring errors are caught like personal work-notes or c...

When referring to the country, both US and USA (among other forms), are acceptable. But when used as an adjective, USA sounds wrong. Even in the expanded form (for emphasis), I hear sentences like: He's a United States Senator, he has a lot of influence. (never United States of America Senator.) Wikipedia lists the adjectives as American and US . Is USA an adjective? Was it ever? If not, how did US originate to be the adjectival form and why was USA dropped? EDIT: After Janus's comment below, I wonder if US can be used predicatively (or is it used solely attributively)? For instance, can we say "The car is US" instead of "The car is American"? Answer TL;DR US and USA are not adjectives: they are nouns that can potentially be used attributively, with the same meaning as the corresponding adjectives (if such exist). Headlinese has slightly different rules, but in normal, non-Headlinese language use: USA is not used attributively because it is an abbre...