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What does until mean in the following? You need to deliver this product within 2 days ( until August 18, 2011) to meet your deadline and get paid. Does this mean that I have to deliver the product by 23:59 on 17 August 2011 or 23:59 on 18 August 2011? The order time is 21:04 on August 16 2011. Answer My default reading of that would be that you can deliver the product at any time on the 18th of August, 2011 and still be considered to have met your deadline. If the deadline were 23:59 August 17, it would have been stated as "(before August 18, 2011)". I will also note, though, that most people will consider "the end of the business day" rather than "the end of the day" to be the cutoff time, so you might be considered late if you turn it in after 17:00, if that's when your client normally closes their offices.

In the following sentence, what is the main verb and in what tense does it occur? I have got a car. There are two possible explanations that I can think of: get as the main verb in the present perfect tense have got as a phrasal verb in the present simple tense

Are there specific rules / conventions at play when creating demonyms? Or are they merely formed organically over time - the most popular winning out? There are many suffixes to choose from, but I cannot find concrete guidelines as to which is proper to use in which instance. Answer Generally, you have to go with what the locals call themselves. The names of foreign countries and their associated demonyms are often transliterated or reinterpreted versions of the original—or altogether fabricated because the original is unknown. As with any term in any language, the most popular wins. These five suffixes seem by far the most common: -(a)n (mostly for countries) as in African -ian as in Oregonian -ite (mostly for cities) as in Vancouverite -er as in New Englander -ese as in Japanese Other suffixes listed in the Wikipedia article such as -ard as in Spaniard and -onian as in Newportonian are rarer and sound a little more old-fashioned. If you need to coin a new demonym, such as ...

This stems from a discussion over on ELL which has moved beyond being useful to second-language learners. In short, consider the sentence: It weighs about 5 pounds. What part of speech is "about?" Since the verb "weigh" is not having any effect on the "about five pounds," I think it must be intransitive. That leaves the "about five pounds" as a long adverbial phrase, modifying the verb, right? If that is correct, then isn't "about" an adverb modifying the adverbial noun "pounds?" Would the answer hold true if we were talking about the price tag on something?: This shirt costs about 5 pounds. Answer Traditionally, words modifying just about anything other than a noun phrase were lumped into the default category: adverbs. Here, a more analytical approach is to label about as a quantifier modifier, which is obviously its function (if one is in the 'numbers are quantifiers' camp. Those who define numbers as being dif...

What do you call a person that has a lot knowledge/information but decides to not share it? Is it really the classic know-it-all or enlightened?

The computer software can have versions targeting different hardware and operation systems. For example, the same game can be run on PC, Xbox and Mac. My question is - when describing the release of the version targeted the specific environment, which preposition is best to use? E.g.: The company X has finally released their famous Zombie Undeads game on/for/to/? Xbox? The same question for virtual stores - We plan to release a new version for/on/in/to/? App Store and Google Play in March - which preposition is the most appropriate here? Answer The conventions here are fast-moving, but for the most part while the game would be played on a given platform, as a product it would be released for that platform. With distribution platforms (App Store, Google Play, Steam), the game would be available in or on it ( in seems to be favoured for the App Store, since they are more strongly pushing a shop metaphor, on more so for Steam, with Play seeming to lean just slightly toward on ), a...

What is the difference between so , very , extremely and really ? For example, We're so/very/extremely/really glad you could come!