Notes

I would like to know if there is a grammar rule(s) that defines whether a word is gramatically legal or not. I understand a word is given meaning by a human and anyone can give meaning to anything. Therefore I realize it is probably impossible to create a set of laws that can absolutely define the legality of a string of letters. Barring that extreme example, is there a practical/general set of such rules? For example, I remember my grade 2 teacher saying that if a word does not contain at the minimum 1 vowel, then it is not a legal word. Based on that principle, I might claim that the word 'lkjsdlf' is not a legal word. Is there a generally accepted set of grammatical parameters that define whether a word is legal or not (apart from looking it up in a dictionary)? The reason I'm asking this is to determine if it's possible to programmatically validate a word (rather than using a list of 100,000+ words from a dictionary). The goal is to categorize 'lkjsdlf' and ...

I'm looking for a word to fill in this blank. "I'm certain of it: the square root of 225 is 25," said Peter. But when Mary pulled out her phone and used the calculator app to find that it was in fact 15, Peter recoiled. In a quick ___, he redirected, adding, "But you know, this reminds me of a funny story involving Euler..." The word I'm looking for would mean a deflection from a conversational faux pas by redirecting the conversation. It could describe making an excuse for one's flub, but not necessarily. I've thought of some related verbs like redirect, deflect, rebound, recover , and so on, but I'm looking for a noun, and one that pertains particularly to talking. Tangent (as in, "going off on a tangent") is relevant, though that doesn't have the connotation of recovering for a mistake. I really feel like at some point, the French must have invented a word for this, and then we stole it. Alternatively, a word for a deflectio...

I usally hear the word compounds "well-said, well-spoken etc.." to express the appreciation of someone's speech or a useful idea, but I never heard such a single word to express that. PS : I'm not searching for answers like : "To agree etc..." or general terms of "admitting/accepting things". EDIT : I've found a useful interjection " Touche ", but still wondering if it can be used in business speech.

Is this sentence grammatically correct? Anyone who loves the English language should have a copy of this book in their bookcase. or should it be: Anyone who loves the English language should have a copy of this book in his or her bookcase. Answer Certainly many usage guides have advised against use of this " singular they " on various "logical" grounds. Nevertheless, singular they has long been part of the English language, and there are various posts on Language Log giving examples of it being used in the Bible , by Shakespeare , by the president , by the Canadian Department of Justice , etc. . The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language 's coauthor Geoff Pullum (a frequent Language Log contributor) calls the idea that they must never occur with a singular antecedent a myth . There is no shortage of usage "experts" who advise against it, as the other answers in the question should make clear (though these days their reasoning tends away from a...

What is a good word to describe someone who is confident, will correct you if you are mistaken about something and they are correct. They display a degree of self-assurance that could be construed as arrogance or a touch narcissistic, but they are not mean nor do they try to humiliate others if making a correction; it's just their nature to stop the dissemination of false information. They are happy to acknowledge their strengths and high intelligence. As opposed to a more, socially acceptable, slight self-deprecation, that can be mistaken for humility. (I think humility warrants a discussion elsewhere). To an uneducated observer they might be regarded as being arrogant or grandiose. If an extremely skilled and capable individual, doesn't actually flaunt their capabilities, but makes no attempt to hide them and will argue logically and without malice, and happily acknowledges this capacity. If they are not actually self absorbed, but can also give credit where credit is due.. W...

When I was a child, I used to pronounce mushy as 'mah-shee' but somewhere along the way I've heard it being pronounced as 'mooshee' and have been using that ever since. Recently my mom argued with me saying the former was the right pronunciation but I begged to differ. So I googled and only found the former pronunciation but I'm still not convinced. Is there really no 'mooshee' pronunciation for mushy? Or is it little known?

Is any particular punctuation necessary when a quotation is the subject of a sentence? For example, in the sentence below, should there be a comma after export ? Or anything else? "Laughter is America's most important export" is a well-known quote of Walt Disney's.

English isn't my native language (Spanish is), so this question may be very basic, but it is worse not to ask. Which of these two phrases is the correct one? I'm trying to wake and get up from my bed I'm trying to wake up and get up from my bed Answer Either would suffice, but #2 is more natural. Actually, most natural would be: I'm trying to wake up and get out of bed.

This question about alien species and planets brought up something I've been thinking about on and off for years. We capitalize names of alien races like Vulcan , Timelord , Cylon (well, maybe not alien), Krell , Nox , Minbari , and so on, but we never capitalize human . So how did we end up capitalizing names for sentient species when we don't do that for our own race? Answer Most of the names you give are derived from proper place names, or clan names, or such, so using "human" as a comparison is not accurate. For instance, Vulcan and Minbari are named for their planets. We would capitalize Terran likewise (or Earthling or Martian). Also Krell, Nox, and Timelord are groups of peoples (my apologies for not using a panxenic term, but "beings" was too confusing). We would likewise capitalize Irish, Passamaquoddy, Vandals, etc. (And naturally, Timelords are Gallifreyan, just as Mongols are Terran.) Or if you consider them more like ethnicities, you would st...

Are simplify and facilitate interchangeable? The Oxford dictionary defines them as: simplify : make (something) simpler or easier to do or understand facilitate : make (an action or process) easy or easier Answer Facilitate is often used specifically with an agent, eg: he facilitated the meeting, or the software facilitates the accurate recording of information. The event or process remains the same, but the subject is helped to progress through it by the agent. Simplify is more commonly used to imply the process or event has been made simpler through changing its structure or rules, although as commented below, this may not make it easier to carry out the process.

Page 6 of those two documents is/are significantly different. I think is is correct, but what is the rule for this situation? Answer My guess it should be something like: Page 6 in each of the documents has a significant difference. There is a significant difference on Page 6 in each of the documents. There is a significant difference between the documents on Page 6. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Which phrase is more suitable to convey one's inability to do something — "not able to" or "unable to"? For example, not able to join the meeting unable to join the meeting Answer I interpret the sentences in different ways. "He was unable to join the meeting" I read as, "he" was unable to join the meeting because of scheduling conflicts, or for reasons that made him decline participation in advance. While I read "He was not able to join the meeting" as, "he" got held up in traffic or some other unforeseen situation prevented him from joining the meeting as he had planned. I'm not sure there's any formal validity to this.

My friends have a variety of ways of pronouncing "Tuesday": Tooos-day Tyu-sday Choose-day Which one is considered correct? Answer There are really only two phonemic variants here: First syllable is /tu:/ First syllable is /tju:/ The variation between these two forms is an instance of the widespread idiosyncratic insertion of /j/ before /u:/ in many English dialects. Another common word with this variation is tune , which is pronounced both as /tu:n/ and /tju:n/. Generally both variants are accepted as correct, though your dialect will vary in which one it prefers. The variant pronunciation with "choose-day" is a matter of dialects in which the cluster /tj/ is regularly pronounced as [tʃ] ("ch"). This is another common dialectical feature which is generally accepted as correct in the regions where it occurs. When you have someone who begins "Tuesday" with /tju:/ and produces /tj/ as [tʃ], you'll hear them pronounce the word with [tʃu:] as th...

I came across a sentence like this: The president of the World Bank says he has a passion for China, which he remembers starting as early as his childhood . I am not sure how to understand the indefinite relative clause here. Does it mean "he remembers the passion starting as early as his childhood"? Then what is this use of starting here? Is it a participle? And we say "remember somebody doing something", but I don't think that is the usage here in the clause. How can I understand the part of the sentence with the “passion starting as ... as...”?

I'm tasked with a morphological analysis of incrementing . I would say that crement is the base of increment and the root of the word. But I'm curious, because all my life I've been thinking about the words increment and decrement differently. 1 Would the morpheme crement be referred to as a "cranberry morpheme" and if so, did it once mean something on its own in English? I've looked up some etymology, and understand the Latin origin of the words— incrementum and decrementum . Did the words come entirely as units from Latin? Or did we get the two morphemes in each individually and combine them? If they did come as units from Latin, can we still consider crement a cranberry morpheme, given that it did not ever exist on its own in English? Does it even make sense, then, to break it up into in + crement or is the word atomic? Can we consider, in morphological analysis, previous versions of words if they are in other languages? 1 For some reason, I'v...

What is with words that have forms that end both in -zation and -sation , such as localization and localisation ? Many spell checkers recommend -zation . Answer The "z" is American , the "s" is British . As an American I always use "z" for these words, and apparently many UK spellcheckers do not mark it as wrong and the Oxford English dictionary even gives "organization" as the first spelling, saying (also organisation). Yet my (US English) Firefox marks the "organisation" variant as misspelled and suggests "organization". My advice: unless you are writing under guidelines that suggest otherwise, use the "z" form for these words.

Specifically words like succinct and concise. While not exactly the antonym of pleonasm, I would especially like to find a word that implies someone who speaks just enough, perhaps due to wisdom. The opposite of impulsive, excessive speech? Answer Perhaps an incisive speaker; that being clear and direct. Or a direct speaker; as an adjective for coming straight from a source (e.g. the shortest distance).

I have a friend who pronounces the vowel in plague , vague , and bagel as [æ] instead of the standard [eɪ] (so plague rhymes with flag , for instance). Interestingly, he apparently can't tell the difference between the vowel sounds (i.e. even when I say [veɪɡ] and [væg] back-to-back, he can't tell me which pronunciation is the one he uses and which is the one I use). I had at first assumed it was a regional pronunciation, but his wife is from the same relatively small (35k) town in western Michigan, and she uses the standard pronunciation. Is this shift common in his region (or any other region, for that matter)? Is it otherwise explainable? Any insight would be appreciated.

Some dictionaries mention an origin involving shoemakers... But I can't say the link is straightforward, really. Answer http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=snob&searchmode=none snob 1781, "a shoemaker, a shoemaker's apprentice," of unknown origin. It came to be used in Cambridge University slang c.1796 for "townsman, local merchant," and by 1831 it was being used for "person of the ordinary or lower classes." Meaning "person who vulgarly apes his social superiors" arose 1843, popularized 1848 by William Thackeray's "Book of Snobs." The meaning later broadened to include those who insist on their gentility, in addition to those who merely aspire to it, and by 1911 had its main modern sense of "one who despises those considered inferior in rank, attainment, or taste." http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/originsnob People often claim that this word originated as an abbreviated form of the Latin phrase ...

When we list pairs of words, certain orders seem much more common and natural than others. A few examples: Fish and chips instead of chips and fish Ladies and gentlemen instead of gentlemen and ladies (likewise, men and women instead of women and men ) I'm sure we've all (?) had those disagreements about whether it's Rob and Salma or Salma and Rob (or whatever) In most of these cases though, I struggle to rationalise why one order sounds more 'right' than another. Is it purely a historical accident that one order is more common than another? Or are there subtle linguistic rules that are responsible? Answer They are often referred to as irreversible binomials and their fixed order is generally due to conventional usage: A noun phrase consisting of two nouns joined by a conjunction, in which the conventional order is fixed . Examples include bread and butter and kith and kin. (ODO) also: Siamese twins (also irreversible binomials,binomials, binomial pairs, fre...

Over on Photography Stack Exchange , people often describe themselves as "beginners" or "newbies". Nothing at all wrong with that — in fact, it's great. Both of these terms have the implication of starting at a low level now , but with the general expectation of gaining knowledge. I want to distinguish this from someone who doesn't really want to begin at all. In photography, they may just want to take a decent picture for social media but don't actually want to learn anything or, heaven forbid, practice. But I also don't (always) mean this negatively: if that's not your interest, you're just needing to do this thing in the course of something you do care about, why should you become an actual beginner ? The same could apply to computers — I may be not very skilled at spreadsheets, but, also I don't consider myself a beginner, because I have no intention of getting better. I just sometimes find myself needing to edit them and send the...

It's well known that some people find the presence of the in- prefix in inflammable to be confusing, and as a result, the form flammable has become more common over time. Although the spelling "imflammable" doesn't seem to have ever been at all common relative to either inflammable or flammable, it does seem to have had some use. (See the Google Ngram Viewer ; also, to show that these are not just OCR errors, here are a couple of specific examples from Google Books: The Iron Age , 1906; Automatic telephone systems , 1907). If I had come across "imflammable" before today, I would have thought of it as an accidental or ignorant spelling error. But I just learned from Hot Licks that it was at one point used intentionally as an alternative to "inflammable": Back ca 1960 there was a hubbub in the US shipping and transportation arena because many people took "inflammable" (as used on, eg, tanker trucks) to mean "non-flammable"...

Do I need to put a "-" between "non" and an adjective? As an example in physics we say "a non isolated photon", "non tight photon"... The context is very formal (paper publications and similar). Is there a general rule? Are there some differences between countries? Answer Yes, a two-word modifier (like this one) requires a hyphen, except that the commonly held convention is that adverbs ending in "ly" don't (like that one). See this table in the Chicago Manual of Style.

I commonly come across sentences where I have to write the same word twice such as, This is what I've been looking for for a long time. and in these cases I just try to rewrite the sentence to avoid this. Is it OK to write sentences like these? How do you properly write these types of sentences? Answer It is okay, but can be potentially confusing/surprising for some people. In this particular sentence, you can do "I've been looking for this for a long time" or "For a long time, this is what I've been looking for".

How should the "^" symbol be pronounced? I searched on the internet but couldn't find an answer. Answer That looks like a caret symbol. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caret ... The caret /ˈkærət/ is an inverted V-shaped grapheme. It is the spacing character ^ in ASCII [...] and other character sets that may also be called a hat, control, uparrow, or less frequently chevron, xor sign, to the power of, pointer [...] or wedge. Officially, this character is referred to as circumflex accent in both ASCII and Unicode terminology (because of its historical use in overstrike), whereas caret refers to a similar but lowered Unicode character: U+2038 ‸ CARET. From Computer Desktop Encyclopedia ... caret — The small up-facing arrow on the "6" key (shift-6) on a typewriter keyboard. Also called a "hat," it is used as a symbol for several different operations. The mathematical expression 2^12 means 2 to the 12th power. It is also used as an exclusive OR o...

Suicide is to kill yourself. Genocide is to kill a genus. Homicide is to kill a human. Matricide is to kill one's mother. Patricide is to kill one's father. Parricide is to kill one's close relative. Regicide is to kill a king. Uxoricide is to kill ones wife. ??? is to kill your colleague? Added extras from Andy's comment Answer Consider confratricide . confrere : a fellow member of a fraternity or profession; a colleague. [Middle English, from Old French, from Medieval Latin confrater : Latin con- con- + frater brother

I am looking for a word that describes disguising or hiding sound with other sound . Much in the same way that camouflage acts in hiding visual objects. I ______ our conversation with loud music to avoid recording. What could be used for hiding one sound under another ?

Yesterday I read Modern English:A Practical Reference Guide written by Marcella Frank, and she gives a paradigm about tenses on page 50. The page shows tenses in active voice and passive voice; she said these four tenses are exceedingly rare: shall/will be being offered has/have been being offered had been being offered shall/will have been being offered Why are these tense so rare? Are they normally replaced by other tenses? Answer Those constructions are all rare because they are too cumbersome, and so shorter constructions are used instead. It is exquisitely difficult to construct a contextual framework in which the longer version would make more sense than the shorter one. They are also too confusing. All those markers of a continuous aspect are superfluous in all but the rarest of circumstances, especially when combined with a completed aspect. 1. shall/will be being offered This should normally be simply shall/will be offered without the being part: It’s not being offered now...

An example for the use of "potted history": The potted history of P-values, at least when told by certain sorts of Bayesians, is that they were an invention of R. A. Fisher that set scientific inference on the wrong basis for the better part of a century. For instance, Nate Silver spends a whole chapter on this potted history in his recent book.

What does spam stand for, when talking about unsolicited (mostly advertisement) messages? The nearest possibility I found was "Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages" but it seems like too colorful to be a proper acronym. When was it first used to mean "unsolicited messages"? Answer SPAM is a proprietary name registered by Geo. A. Hormel & Co. in U.S., 1937; probably a conflation of spiced ham. Soon extended to other kinds of canned meat. In the sense of "Internet junk mail" it was coined by Usenet users after March 31, 1993 , when Usenet administrator Richard Depew inadvertently posted the same message 200 times to a discussion group. The term had been used in online text games, and ultimately it is from a 1970 sketch on the British TV show "Monty Python's Flying Circus" wherein a reading of a restaurant's menu devolves into a humorous song consisting (almost exclusively) of the word 'spam.' How the Word “Spam” Came to Mean “J...

I need a word to describe the state of being the only one of something. For context, it's for the UI of a scientific device that detects and analyzes cells. In this particular case, we are talking about a particular cell that the device has judged to be the only one there. The phrase needs to be short, so I want to use "Judgment of * ". "Singularity" would appear to be the perfect word for what I am looking for -- if it hadn't already been taken for a very different meaning. Any other suggestions? I really think there must be a word for this; it seems a pretty basic concept. I have a feeling that maybe I am simply not seeing an obvious choice...

Specifically, in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby': With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The phrase "With the influence of the dress" is known as a 'prepositional phrase', but is there a specific term for the preposition starting a prepositional phrase? If so, what is this language technique? Answer I'm assuming the previous sentence in the discourse explained some other change to her (e.g., her hair changed color). The prepositional phrase with the influence of her dress functions an adjunct . In English adjuncts often consist of a prepositional phrase, but not always. So you should cast your net broader than just prepositional phrases. Consult the relevant Wikipedia entry for more details.

According to Dictionary.com there adverb in or at that place (opposed to here ): She is there now. pronoun (used to introduce a sentence or clause in which the verb comes before its subject or has no complement): There is no hope. Then, what element is there in: There is the man. I'm confused because "There is the man" is an adverb inversion, in which there is an adverb and "the man is" is inverted. But according to the definition above, there suddenly becomes a pronoun. Answer Consider this example: There is some milk in the fridge . What would be the question to which you could offer that sentence as an answer? Do we have any milk in the fridge? Where is the milk? The first one - so, there is is used to say that some milk exists in the fridge, and therefore it is a dummy existential subject . As professor Lawler explained below, it doesn't belong to any particular word class or part of speech . If you ask: Where is the milk? Or Where in the fridg...

This was posted on facebook and people are saying it is incorrect, it should be: "...as you and I" Which is correct?

I just saw a parody on the Lord of the Rings , where one of the characters says: it must be cast back in the fire from whence it came! This struck me as odd, since I expected them to say "whence it came"; but now I find that "from whence" seems to occur as well. Does anybody know whether this is correct, or whether it has been correct at some point and subsequently fell into disgrace (or vice versa)? Answer I did some research using the Corpus of Historical American English , and it paints the following picture: (X axis: year, Y axis: incidences per million words) This shows that from whence has been in constant use all the way back to 1810 (that's how far the Corpus goes). Indeed, as the World Wide Words post already linked by Shaun says: And even a brief look at historical sources shows that from whence has been common since the thirteenth century . It has been used by Shakespeare, Defoe (in the opening of Robinson Crusoe : “He got a good estate by merchan...

Are there any grammatical errors in the sentence? "I regret to inform you that "name of company" people are looking for students who are from CSE/IT background. We tried to negotiate, but it didn't work well" I think "it didn't work well" gives a feeling that they did not negotiate well. Instead they should have said "it didn't work out" which I think means the negotiation broke down. Is there really a difference or is it just me? Answer It depends on a number of factors, namely the tone / emphasis you wish to convey. If you are suggesting negotiations were made on the recipients behalf, but an agreement could not be reached (without inferring failings on the side of the party representing the recipient), why not say: "I regret to inform you that "name of company" is currently focussed on identifying those students with a background in CSE/IT. It is with regret that negotiations in this instance unfortunately failed to...

I am confused about the usage of the words like and unlike in sentences. Like and unlike make me confused because I see them being used everywhere almost interchangeably, and to make matters worse I even saw commas making difference in meaning. Which of the following sentences is most correct, and least ambiguous? Unlike Xbox, Playstation can't play Halo. Playstation can't play Halo unlike Xbox can. Playstation can't play Halo, unlike Xbox can. Like Xbox, Playstation can't play Halo. Playstation can't play Halo like Xbox can. Playstation can't play Halo, like Xbox can. Playstation can't play Halo unlike Xbox. Playstation can't play Halo, unlike Xbox. Playstation can't play Halo like Xbox. Playstation can't play Halo, like Xbox. In case you don't know what I actually wanted to say in those sentences: I'm trying to say that Playstation can't run the Halo video game and Xbox can run that game. I probably should have tried sentences w...

I've finished my work. I finished my work. When do I use one or the other? Answer It's a subtle distinction. The present perfect describes the present ... right now, you can be described as having finished your work. The past describes an action that took place in the past ... five minutes ago, you finished your work.

What is the difference in meaning in these three sentences? it might be funny it could be funny it may be funny The answer was partially touched on in this post . Answer All three phrases indicate that the source (the person who is speaking or writing the sentence) does not find the subject (it) very funny. The subtle differences between the three are all about tense (either present or future) and degree of confidence. It might be funny Low confidence, present or future tense: In this context, the word might indicates either: (1) a small chance that the subject is funny, or (2) a small chance that it will be funny in the future. If the second meaning is intended, it would normally be followed by a condition of some sort: "It might be funny if..." It may be funny Medium confidence, present or future tense: This phrase is very similar to the first one, except that it implies a greater chance that the subject is funny or will be funny in the future. Without any context, I wo...

Consider these sentences: The ice was thick enough to walk on. They were in a hurry. There is enough salt in it. It is freezing. I am right. Are the italicized verbs auxiliary verbs? Update: Let me explain why I asked this question. The above sentences are from exercise 6 "Auxiliary verbs" from the book "A Practical English Grammar Exercises 1" . From the 36 sentences in exercise 6, all except the above mentioned five sentences are indeed sentences that contain auxiliary verbs (may, must, can, will, had, etc.). So, what happened here? Why are those five sentences in this exercise? Is it an oversight? View image in full resolution here: http://i.stack.imgur.com/gjn8J.gif Answer Before I start, let me remind you that an auxiliary verb (to be, to have) is called like this because it helps another verb ( from NOAD: late Middle English : from Latin "auxiliarius", from auxilium ‘help.’ ) as in, it supports the main verb. The ice was thick enough to walk...

Why do we use pay top dollar and not pay top dollars ? Dollar is countable, so dollars look more correct. Answer I think the idiom started with advice by the State Board of Agriculture in New Hampshire, 1901 ... It takes the bottom dollar to pay for the labor, the cost of production, the fertilizer, the taxes on the farm, and the mortgage and all that, but it is the top dollar that has the "funny business" in it. If you go to Europe with your wife next year it comes out of the top dollar . Originally it didn't mean "obtain the top price" so much as "look to the 'margin' over fixed costs". Advice repeated in 1907 with similar wording by the equivalent Board in Massachusetts ... It is the only way to get the top dollar. It takes the first dollar to pay the rent of the land, and the next two or three for the labor, and the next dollar or two for the fertilizers, and another dollar or two for the spraying... ...and Vermont (but probably meanin...

The accepted response to an earlier question concerning words like alone , asleep and alive places such words in the category of adjectives that simply don't occur in front of the nouns or noun phrases that they modify -- a category labeled as never-attributive adjectives .  There are other words that easily modify noun phrases which precede them, such as here and there .  These words fall under the category of intransitive prepositions .  There are strong similarities between how the two categories presented are placed and used.  They both work well in post-positive, predicative and supplemental positions.  They both seem able to modify verbs as well as nouns.  In some cases (alive and asleep, for example), the so-called never-attributive adjectives derive from fused prepositional phrases.  Is there a useful distinction here?  Is there something about never-attributive adjectives that isn't true of intransitive prepositions? Edit: Since examples were requested . . . .   So...

Does the word 'hour' have 1 or 2 syllables? Answer From what I understand, hour, fire, hire, layer, rhythm , etc., are all examples of words which are not easily classifiable. But, according to this linguist , Hour and fire are generally considered to be monosyllabic words containing a triphthong . Wikipedia further confirms this in a couple of its articles. Triphthong (WP) : English in British Received Pronunciation ( monosyllabic triphthongs with R are optionally distinguished from sequences with disyllabic realizations) [aʊ̯ə̯] as in hour (compare with disyllabic "plougher" [aʊ̯.ə]) (British) Received Pronunciation : RP also possesses the triphthongs /aɪə/ as in ire, /aʊə/ as in hour , /əʊə/ as in lower, /eɪə/ as in layer and /ɔɪə/ as in loyal. There are different possible realisations of these items: in slow, careful speech they may be pronounced as a two-syllable triphthong with three distinct vowel qualities in succession, or as a monosyllabic triphthong. In...

I am confused about using transitive and intransitive verbs for making passive sentences. Especially when that verb can be both (like the verb change ). Answer Change is one of a number of ergative verbs in English. These are used in both transitive and intransitive senses: In the transitive sense, the Agent is the subject of the verb and acts upon a Patient , the direct object . John ( Agent , subject ) broke the window ( Patient , direct object ). Mary ( Agent , subject ) walked the dog ( Patient , direct object ). This book ( Agent , subject ) changed my life ( Patient , direct object ) In the intransitive sense, the Agent is deleted and the Patient becomes the subject of the verb, which thus represents the action as “performed” by the Patient. The window ( Patient , subject ) broke . The dog ( Patient , subject ) walked . My life ( Patient , subject ) changed . As you know, only transitive verbs can be cast into the passive , but the effect is very similar — the Patient ...

Is there an official pronunciation for Porsche? I grew up pronouncing it with a silent final e ("Porsh"). However, I've increasingly heard it was pronunced with a neutral e sound at the end ("Por-shuh"). Is this simply an anomaly in some people's idiolects, is it regional, or is it becoming a general thing in American English? And has the pronunciation with the final e become more common over time? Answer Car guys and gearheads have (pretty much) always known how to pronounce Por - sche . Porsche's television ads have always given the proper pronunciation, so anyone who paid attention to them (which may have been limited to car guys and gearheads) knew the proper pronunciation. I would speculate that Porsche has reached a broader market in the past decade or two, especially with the introduction of the Cayenne crossover in 2003, and so there have been more Porsche ads on television, giving a larger cross-section of people (not just the ones who watched...

In the following example, would it be correct to replace both uses of 'upon'? Tom further encouraged Blain's team regarding the proposed trade deal, adding that before everything would be agreed upon, nothing would be agreed upon. Answer Per the usage deities , on and upon are interchangeable, though upon lends a more formal, emphatic note.

If my understanding is correct, the possessive personal pronouns (which are mine, thine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, and theirs ) are used in place of nouns, whereas the possessive determiners (which are my, thy, your, his, her, its, our, and their ) are used as adjectives. If this is the case, then why is example 1 below correct, as opposed to example 2? Whose book is this? It is mine . Whose book is this? It is *my .

In my web application, I am importing and exporting users to/from the application. So, for that I would like to have a single word to generally represent 'Import/Export process'. I've gone through Hypernym for “import” and “export”? . But it is talking about business trading and all. I'm not expecting that meaning for it. So, please suggest one. Thanks :)

I often find myself editing prose to remove needless verbiage. Is there a word for this process? It comes up frequently enough to be useful. I sometimes say that I tightened the wording, but perhaps this can be improved upon. Answer You could say that you streamlined the wording. You could also talk about tidying up the writing. But I actually like both tighten and edit . e: Was rereading Steven Brust's The Phoenix Guards , and the fictional narrator describes this process thusly: ... for the past twenty-one years, we have had the honor of refining, or, if we are permitted, "honing" the notebook ... I like both refining and honing for this process. Refining, in particular, describes reducing something to its fundamental elements. (Although Brust's usage is deliberately ironic, since the narrator is anything but terse.)

Taken from BBC Interim President Oleksandr Turchynov described the referendum as a "great farce" which "will never be recognised either by Ukraine or by the civilised world". My try is Interim President Oleksandr Turchynov described the referendum as a "great farce" which "will never be recognised neither by Ukraine nor by the civilised world".

I've just realised that CC is "carbon-copy" and BCC is "blind-carbon-copy". Basically I'm wondering, where did these terms come from? Answer Back when typewriters were in common use and photocopiers were rare, one kind of paper you used to be able to buy actually came as two or more sheets stuck together at the top with carbon paper between each sheet. This way you automatically had multiple copies of whatever you put on the paper. This was commonly used to save typing work for office memos, but was especially common for forms. If they were filled out by hand, they'd put instructions on the top of the first page to "press firmly when writing" to ensure even the bottom copy was legible. I think such forms are still around in some places, but they now use specially backed paper instead of separate sheets of carbon paper. Forms also typically had different words at the bottom of the carbon copy pages saying who got that copy. Now the "bli...

Aside from the offensive meaning, colloquial British English uses the term fag to indicate a cigarette. James has gone outside for a fag In my googling, I thought perhaps this originates from one of the possible meanings of faggot : a bundle of sticks, twigs, or branches bound together and used as fuel, a fascine, a torch, etc. dictionary.reference.com In a very loose sense, this definition could be applied to a cigarette. It's a collection of materials (tar, tobacco, etc) bound together for burning. The origin from Etymonline indicates: 1888, probably from fag "loose piece, last remnant of cloth" (late 14c., as in fag-end "extreme end, loose piece," 1610s) This appears to be speculative, and doesn't necessarily explain why this definition fell into common usage to indicate a cigarette. I'm looking for something more concrete indicating what caused it to be used in this context. What is the origin of this meaning of the word? Answer According to the O...

I wanted to use the word "unwaning" (or, perhaps, un-waning), as in "for his unwaning enthusiasm". However, no decent (online) dictionary I've consulted seems to recognize it. What other word would you use? Does "unwaning" sound weird, or does it sound right to a native speaker? Answer With the word enthusiasm , you may want the word unflagging , or some synonym: ...for his unflagging enthusiasm.

I think there should be a specific term for someone getting a free ride without consent, but I keep thinking of the word "hijack" which clearly isn't correct. Examples include jumping on a train without a ticket, or riding without consent on the back of a truck. Or perhaps I want to sit in on someone else's meeting and just observe. Am I gatecrashing? Or going along for a free ride? Equally, if I hop on the roof of a train to get somewhere for free, is there a term for that? Answer A stowaway is: a person who hides aboard a vehicle, ship, or aircraft in order to gain free passage (Collins Online Dictionary) From Alexander Rein's The Blue Streak: A Hacker's Guide to Special Relativity: For example, if a railroad train is passing by a bystander who is very close to the tracks and at the same time a stowaway on top of a railroad car is running in the forward direction, the Velocity of the stowaway relative to the bystander is simply the sum of the two Velocitie...

If "errored" is not a valid word, then how should I say: The program errored at line 44 I guess I could say: The program threw an error at line 44 But why is "errored" wrong? Is there a better alternative?

The sentence Except the buildings built towards the end of his life, the buildings erected in Istanbul can be assumed to be his. was recently used in a question here. I edited to replace 'except' with the compound preposition 'except for'. I'm very unhappy with the original, but don't like to assume my gut reactions are necessarily correct. CDO gives: Except or except for? from English Grammar Today We often use except and except for as prepositions to mean ‘not including’ or ‘excluding’. They are followed by a noun or noun phrase or a wh-clause. Both except and except for are correct after a noun: I like all fruit except (for) oranges. (excluding oranges) Except for Louisa, who’s away in Berlin this weekend, we’ll all be at the party. She likes going to most sports events, except cricket matches. This shows the choice of 'Except for' to start a sentence-initial prepositional phrase, but does not go so far as to state that the choice of the simple ...

Many headlines use the present tense to talk about the past. However, I feel that sometimes it's hard to distinguish when they are using the historical present and when they are talking about a habitual action. For example, a headline of "Today's trailer reveals new character" could be interpreted both ways, such as in "Interstellar' Trailer Reveals Potentially Habitable Worlds." http://www.space.com/26707-interstellar-trailer-reveal-potentially-habitable-worlds-video.html Another example of a headline that I find hard to distinguish would be "Today's Star Wars Comic Changes The Canon... Forever!" I'm not sure if it's using historical present or if it's similar to a sentence like "this changes everything."

Do the following sentences use 'despite' correctly: a) Despite having fractured his arm, Ravi insisted on playing the match. b) Despite fracturing his arm, Ravi insisted on playing the match.

Context: A few decades ago, during the electoral campaign for governor, there was a televised debate between the three major parties candidates. Candidate A, the favorite according to the polls, was notorious for heavy drinking and rumor had it that he had become a real alcoholic. The three candidates arrived at the studio and when Candidate C shook hands with Candidate A he said: It's a great pleasure to meet you, Mr A, and "I'm happy to see that you are sober as a judge". Candidate A simply smiled and said "Thank you", perhaps hoping it had gone unnoticed. First I thought this might be a figure of speech like "Ad hominem, poisoning the well". Then again, it doesn't look or sound like a figure of speech. Is it a rhetorical device? What kind? Is there a term for it? Answer It might be paralipsis : Stating and drawing attention to something in the very act of pretending to pass it over. A kind of irony. (From the Silva Rhetoricae website at Br...

I, being a native English speaker, and having snoozed through some of my grammar lessons in elementary school, sometimes cannot express differences that I feel exist in certain grammatical constructs. Here is such a case: The car is. and The car is blue. What is the name for the word "is" when used in the first sentence, and in the second? I feel that these two sentences have different semantic meanings for it, the former being "exists" and the latter not being "exists". While the second sentence could be rephrased as "The property of blueness exists in the car" I think that that is a completely different way of stating the thought, not an equivalent. I think the latter is called a "copula" perhaps? No idea for the former. Answer The first is the existential form of the verb be and the second is, as you rightly mentioned, be as copular.

What are the rules for building names? In particular, does the word "building" need to be capitalized when a part of a building's name? How about article "the" - what are the rules for using it as a part of the name, and does it get capitalized in the middle of the sentence? For instance: is it "the American Radiator building" or "The American Radiator Building" or "American Radiator building"? How about when the address is the name of the building, like 7 World Trade Center?

Where does the figure of speech "at the drop of a hat" come from? I understand the phrase means "Immediately; instantly; on the slightest signal or urging. (Alludes to the dropping of a hat as a signal.)" - TheFreeDictionary.com But I don't understand why anyone would think that dropping a hat were some sort of signal. What's the historical context? Answer Since the earliest examples of this phrase in print have no specific mention of fighting, my bet is on the start-of-a-race explanation from James Rogers' Dictionary of Cliches : DROP OF A HAT - Acting readily or on some single signal. In the 19th century it was occasionally the practice in the United States to signal the start of a fight or a race by dropping a hat or sweeping it downward while holding it in the hand. The quick response to the signal found its way into the language for any action that begins quickly without much need for prompting. The earliest reference I could find was from a heari...

An orange is made up of segments, but what is the word for the small tear-drop shaped pieces that comprise the segment itself — within each segment membrane? If you break a segment in half you can see these pieces all stacked together. This structure and elements are common across all citrus fruits so I would expect there to be a name for them. Answer The word is vesicles ; those within the supremed segments you are referring to are the juice vesicles , while those in the rind (well, the flavedo), are the oliferous vesicles . Each is a little bladder or sac filled with some sort of fluid, respectively juice and oil. The juice vesicles are actually modified hair cells. The website www.speciale.it has an article on Citrus Fruit that offers this diagram: And explains: Under the epidermis , we find the flavedo , characterised by its yellow, green or orange colour. The flavedo contains the oliferous vesicles on the inside and are very fine and fragile; the essential oil contained within ...