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I realize (or realise?) I may be splitting hairs here, but I find this question interesting, and I’ve never heard or seen it discussed before. I was about to post a quote from Rich Hickey outside my cubicle, taken from an interview with him, in which the writer uses the traditional British spelling of realize . Hickey is an American, as am I, so I changed it back to the American spelling. However, it got me thinking: if Hickey were British, should I spell it his way? The question then is whether I should do so only if quoting something he wrote , or even if I were quoting something he spoke — and thus something he did not actually spell . Tangentially: should I think of this as quoting Hickey himself, or quoting the author who quoted him? My gut instinct is that if you’re quoting something written, then you should maintain whatever spelling the author used, and if something spoken then it’s debatable, and using the spelling of your dialect (or of your audience’s dialect) is probably ...

EDIT 2: The nuance difference may be subtle, maybe even subliminal to most people, but still important to me. I don't think there's one right answer to this question (but maybe there is), as any answer is subjective, so I'm interested in any opinion from anyone. Let's assume we have a company ACME that has some technology used in some product. To your ears, what would be the difference between saying "The benefit of using ACME technology to accelerate the development of [...]" and "The benefit of using ACME's technology to accelerate the development of [...]"? The former sounds to me as if the technology was developed by ACME, regardless of who owns it. The latter makes it sound like ACME owns the technology (patents etc.), but didn't make it themselves. At the same time, saying "our technology" should be analogous to the second variant (assuming you work for ACME), but it doesn't feel quite the same. EDIT: I ran a few searche...

Imagine that the term "grrfumblezig" is a verb, defined as "to realize as a moral norm" or "to bring into being as a moral norm". An example sentence using this term is: "The architecture of the societal systems within which the ancient Greeks were forced to interact grrfumblezig egoism." Another example sentence using this term is: "The narrative myths of ancient Chinese culture grrfumblezig collectivism." A third example sentence using this term is: "Their unconditional commitment to disbelief of all assertions, even in the presence of amply sufficient evidence, grrfumblezig nihilism." What term could replace grrfumblezig in this sentence, to mean "to realize as a moral norm" or "to bring into being as a moral norm"? NOTE: This question asks what I intended to ask here: What single word (verb) means 'to assert as a moral norm' or 'to support as a moral norm'?

In British English vocabulary, most words with "z" are spelled with "s". For example, "capitalization" is "capitalisation", "industrialization" is "industrialisation". But for some words, like "citizen", for example, it has a "z" instead of a "s". Why is this like this? Answer There is a suffix that is written only as -ize in American English and often -ise in British English (but not always, as ShreevatsaR points out in the comments). This suffix attaches to a large number of words, thus the s/z alternation shows up in a large number of words. Citizen does not have the -ize/-ise suffix.

Which one is correct? He is one of the boys who play football. He is one of the boys who plays football. Please state the reason as well.

Having looked to urban dictionary, witionary, online etymology, dictionary.com, Wikipedia and wordfreaks.tribe.net, I have found a wide variance in the etymology and definition of the word snog . I believe this to be a British phrase meaning simply kissing, but several of the above references push it to the level of making out. Does the OED, or a some specific example in common usage provide any insight or guidance to differentiate the connotation? Answer The phonosemantics of sn -initial words includes two body-part foci, of which one is Nose, Mouth, and Respiration ( snooze sniff sneeze snort snore snuff ) Snog 'kiss', and its attendant courtship metaphors, like flirting, fits right into this frame. It's not a part of my idiolect, however, and I didn't include it in my database . So the numbers in the link are off by one; with the addition of snog , the page should read SN- 39 out of 45 coherent assonances A. Nose (20 Thank you.

What does the term mean and what is the best way to use it? And, I also wanted to know if there is any information about where it comes from. And by the way, how do we pronounce it? Answer It's an onomatopoeic term for an explosion or perhaps something collapsing in an horrendous cascade of messiness. Things were going well until lunch, and then a bunch of error reports made my whole day go kerplewy. [My day got messed up badly]. The children's room is kerplewy. [The room is such a mess that explosions are referenced as hyperbole]. It use is normally half-joking, certainly informal. A variant is kablooie as in "Horrendous Space Kablooie", a term used in a comic for the Big Bang that some scientists prefer. Mostly because they have a sense of humour, but also because "Big Bang" was coined to ridicule the theory, not to name it.