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He likes going to the library to study. That always makes her happy. What if the last sentence were to be changed to It always makes her happy. Do these two sentences mean something different? It seems to me that "that" is referring to his attitude, and "it" refers to the act of studying. What about this: Her boyfriend likes playing with her dogs. That always makes her happy. and It always makes her happy. Would "that" be reffering to her boyfriend's attitude towards her dogs, while "it" refers to the actual act of playing with them? Answer Past answer: deleted. EDIT: Sorry for my mistake, I didn't notice it. My fault. Reading it again, they both refer to the same thing but the first part instead, as in the fact that "he likes going there" . But your question was if "that" and "it" mean different things. They mean the same here, but the former is less ambiguous probably because it is a deixis. "It...

I've been trying to find a single word that describes a person that will go to extreme ends to achieve a goal. For example, a person that would harm friends or leave behind a path of destruction to get what they want. This question about a person that always goes the extra mile was the closest I could find, but didn't answer my question because of its more positive tone. Answer You have pretty accurately described someone with antisocial personality disorder. Popular terms for this are psychopath and sociopath . Both types of personality have a pervasive pattern of disregard for the safety and rights of others. Deceit and manipulation are central features to both types of personality. And contrary to popular belief, a psychopath or sociopath is not necessarily violent. http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2015/02/12/differences-between-a-psychopath-vs-sociopath/

What is the English word for a person who loves building his vocabulary?

What is the origin or history of using "skin" to refer to "money?" For example, a golf competition called a "skins game" or, referring to an investor who, "has some skin in the game."

There was the following sentence in the article titled, “Romney says inaccurate attack ad is fair” on IowaPolitics.com (November 23), which was studded with several expressions I’ve not gotten used to: " What's sauce for the goose, is now sauce for the gander ," Romney said. "(Obama) spoke about the economy being a huge burden for John McCain. This ad points out that, it's now your turn ... This economy is going to be your albatross ." The ad was rated “ pants on fire” by Politifact, a Pulitzer-Prize winning project of St. Petersburg Times that checks the truthfulness of political statements. This rating indicates that Obama’s words were distorted.” I can roughly guess what the phrase, “What’s sauce for the goose, is now sauce for the gander. This economy is going to be your albatross," mean. We have a similar (I think) Japanese saying: When you curse someone, you dig two holes to bury at the same time, one for him and one for yourself. However, I’m p...

I have always used quantify , but have been encountering quantitate more and more in scientific literature. Is quantitate a "valid" verb and a synonym for quantify ? Otherwise is there a subtle difference in the meaning of these two words? I forgot to mention that in some dictionaries both words exist while in others, quantitate is not featured, e.g. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/spellcheck/british/?q=quantitate Answer Valid word is a difficult thing to quantify. As I've said before , a word exists as long as people use it. You say in your question that you have read it in literature, so therefore we must conclude that it does exist, and, given the context of its use, is a synonym for quantify . The meaning according to OED 1 is a synonym for quantify , chiefly used in biological or medical contexts, so I feel quite sure that its use is typical. As can be seen in the above ngram, quantify is more popular than quantitate , but quantitate 's use is not insignif...

In the phrase "cash on the line" (immediate payment, payment during the transaction), what was "line", originally? I suspect it was a ship mooring line but I'd like to be sure. (I imagine a ship coming in with goods that are in demand, and business people show up in port and the ship insists they pay on the spot (by the mooring line) before the ship will unload the goods to give to them.) I found the following sites with definitions of the term but they lack the origin: http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/cash+on+the+line http://esl-bits.net/idioms/id111.htm Answer A Hypothesis I believe that "line" is here being used to refer to a contract. This is the same line from "sign on the dotted line", which hews closely to the idea that money is exchanged directly after a contract is signed. Admittedly, there are a lot of ways to say the same thing and the documents are sketchy so I don't think that I can prove this definitively. I don't th...