When do you use the plural form for nouns that are generally considered uncountable?


When should the plural form of the nouns combustible, material and liquid be used?




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

What is the origin of the phrase shit eating grin ? How did it come to mean showing smugness or self-satisfaction of an individual's actions? Answer From the Urban Dictionary: ...these uses are documented in the Oxford English Dictionary no earlier than 1957 There have been similar expressions used quite far back: In Book XXI of his History of Rome, Livy describes a Carthaginian sect of coprophages, the risus faecivorus, or shit-eating grin, being commonly displayed by its adherents. Although, its origin is undetermined, they may have been incidents which caused the invention of this phrase. Below is an excerpt: "1944 Jrnl. Nerv. & Mental Dis. XCIX. 959 Among demented patients in advanced stages of their illness,..it is not rare to see some of them grasp their own feces, chew them and eat them often with great pleasure and satisfaction (coprophagia).
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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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etymology - Why "silver-tongued" for someone who is convincing?

I understand that "silver-tongued" or "silver-tongued devil" means to be a good orator, or: able to speak in a way that makes other people do or believe what you want them to do or believe Merriam Webster My question is: why silver ? This question on quora goes into detail about where & when the phrase appears to originate from. But why would silver be chosen as the adjective to describe someone's tongue? I'm making the assumption that it means the valuable metal silver and not simply the color, but would gold not have been more apt, as it is worth more? Or why not jewel encrusted tongue? It just seems rather arbitrary to choose a valuable metal, but not the most valuable, to describe someone with a tongue that is valuable. I was wondering if there is any evidence of a deeper or more substantial meaning as to the original choice. Answer It does not refer to the value but to the " sound " produced by silver objects: Of voices, words, etc., fr...
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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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First floor vs ground floor, usage origin

Ground floor – First floor: In British English, the floor of a building which is level with the ground is called the ground floor. The floor above it is called the first floor, the floor above that is the second floor, and so on. In American English, the floor which is level with the ground is called the first floor, the floor above it is the second floor, and so on. (Collins COBUILD English Usage) Though there are exceptions to the above-mentioned usage,( and exceptions are not the issue here) in public buildings in the U.S., for instance, it’s also possible to call the street-level floor the ground floor, like in Britain, but how come that in the UK and Europe the ground level floor and the first floor are respectively referred to as the first floor and the second floor in the U.S. (and so on for higher floors) . Was it a custom imported into the U.S. from a different culture? Related: "Ground floor" vs. "first floor" .
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meaning - What is synonyme of "scale"?

What is the meaning of the word "scale" in both cases? http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/scale I couldn't find the appropriate meaning in the dictionary. “For any new table reservations product, no matter how good it is, it’s very hard to get businesses to adopt the product at scale for two reasons. First, it is hard to scale a sales team without massive funding. Answer The word scale can have many meanings and can act as both noun and verb. Source 1 In your case, for understanding the meaning of at scale in the first sentence, see this thread . In the second sentence, it is being used as a phrasal verb ( Source 2 ) and in this context, it means to increase the size of the sales team .
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grammatical number - "My wide range of abilities have/has helped"

Please consider the following: My wide range of abilities have helped my team succeed. My wide range of abilities has helped my team succeed. Microsoft Word identifies the first as a subject-verb agreement error. However, from my perspective, the "wide range" is not the subject, but rather a descriptor of the abilities. Are either of these sentences wrong, and is one preferred? Answer In such cases, ‘. . . when there are agreement options, the singular verb seems to invoke the set, whereas the plural verb makes us aware of the individual items in it’ (The Cambridge Guide to English Usage’). That leaves the choice of both available to the writer, depending on the aspect to be emphasised.
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