Notes

I have a few questions about simple situations. What should I say to another person right after falling? a) I fell b) I have fallen What should I say to another person right after throwing a ball? a) I threw the ball b) I have thrown the ball What should I say to another person right after taking something? a) I took b) I have taken Please provide explanations for your answers.

I notice great variability in how this concept is expressed. Does the term vary depending on the context? Should one use one variation when discussing biology, for example, and another when talking about product phases? Wikipedia uses different forms in way that seems random. So, too, does the New York Times, based on basic search. An earlier discussion of the variations in connection with technology notes that "A compound generally starts open (life cycle), migrates to hyphenated (life-cycle), and ends up closed (lifecycle)." Are we at the closed stage for the term in a general sense? Answer My medical dictionaries ( Dorland's Illustrated , 30th Ed.; Saunders Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary ) either list it as two words (Dorland's) or not at all (Saunders). So I would say in medical literature fields, where the context would be something like the life cycle of a parasite, it's still two words. And I'm not sure that lifecycle and life-cycle are nearly...

I know that to express gratitude or to thank are verbs that basically mean to say thank you , but what is the verb for the reciprocol action (i.e. saying you're welcome )? Is there a word for this, and does it vary based on the response? Like if I say thank you and you say go to H-E-double hockey sticks! . What did you do other than reply ? In short: "Thank you" = to thank "You're welcome" = to ??? Answer You could say that the other person is acknowledging the thanks when he says "you're welcome," and perhaps is rudely dismissing the thanks when he says "proceed to your choice of unpleasant venue and reside there indefinitely."

I say that "whoever" is the correct grammatical choice in the following sentence: Give the raise to the hardest-working employee, whoever/whomever that may be. I say "whoever" is correct. The reason is that, when we isolate the "whoever/whomever" clause ("whomever that may be"), the phrase converts to "It may be he". "It may be he who is the hardest-working employee", not "It may be him who is the hardest-working employee". Thus, I believe "whoever" is the correct choice here. Am I right? And is my explanation in determining "whoever" on point? This question is different because the "whoever" clause is at the end of the sentence.

What does this phrase from The adventures of Tom Sawyer sentence mean: "True, the knife would not cut anything, but it was a "sure-enough" Barlow, and there was inconceivable grandeur in that -- though where the Western boys ever got the idea that such a weapon could possibly be counterfeited to its injury is an imposing mystery and will always remain so, perhaps." Thank you!

What is the category name to describe “day”, “night”, or “dusk”? What would be the hypernym for the various divisions of the day such as morning, noon, evening or night ?

I have been searching for a word, which I'm beginning to doubt exists at all, that describes a person or thing that changes from one state to the opposite of that state frequently, i.e. an adjective describing the binary oscillation of some particular state. Words like mercurial or capricious are similar but they only indicate that something changes in general , not necessarily to its opposite. I'm looking for something that indicates an antipodal change. The closest word I have found is bipolar but, as this refers primarily to a mental disorder, I feel its application to things like the weather or someone's cooking is too poetic. I want a word that is more literal. Oddly, and with great frustration, I find that while the definition of bipolar is something like "having or relating to two poles or extremities", which specifically implies opposition, all of the synonyms I find for "bipolar" are only describing a general tendency to change. ___________...

Over the years I've stuck fast to a possibly self-invented rule that enumerating pairs of things in an out-of-order fashion requires a "respectively": …where x, y, and z are "ecks", "why", and "zed", respectively. But I begin to tire of this redundant usage where it's clearly obvious (or is it?) that the pairs match up n-to-n in the lists. Is this rule I follow a real rule? Can I drop it in what seem to me, the writer, to be patently obvious cases? Answer I don't think it's clearly obvious in all situations that the pairs match up. I guess the main purpose of respectively is precisely to remove any potential ambiguity. Observe: Jane and Joe are beautiful and smart. Jane and Joe are beautiful and smart, respectively. Japanese, Italians, and Russians are good at making sake, grappa, and vodka. Japanese, Italians, and Russians are good at making sake, grappa, and vodka, respectively. So I suppose you should always double-check whet...

I have a situation/feeling that occurs to me frequently and I'm not sure what the adjective is to describe it (or if there even is one). I'd love to hear your ideas on the matter. The situation is one where I feel like I have some general knowledge, typically gained through experience, that lets me look at a situation more clearly and then take some action (or at least know what action to take) in a positive direction. Here are some examples: My young children frequently argue over who gets to sit in the middle seat at a three-seat table during dinner. As an adult, my viewpoint on who-sits-where is that it makes no difference in the grand scheme of things. The seat can be shared by each person over multiple nights, etc. It's a viewpoint my kids simply don't have the life experience to understand, so I usually just decide and tell them what to do. On my part it's an emotionless decision. Today I have a whole lot of work ahead of me. I'd like to leave by 3pm and g...

Recently at work I was writing the following, and I have not been able to get a firm answer on which version is the most grammatically correct. The sentence is: We would like to use one of the cables that _________ between rooms. Is the correct conjugation run or runs ? I think 'run' is correct, because I think that the verb in the prepositional phrase is referring to 'cables' not 'one.' However, a number of colleagues have said that 'runs' is correct because one is singular. Answer Hmm. I have just reversed myself on this, to the extent that I have removed my comment disagreeing with Chris M's answer. Logically, it should be "run", unless it means that only one of the cables does run between the rooms, and we're choosing that one. With the plural it parses as "one of [the cables [that run between rooms]]", giving what I think is the more likely meaning. If you use "runs", it should parse as "[one of the cable...

We can say both of the following: The carrots need to be chopped. The carrots need chopping. How does the grammar of these sentences affect their meaning? Why is it that in these instances need takes a passive infinitival clause in (1) but an active gerund-participle clause in (2)? Relating to this, why is it that we cannot say either of the following instead of the examples above: *The carrots need to chop. *The carrots need being chopped. This question is being asked because of this question here , which got migrated to ELL.

When we travel around, some people get lost much more easily than others, since they cannot remember directions correctly. Is there any specific word for these kind of people? Answer It seems from looking at answers to identical questions asked elsewhere (see here and here ) that there is no single word that describes this kind of a person. I would usually say: He/she has a poor sense of direction and leave it at that.

Why does English omit diacritics from foreign names that still use the Latin alphabet? For example, why are the Czech tennis player Tomáš Berdych, the Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø, or the Polish city of Łódź so often simply spelled as Tomas Berdych, Jo Nesbo, and Lodz ? Within their native languages these are often separate letters, and in the Netherlands they would always use these diacritics where possible. So what’s the reason that English often omits these? Two examples: (Note: I am only talking about names using the Latin alphabet, I am not talking about transliterated names)

I posted the following on Meta Stack Overflow, and I believe that there was a better word that I could have used rather than "a little too harsh". Considering that my post fails all but possibly one or two of the low quality post heuristics, is something malfunctioning or is the detector perhaps a little too harsh ? Essentially, I believe that there is a word that is more precise in its definition, perhaps an antonym of "tolerant" , that could have substituted in as "perhaps too [insert word here]". The definition of the word would be something like "erring on the side of caution, possibly to a degree of excessiveness"; it would be beneficial for a Secret Service Uniformed Division agent to be [this quality]. I've considered "cautious" , but I don't think it carries the right tone for that context. Does anyone know of a better word? Answer The literal antonym of tolerant is intolerant . It seems like that would be a good fit f...

The words one, two, three, and so on are the cardinal numbers . Similarly, first, second, third, and so on are the ordinal numbers . Is there a similar term for the words single, double, triple , and all the rest? Answer These are called multiplicatives by Fowler (1850) . The term multiplicative is also seen to describe the words once, twice, thrice , and it seems reasonable to distinguish the former as multiplicative adjectives, and the latter as multiplicative adverbs .

Lately I've noticed increasing usage of the phrase "free reign". Is this a legitimate usage of the word "reign", or is this a corruption of the phrase "free rein"? I've been dismissing usages of "free reign" as grammatical errors, but I'm beginning to see this phrase used even in print, so I'm questioning my initial dismissal of this phrase. Answer The NOAD reports the following note, in the definition of reign : The correct idiomatic phrase is free rein, not free reign. In the definition of rein , the dictionary adds the following notes: The idiomatic phrase a free rein , which derives from the literal meaning of using reins to control a horse, is sometimes misinterpreted and written as a free reign . More than a third of the citations for the phrase in the Oxford English Corpus use reign instead of rein . Grammatically speaking, both the phrases would be correct, but the idiomatic phrase should be free rein .

The word "filtered" seems to be much more common than "filtrated". I know that these words derive from "to filter" and "to filtrate". What is the difference in meaning between these two verbs? The context I have in mind is a mathematical one. Here the words "filtration" and "filter" have fixed and different meanings. In addition, there is an invariant for certain objects which are endowed with a filtration (technically this isn't accurate but let's suppose so). This invariant is called "filtrated K-theory" by several people. Yet, some people insist that it should be called "filtered K-theory" because filtrated is hardly a word or at least sounds weird and artificial. Can native speakers confirm this, or would you go for the more logical(?) "filtrated"? Answer The meanings of jargon terms often have essentially nothing to do with the meanings of the English words they're made from. Now...

I was talking to some friends and I said "I ate (/et/) chocolate yesterday...". Then my friend corrected me: "you ate (/eit/) chocolate...". I repeated my sentence with the /eit/ pronunciation and we moved on. But later at home I checked some dictionaries and online debates on the subject, and now I'd like to know if it's possible or not to pronounce ate as /et/ rather than /eit/. Answer That's just a regional pronunciation. It's non-standard but not completely uncommon. If I had to guess, I'd say rural midwestern America, where a lot of the different vowel sounds all get pronounced the same --although Peter Shor's comment above seems to imply it might also be a Cockney accent. (I'm not all that familiar with British accents, so I don't know which might fit best.)

British English often employs mass nouns where American English would only employ count nouns . Count nouns are nouns which take pluralization and numerical quantifiers like 'many'. Mass nouns can't be pluralized and take volume quantifiers like 'a bit of'. For example: I like sport. I like drink. I pay tax. I've got toothache/earache/stomachache/backache. I eat mashed potato/scrambled egg. I play with lego. In American English, we would render these: I like sports. I like to drink / I like to have drinks. I pay taxes. I've got a toothache/earache/stomachache/backache. I eat mashed potatoes/scrambled eggs. I play with legos. These facts are documented here , here and here . But this difference is not mentioned on the Wikipedia page comparing British English to American English. My question is simply what other nouns which are standardly count in AmE are often mass in BrE? Further, are there any broad categories of nouns (for example, food nouns) that ten...

If I were to ask: Which children did you bring? and you respond: I brought both Adam and Billy. The "both" implies not only that you brought two children, but that you brought your only two children (that the whole set was brought). If, however, you had more than two children, neither: I brought Adam, Billy, and Charlotte. nor: I brought all of Adam, Billy, and Charlotte. would have the same connotation that you brought all your children . The first gives no idea how many children there are total, and the second sounds more like you brought "all of" each individual item. Is there a word that has extends the meaning of "both" to more than two?

What is the differentiator between these two phrases? Answer These are not two variants of the same phrase. "Of" is simply a preposition. "... that which you own ..." → You own something. "... that of which you are the owner ..." → You are the owner of something, that's where the preposition comes from. Similarly, you could encounter "that in which you", "that under which you", "that from which you", and theoretically even "that out from behind which you". The possibilities are (almost) endless!

Several dictionaries I have consulted, as well as another question here on English.SE , state that the origin of the word goodbye is “God be with ye”. Shouldn’t it be “God be with you ” or perhaps “God be with thee ”, or did the preposition with really take the nominative? Answer It is an error to believe that ye was only used in the nominative or vocative; it wasn’t. The word ye was sometimes used as the object. The OED says: 3 . Used as objective (accusative or dative) instead of you (in plural or singular sense). And provides many citations, of which these are but a few of them: 1594 Marlowe & Nashe Dido iv. iv, ― For this will Dido tye ye full of knots,··Ye shall no more offend the Carthage Queene. 1613 Shaks. Hen. VIII , v. iii. 181 ― As I haue made ye one Lords, one remaine: So I grow stronger, you more Honour gaine. 1667 Milton P.L. ii. 840, ― I··shall··bring ye to the place. 1820 Byron Mar. Fal. v. i. 198 ― Was not the place of Doge sufficient for ye? 1840 Dickens ...

I’m reading about the C++ Boost library, and the following sentence from Boost.ORG drew my attention: Once the two steps have been successfully completed, the process can start writing to and reading from the address space to send to and receive data from other processes. Now, let’s see how can we do this using Boost.Interprocess. I assume the sentence in bold should be written as let's see how we can do this . Has the original sentence been mistakenly written by somehow (like perhaps by a non-native speaker, for example), or was this reversed order intended to emphasize something? Answer You are right. The correct sentence would be Now let's see how we can do this. The incorrect form you've read demonstrates a fairly common English mistake among non-native speakers, especially those whose native language allows for omission of the subject pronoun (such as the Romance languages). The confusion arises from three points: In a question, the word order would be "can we...

My question may sound repetitive; I've been sifting through whole Internet and I haven't found a clear and comprehensive description about how to utilise idioms like: Regarding With regard to In regard to As regards In respect to As to As for Pertaining to Concerning and the differences in their usage. I am even mostly correct on using them, but sometimes they still seem to be confusing! I need a once-for-all clarification. He is a great man in terms of morality. (Sounds natural to me) It means he is great in morality as an aspect, right? In terms of here means to look at someone through their morality aspect, could it be replaced with "as regards" ? "With respect to" many requests we have received "concerning" exams... Could "with respect to" be replaced with "as regards to" since we are observing numerous requests received? These are still vague to me in many situations. Thanks!

I often get stuck when forming or formatting a sentence with one or more parentheses. For example, I wrote an answer on another Stack Exchange site, in which I wrote: ...whereas, my phone(xperia x10 mini) comes with several widgets... which, afterwards, I thought should be: ...whereas, my phone (xperia x10 mini) comes with several widgets... But in some cases I feel the former way is correct, like: ... phones which have a camera include IPhone(5MP), Nokia N8(12MP), Nokia X6(3MP).... Is there any rule for the placement of space after and before parentheses? Answer The one rule remains readability . No space before a parenthesis is usually used with functions: f(x) Since your technical description of camera isn't a "function", I would still go with: ...phones which have camera include IPhone (5MP), Nokia N8 (12MP), Nokia X6 (3MP) That being said, if you have a consistent convention throughout your document with no space before parenthesis, you could go with it. But as you...

XS sounds like excess , B4 sounds like before , XLNC sounds like excellency , etc. What are these wordplays called? Answer After some googling, I found the term grammagram referring to this type of wordplay. While not as common/official as rebus , this term is much more specific, since a rebus is usually mostly pictures, with few letters. It is an RL-coined ( Richard Lederer ) word, apparently (see this thefreelibrary entry), which, together with the comparative rarity of grammagrams themselves, would explain its uncommon status. Personally, I'd use it, though rebus (or letter rebus ) would be more widely understood.

there's this word eavesdropping or eavesdrop, which I looked over in oxford and several other places. the closest I got to understanding it was that it originated from an obsolete noun "eavesdrop", meaning the ground on to which water drips from the eaves. But how did come to it's current usage? I'm curious. anyone else? Answer There was an ancient custom that stopped a landowner from building within two feet of his boundary, for fear that the water cascading off the eaves might cause problems for his neighbor. By the end of the medieval period, the word eavesdropper had been invented to describe someone who stood within this strip of ground, under the projecting eaves and close to the walls of a building, in order to listen surreptitiously to the conversations within. The verb eavesdrop in the same sense came along about a century later. The most complete explanation I've found is here Eavesdrop, or originally eavesdrip, was originally a noun referring to th...

So I encountered the word "emcee" in written form for the first time this week and was surprised to find that it was not simply written "M.C." (short for Master of Ceremonies). Why does the "emcee" form exist? Answer Per @Sarah's answer in this related question , the coinage vocologue was proposed for such words over a decade ago. But it seems to have no currency as yet, and personally I much prefer acronomatopoeia as suggested by ELU's @wim in a comment to that question. There aren't actually very many in common use. By far the most common is okay , which one of a very few where the longer "phonetic spelling" form occurs more often than the short form (possibly because people aren't sure whether "ok" should be in capitals or not, and they're not sure what it stands for anyway). A couple more where we very often see the longer form are emcee (MC, Master of Ceremonies)) and Dubya (ex-president George W Bush). Ot...

Given the following sentence: Don't listen to those other people. Are those and other adjectives or determinatives? Both? Which makes more sense? Context: I am prefixing the words in some phrases with abbreviations. Some of the words are giving me trouble in classification. (The message is supposed to be an implicit proof of why adding prefixes to table names in a database is terrible. But I'd like to get it right.) Here's the full set of sentences for your amusement. However, please restrict your comments to the stated question, for the most part. com-Don't ver-Listen prep-To adj-Those adj-Other nou-People. pro-You aux-Should adv-Always ver-Use nou-Prefixes prep-With pro-Your adj-Table nou-Names. pro-I aux-Have adv-Even ver-Started ver-Using pro-Them prep-In adj-Normal nou-Writing. com-See adv-How adj-Effective pr-It ver-Is? nou-People aux-Can ver-Understand pro-Your nou-Writing adv-Better! (where com means command verb ) This question is part of 3 related questions...

Fifty meters (is, are) the length of this pool. Ten dollars (is, are) too much to pay for a book. One sixth of the cake (was, were) eaten. One half of the students (is, are) going. Kindly help me to answer those questions please..

How correct/common/proper is "pretty" as an adverb? It is hard for me to see, since it's my native dialect, but I say "pretty often" pretty often, and "fairly often" fairly rarely. Does "pretty" mark me as informal or uneducated or rustic? Answer The NOAD reports that pretty used as adverb is informal, and it means to a moderately high degree, fairly : he looked pretty fit for his age .

This is an extract from text about restaurant of the future http://www.eater.com/2015/9/14/9310919/restaurant-of-the-future I am confused about this sentence: "You would be impressed had you not seen this shameless attempt to appeal to Generation Z’s eco-friendly sentiments a million times in similar restaurants" Would someone please write this sentence in other words or explain the meaning. Answer This sentence uses ' had you not seen '. In general this will refer to an adjective that 'would' have or 'would not' have happened if you did not see something. In this example it means you would have been impressed but because you've seen the same thing many times, you are not. Essentially it adds a negative.

I’ve noticed that some people use an article with the word “part” and the bulk of them does not (at least at some web pages I skimmed through). Which is the correct variant? I think that parts of something are countable, so there should be an article, whether definite or not. A few examples right out of my head. Please, do not consider it as meaningful sentences. These are just for demonstrating and mean almost nothing. KDE is a part of the Linux GUI. The mentioned district is a part of the city. This stick was a part of that tree. Something is the main part of his success. Here you go – a few real life examples I’ve just stumbled with: … the resulting moc file is included in a _automoc.cpp file, which is then compiled as part of the target. DarwinPorts was started in 2002 as part of the OpenDarwin project. It was part of Tax Day protests held throughout the 1990s and earlier. Answer All the sentences with X is/was a part of Y do not require the indefinite article. KDE is part of t...

In contemporary American English usage, I come across sentences like: I ain’t got no money. Ain’t no man like him. Saying ain’t no sounds incorrect to me because it is a double negative. What is the origin of this particular construction? I wasn’t able to find anything online related to the origins of this incorrect usage. Answer Leaving aside ain't , as John suggests, the phenomenon called "double negation" is not so simple as it may seem. Most of the languages of the world use multiple negatives to emphasize the negation, like the (respectively) French, Spanish, and Yiddish examples below: Je ne regrette rien . 'I don't regret anything' ( lit 'I not regret nothing') No entiendo nada . 'I don't understand anything' ( lit 'Not I_understand nothing') Ikh hob nit kin huyz. (‏איך האָב ניט קין הױז) 'I don't have a house' (lit 'I have not no house') Using negatives this way is known as Negative Concord . Many Eng...

Are you comfortable with him? ( correct ) Are you comfortable with whom he is? ( ?? ) You're comfortable with whom he is. ( ?? ) Are you comfortable with who he is? ( ?? ) You're comfortable with whom? ( correct ) Why does adding he is change the usage of who/whom ? I understand that the is is reflective and takes the nominative case, but my brain is not "computing" because I've never seen anything following with ever be nominative...until now. Please enlighten me. PS: There are no tags for 'nominative' or 'dative' or likely any of the other cases. Answer Whom would be wrong in your example; it should be who . The reason is that a relative pronoun functions as part of the relative clause, not of the main clause. Don't let the question mark fool you: who is a relative pronoun here, not an interrogative one. Are you comfortable with [the person] who he is? This shows the structure of your sentence a little better. The person , the hypoth...

I saw on the bottom of an email: To change your email preferences or unsubscribe from certain messages, click here. Is that correct or should it be: To change your email preferences or to unsubscribe from certain messages, click here.

I was just reading this question: When "etc." is at the end of a phrase, do you place a period after it? And it brought to mind something similar. If a phrase ends with a . (such as e.g. or etc.), and you want to use ..., how many periods should you put? That is, which of these is correct? something something etc... something something etc.... To preempt the objection that ellipses never follow abbreviations, they can when used for aposiopesis in dialogue. Answer An ellipsis is always 3 dots. A period is always one dot. If you need both an ellipsis and a period, that totals up to 4 dots. Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition, section 10.55: When the last part of a quoted sentence is omitted and what remains is still grammatically complete, four dots—a period followed by three ellipsis dots—are used to indicate the omission. Ideally the ellipsis would be set distinctly from the period, using for example the Unicode Horizontal Ellipsis codepoint (U+2026): … Although the CMoS i...

Is the following correct, or is there more to it? "I forgot his name" — I knew his name, but I forgot it. "I forget his name" — I keep forgetting his name. Where using "forget" basically means that you tried to remember this information before as well, but you couldn't then either. Answer I forgot his name means that at some time past, I no longer remembered his name, but leaves open whether I can currently remember it. I forget his name can be construed in a couple of different ways: I forgot his name and I still can't remember it (but I hope you know who I'm talking about even so). I keep on forgetting his name. Both are valid; the context might disambiguate between the two.

I think some good words would be conflicted, or confused. As an example of context, think of someone who believes in freedom of speech, but, at the same time, they would support banning comedians who make jokes about certain issues that person cares about.

Should one use has been or was in the following sentence, and why? For many years the USA has been a British colony. For many years the USA was a British colony. Answer "Was" is the correct word to use. Why? If we were to rearrange the sentence a little, we would see why: The USA has been a British colony for many years The USA was a British colony for many years. Example 1 indicates that the USA is still a British colony, and has been a British colony for many years. Example 2 indicates that USA used to be a British colony, but possibly is no longer. Thus, "was" would be more appropriate in this case. For many years, the USA was a British colony.

Well, we know don't is the same as do not , right? Therefore, can I say "Do not you know?", instead of "Don't you know?"? Well, I know that chances are I can't do that, but technically that should be correct, no? Answer You should also be able to say 'Are I not?' instead of the typical 'Aren't I?' Presumably these colloquialisms result from the fact that neither 'Do you not know?' nor 'Am I not?' have a contraction that is at once easily pronounceable and logical.

Use of “do” in affirmative statements Why do people sometimes use the words "do" or "does" in affirmative sentences? For example: A: We know a guy! B: We do know a guy! Why doesn't B just say: "Yes, we know a guy"? And in general, why the use of "do" in affirmative sentences? Answer Do in affirmative sentences is used to put an emphasis on the positive fact. Person A: I've heard you don't have the piano anymore. Person B: Oh, that's not true! I do have the piano!

“It is they who lied” or “it is them who lied?” What rules make “Remember me, who am your friend” grammatical? Which one of these is correct? It is I who am at fault. It is me who is at fault. The word " is " is a conjugation of " be " which is a linking verb. I also want to know the same for 2nd person. It is you who are at fault. It is you who is at fault.

Is only one of them correct? Are they used in different situations? Or are they interchangeable? Answer From Strunk and White: To compare to is to point out or imply resemblances between objects regarded as essentially of a different order; To compare with is mainly to point out differences between objects regarded as essentially of the same order. Thus, life has been compared to a pilgrimage, to a drama, to a battle; Congress may be compared with the British Parliament. Paris has been compared to ancient Athens; it may be compared with modern London.

Or for example on the bottom of a pool as light is focused by waves on the surface of the water. It seems awkward to just call it a shadow since it implies being darker than the surroundings. Answer They are called caustics , the randomly fluctuating patterns of bright lines at the bottom of the pool. They are caused by reflection and refraction of sunlight at the perturbed pool surface illuminated by the sun. The rippling caustics seen below are so called because they are caused by concentration of sunlight (with the resultant potential of causing a burn). More details on this phenomenon can be found here . (source: toronto.edu )

Generally speaking, for any kind of "-ism", the suffix "-ist" produces the noun form and "-istic" produces the adjective form. But there are some "-ist" suffixes that are acceptable or even more commonly used as an adjective. Examples include fascist, humanist, racist, socialist, absurdist, etc. Why do these adjectives not take the usual form, i.e. fascistic, humanistic, racistic, socialistic, absurdistic? Answer The suffix -istic is generally equivalent to the suffixes -ist and -ic but in some cases it suggests a different connotation. Since every term has its own etymology and usage it is difficult to find a general rule. equivalent to a combination of -ist and -ic but in some words having a less specific or literal application and sometimes a mildly pejorative force, as compared with corresponding adjectives ending in -ist: communistic; impressionistic. (from TFD) -istic :(Etymonline) adjectival suffix, from French -istique or directly fro...

How should I phrase a question that must be answered with an ordinal number (e.g., the third prime)? How do you convert the sentence: George Washington was the first president. into a question, preferably one in the form: ****Missing Phrase**** president is George Washington? If no equivalent sentence that is not awkward sounding exists, why is there no English equivalent for the word how-many-th ?

I’m reading Shakespeare’s Henry IV (Part 1) right now and I’m noticing that Sir John Falstaff has a propensity of saying “If this, then I’m a this” sort of statements. A few examples to clarify: … An I have not ballads made on you all and sung to filthy tunes, let a cup of sack be my poison An I have not forgotten what the inside of a church is made of, I am a peppercorn, a brewer’s horse if manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the earth, then am I a shotten herring If I do not beat thee out of thy kingdom with a dagger of lath, and drive all thy subjects afore thee like a flock of wild-geese, I’ll never wear hair on my face more Is there a particular literary term for these sort of sentences? Answer I would call it a "rhetorical conditional" which is amplified (or exploded) by use of hyperbole and reductio ad absurdum . A standard conditional: If it doesn't rain tomorrow, then we can have a picnic. The previous sentence simply states a condition and pr...

What is the word for the phenomenon where your brain blocks out background sounds, because they are constant? For example when you don't hear the air conditioning whirring away until it stops. Answer The word used in psychology for becoming used to a stimulus is habituation Habituation is a decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated presentations. For example, a novel sound in your environment, such as a new ring tone, may initially draw your attention or even become distracting. After you become accustomed to this sound, you pay less attention to the noise and your response to the sound will diminish. This diminished response is habituation. It is not limited to sounds (it covers all the senses) but it is involuntary. Another possibility is desensitise to make somebody/something less aware of something, especially a problem or something bad, by making them become used to it Although it does often come with negative connotations, you could use it in a neutral context and be...

C# Textreader and TextWriter are the another way to read and write file respectively ... I added a text box and button I called tbUpdate and btUpdate respectively ... In the right hand column, we’ll use three TextBlocks; the first and third as fixed labels (with the values Likeability: and % respectively )... WorkerSupportsProgress and WorkerSupportsCancellation which hold true/false values that let the backgroundworker report progress or cancel an async progress respectively ... While learning many the many different aspects of development, I have not come across a book or series where the word respectively is not used in explaining an example. Honestly I guess it's implied that we know what it means. To me I always kind of skim over it because I can usually figure out what they're saying through the surrounding context. Can anyone explain this? Answer This is not really a programming question. It is always true in English that when you say "A and B are true for X and Y...

A document in a hypertext system (commonly "a web page") consists of navigation elements, advertising elements, and what a lot of authors call "content". The "content" carries the information for which the user is viewing the document in the first place. This term is medium-agnostic; it can refer to text, images, video, 3D models, or anything else that an author can include in a document. For example, the questions and answers on Stack Overflow or EL&U are "content". Likewise, in video games, "content" refers collectively to all components other than the program itself, such as the meshes, textures, maps, and audio. For example, Id Software has long had a policy of making the program of its five-year-old video games free software, but not the rest. These games are sometimes called "free software with proprietary content". However, one style guide published by a prominent organization in the free software community discour...

Bread and butter (is or are) my breakfast? And what's the difference between the above sentence and saying "My breakfast is bread and butter"? Thanks.

In my grammar book ( English Grammar , HarperCollins Publishers), I read that none is occasionally treated as plural, but it is usually regarded as singular . Can you give me an example of sentence where none is used as plural pronoun? Answer None is commonly used as a plural. You can find many examples in the Corpus of Contemporary American English . For example, I searched for none of the [nn2] [vv0] to find examples where none refers to something in plural and then takes a plural verb. ( [nn2] matches any plural common noun and [vv0] matches any simple verb not inflected for third person singular, and so must be plural if used with a plural common noun). There were 117 results that matched, including: none of the airlines want none of the alternatives look none of the americans ask none of the answers make none of the appeals work none of the articles mention none of the artists take none of the attendants remember none of the authors speak none of the averages reflect none o...

How do you say the mathematical function in English: x^y (or x y ) For example, how do you say 2^16 (or 2 16 ) I know ^ means 'power' or 'exponentiate', but that is the name of the operation, not how you pronounce its use. If y = 2, it is 'x squared', y=3 then 'x cubed'. What if y is some other arbitrary number? Answer The references say "two to the sixteenth power" or "two to the power of sixteen" but that is only done in very formal speech. Ironically, in actual mathematical usage, the formal pronunciation is not that common. The more common way to say it (in math class or in a mathematical presentation) is a ellipsis of the first: two to the sixteenth or just as commonly two to the sixteen depending on how rapid speech you are using. Of course there are some special cases: x 2 is "x squared", x 3 is "x cubed". x 1 or x 0 are mathematically jarring if written alone (they are often, when mathematically allow...

Where does the question mark go — inside or outside the parentheses? Consider this: Even a fool gets to be young once (but not twice!). Do you understand? The parentheses and the text within them are supposed to be a part of the first sentence. Note also that this is just a silly made-up example. These are not the actual words I'm dealing with in reality. Question: Should there be a dot after the closing parenthesis?

Does way too long mean a lot too long , or slightly too long? Does way too stand for a huge or small measure? Answer As an adverb, "way" means "to a great degree". So "way too long" means "very/extremely long". I also found the following information on Urban Dictionary : Way too: A phrase originating from Welland, Ontario, Canada. The phrase means to do/be something to a great extent.

I am looking for a word or phrase to describe someone that didn't use their own tool, follow their own policy or use their own product, due to some ironic twist of fate. Almost the antithesis of the phrase "Eats their own dogfood." For example, a UPS employee that chose to ship something via Fed-Ex because UPS didn't offer overnight shipping at the time. The employee made a logical and justifiable decision, so it is more of an ironic twist than anything intentional or malicious. I considered hypocrite , but that seems to conflict with the justifiable aspect of the choice. Traitor is way too harsh and implies a malicious intent that isn't in the situation, either. Answer Some would call the person a pragmatist : One who acts in a practical or straightforward manner; one who is pragmatic; one who values practicality or pragmatism. One who acts in response to particular situations rather than upon abstract ideals; one who is willing to ignore their ideals to accomp...

I'm reading Robinson Crusoe and came across many of these constructions with "but" in it. I can't help but thought they were a little unusual. I don't consider myself fluent in English, that's why I ask. Here is an example: This I saw no remedy for but by making an enclosure about it with a hedge; which I did with a great deal of toil, and more, because it required speed. Second one: However, as my arable land was but small, suited to my crop, I got it totally well fenced in about three weeks' time; By typing the second out I figured it is actually the normal textbook case of "but", just an, in my opinion, screwed ordering in the sentence. Is this what it means? However, as my arable land was suited to my crop but small, I got it totally well fenced in about three weeks time; Why did the author do this? Can you comment on the first sentence too? It's not a textbook-but-usage as I see it.

I am writing a small software program to teach non-English-speaking kids English Alphabets from A to Z. Is there any list of simple English words which begin with each letter? For example Apple for "A", Black or Blue or Blackboard for "B", Zebra for "Z", Snake for "S", etc? Is there any book for teaching the English alphabet to non-English-speaking kids so I can borrow a list of words for every letter? I found this list, But some words seem strange and unfamiliar to kindergarten kids. Do you have a better recommendation? A - Apple B - Ball C - Cat D - Dog E - Egg F - Fan G - Goat H - Hand I - Indian J - Jam K - King L - Lamp M - Man N - Nurse O - Owl P - Pizza Q - Queen R - Rail S - Sun T - Tiger U - Umbrella V - Vase W - Woman X - Box Y - Yard Z - Zoo Answer This is a community-edited answer that anyone with more than 100 reps can improve. The sublist for each letter is sorted alphabetically, with the word used by the NATO Phonetic Alphabet fo...