Notes

Is my mother's step-father, my step-grandfather? To what extent is it usual to extend the prefix 'step'? Can we speak of 'step-cousins', step-aunts and step-uncles etc? If we can it must make for considerable complication in how such relationships are defined. Answer Of the combining form step- , Oxford Dictionaries only says: denoting a relationship resulting from a remarriage Past immediate step-parents or step-siblings, I no longer find the distinction useful. Introduce your mom's stepfather as "My mom's stepfather." Likewise with your stepmom's sister, your aunt's stepdaughter, and so forth.

Who turned off the lights? Who are you? Why do the words in those questions have a different order than the following questions? Does she like ice cream? Where do you live? Where do you come from? Where are you? Answer So, you are asking why we say "who turned off the lights?" instead of: *Who did turn off the lights? Or something along those lines. The difference is in whether the WH-word (e.g. who/what/when/where/why/how ) is the subject or not. If it is the subject, then you just put the Wh-word where you would have put the subject, and nothing else about the sentence changes. But, in any other case, we get the verb movement and possible introduction of "do/does" into the sentence that you are expecting: What did you turn off? In this case, "what" is the object of the sentence. When did you turn off the lights? In this case, "when" is an adverb, again not the subject of the sentence. If you want to know the real deep answer to why it patterns...

If I write a sentence that makes use of two verbs each relying on a different preposition, is it advisable to add commas to structure the sentence and to guide the reader, or is it not necessary (or even detrimental) to do so? An example: It has now become clear that Mister Smith had knowledge of, and in fact drew upon, Mister Brown's book. What about phrases such as the following: This seems to be the backbone to, and the original contribution of, Mister Brown's book. Answer Yes, it is absolutely necessary. The information set off in the commas are a parenthetical aside , which require being set off in someway from the text. This is usually done with commas (as you have), or m-dashes (—), or just parentheses. The rule of thumb I learned is this: If you can remove the phrase and still have a complete sentence, it is an aside. Edit: Better link for the definition and use of asides.

Some sentences begin with a construction like "May I suggest that...." These are phrased as questions but are really statements. Should such a sentence end with a question mark or a period [full stop] (and what is the rationale)?

Is there a specific word that describes people who are easily impressed? Answer Consider susceptible ("likely to be affected by something", "easily influenced or tricked; credulous" and "(medicine) especially sensitive, especially to a stimulus"); and also consider impressionable ("Susceptible of impression; capable of receiving impressions; emotional"). An "impressionable person" may be someone on whom it's easy to make an impression, or may be someone at a formative stage such that impressions will last. Note, making an impression on someone can differ from impressing them.

for smell it would be "olfactory". What is it for touch? Answer Hah Google Sets was actually useful for something! Results for inputting visual, olfactory, and auditory were: visual olfactory auditory gustatory tactile kinesthetic vestibular proprioceptive pain touch/pressure gravity receptors kinaesthetic somatosensory So, tactile it is!

I don't understand, why you would call it a bite, when a mosquito "bites" you. I'm fine with saying "bite" to a wound produced by a tick or other insects that actually have a mouth or something comparable. But mosquitos, they don't have a mouth or teeth with which they could bite you. In my opinion, they sting you. This is even worse for wasps. They really sting you with their sting to defend themselves (and not to feast on your blood), yet still some people call it an insect bite. Answer We use bite for insects (or other beasts) that harm us with their mouth parts, such as snakes or spiders. We use sting when they harm us with a defensive device (i.e. sting), like in the case of wasps or bees. Mouth parts do not necessarily need to be mandibles that open and close. They can have different structures and ways of working. Female mosquitoes do have mouth parts with which they bite us. Look here . Therefore, and according to the previous logic, the phras...

What would be the passive voice of "passengers stay in a hotel". The whole sentence would be "passengers can be forwarded to their destination in a new flight, or (be kept) in a hotel". "Kept" is not a word I want to use for humans :) Answer You can only form a passive out of a transitive verb. To stay when used transitively does not mean the same thing as used intransitively. The word you might be looking for is lodged . People can be lodged in or at a hotel.

A word to describe someone's personality trait that think quick. For example he gets lost in the woods then comes up with a solution on the fly to find his way back home.

All the objects are red, so the group is red. All the objects are small, but the group is not small. Color is ___, while size is ___ . I'm trying to remember the words for this distinction regarding properties and collections, but I am struggling to do so. The words are most frequently encountered in philosophy, I believe. Answer Materials and systems have what are called intensive and extensive properties. From Wikipedia : Physical properties of materials and systems can often be categorized as being either intensive or extensive quantities, according to how the property changes when the size (or extent) of the system changes. According to IUPAC, an intensive property is one whose magnitude is independent of the size of the system. An extensive property is one whose magnitude is additive for subsystems. An intensive property is a bulk property, meaning that it is a physical property of a system that does not depend on the system size or the amount of material in the system. E...

In the Bengali language there is an idiom, "sobjanta gamchawala" (wise towelsman), meaning a man whose occupation is merely to sell towels, but claims to know everything and gives valuable advice on any and every topic. As you can imagine, wise and valuable are used here as sarcasm. In Bengali, the phrase is used to point out a person who always makes a comment on every topic without knowing the context. Is there is an English idiom or phrase for that? I'm not looking for jack of all trades is a master of none . A jack of all trades is able to do a lot of things fairly well, but sobjanta gamchawala isn't. Answer In English, we have the infamous know-it-all : one who knows everything; hence, a person who makes pretension to great knowledge, especially one whose didactic conversational habit conspicuously reveals his belief that he has superior knowledge on many subjects; a wiseacre ; a know-all ; -- usually ironical. [Colloq. & pejorative] Note: the use of th...

How does serverfault, stackoverflow and other stackExchange sites connect together? Is that does or do ? Because I'm talking about multiple items, it would be do . What is more correct? Answer The correct way to ask that question would be with "do". Consider these two examples: How does StackOverflow connect to ServerFault? In that case one item is being considered. Now what if we change the way the verb connect is being used a little and add a second part to the subject so that it is effectively plural: How do StackOverflow and ServerFault connect with each other? Although in both cases the verb "connect" is being used, in the first case the subject being discussed is singular and in the second the two part subject is, considered as a whole, plural. The giveaway would be if you dropped the specific names and just asked your question with the word "sites": How do sites connect together? When switching from a singular to a plural subject, the helping ...

I was wondering if "homework" is countable? I remember it is an uncountable noun when I learned English in middle school. Suppose now I would like to ask my teacher to hand back my graded "homeworks" of last three times. How shall I ask him? Answer "Homework" is uncountable since it is treated as a general meaning not a particular item, like "work", "money" etc. In your case, use "assignment" instead. May I have my last three graded assignments back please?

Is there an American version of “You really take the biscuit!”? As in taking the last biscuit, i.e. it's incredible how selfish you are.

The word "anniversary" literally means a day that commemorates and/or celebrates a past event that occurred on the same day of the year as the initial event. The "ann" in "anniversary" comes from the Latin word "annum," meaning "year." As such, it kind of bugs me when people refer to the "six-month anniversary" of an event. Is there a more appropriate word that means something like an anniversary, except for not a year? Answer "remembrance" or "memorial" are reasonable, though each has a connotation of honoring something or someone no longer with us. I've heard "a celebration" of X used for more happy events.

This live crustacean is called astice in Italian. The one on the right is aragosta . They look very different from one another. The Italian dictionary describes the astice as having a deep (intense) blue colour ( turchino ) with yellow splotches and large claws , whereas the aragosta has a reddish body, five pairs of legs, long antennae and an incredibly hard shell that covers its body and head. To me it looks like a giant insect. In English, however, they are both called lobster and if you eat lobster in either a British or an American restaurant, they will often present you with an astice . An article in the London Evening Standard clearly shows the restaurateur (an Italian!) with two large ‘astices’ in his hands. :)) I don't care which species they give me, frankly they're both delicious, but if I were to invite an Italian friend to a Boston restaurant and order lobster for both of us, she might be dismayed at seeing an astice on her plate. The Italian term astice is ...

Studying possessive apostrophes I have searched on ELU the questions correlated to this matter. I have found the following: « What is the correct possessive for nouns ending in s? » and « When did it become correct to add an 's' to a singular possessive already ending in 's'? » Reading both the first one and the second one I am not able to understand* why " Achilles heel "† is correct, as we can read on Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary . Precisely I am asking why we should write " Achilles heel " rather than " Achilles' heel ". Does it depend on etymological reasons strictly correlated to the Greek origin? if so, in different no mythological cases, should we write, for example, either " Achilles tendon " or " Achilles' tendon "? * I am not able to understand the issue because there is no answer to my question. † Named after the Greek hero Achilles. When he was a little child, his mother held him below t...

In the book A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin, I've noticed the use of the subjunctive mood after wonder if : In truth, he had scarcely considered the mudmen at all, beyond eyeing Meera once or twice and wondering if she were still a maiden. And again, later in the book: He listened to the blasphemies and wondered if he were dying. My (non-native) grammatical intuition makes me think this sounds really wrong. I would say "he wondered whether he was dying" and therefore also "he wondered if he was dying". I would be tempted not to use the subjunctive with an if that can be replaced by whether , and to only use the subjunctive with an if that actually has a conditional value, for instance: "he wondered, if he were dying, why he was feeling so alive". Also, I believe that using Martin's structure in the present tense may sound even more wrong: "he wonders if he be dying" (present subjunctive)... So, am I right, or is it correc...

In the following quote, it seems (to me at least) quite difficult to figure out what exactly is being quote: “The best cure—quote, unquote—for aging is slowing disease,” Daniel Kraft, the chair of [...] My questions are the following: Isn't it better English to write (and say): "The best cure—quote— for aging—unquote— is slowing disease.” How did the usage of "quote, unquote" come to be? In French, people say "ouvrir les guillemets" then "fermer les guillemets" (literally open/close quotes) which better delimits what is quoted. By the way, I am surprise that this question hasn't been asked already: did I not enter to appropriate search terms? Answer Unlike the earlier reply, I would interpret that sentence with the quotes around "cure". I think they were probably added as an afterthought, after cure had been uttered, to indicate that it was not really a cure that was being described. It is unclear what is intended when the quote.....

Is a company always plural, or are small companies singular? I have two statements like this: The committee has approved expenditure of hundred crores. The committee have gone on holiday. The uses of has and have in the above statements confuse me. Can anyone explain me why has has been used in the first sentence, why I shouldn't use have in the place of has in first sentence, and vice versa in the second statement? Answer In British English, either verb could be used in either sentence (not in US English, where "The committee have" is frowned on in any context). I guess that Indian English aligns with British here, but I don't know. There is a small difference in meaning, to do with whether the speaker is thinking of the committee as a unit or as a collection of members. "Have" is more likely than "has" in the "gone on holiday" case, because the separate members will usually have gone to different places from each other; but "...

After seeing completely insane examples of "and" usage in this question , I realized that I have no clue how to use the word "and" grammatically: How far does the insanity go? Are the following grammatical? John is, and Sally hates, cooking. John has once ineptly, and Sally hates, cooked meat. Sally hates, and Michael said that John has ineptly, boiled vegetables. Sally, at the bakery, bought, and the makeup on her nose, cakes. If 2 is grammatical, what does Sally hate exactly? If 3 is grammatical, does Sally hate boiled vegetables, or boiling vegetables? If 4 is grammatical, I'm going to cry. This question is inspired by trying to incorporate "and" into a mechanical parsing of English, which, surprisingly, is a lot tougher than anything else.

I sometimes get confused whether to use in or at . For example, Children were not at school yesterday, because yesterday was a holiday. Children were not in school yesterday, because yesterday was a holiday. Is there a rule of thumb to not confuse in and at ? Answer Not really, 'in school' is perhaps more common American English while 'at school' is more British but both are equally 'correct'. Similarly an American would probably say 'in college' while a Brit would say 'at university'. In tends to be used for institutions, so you are 'in hospital' rather than 'at hospital' but 'at home' not 'in home' - although you might be put 'in a home' It's just one of those things! edit: there is perhaps a slight subtle difference that 'in school' means they attend school - as opposed to having finished school, while 'at school' means they are there now. So "are your children in school...

Maybe this problem is a bit too trivial for some people. I could not find any dictionary giving me a pronunciaiton for the word 'pluriharmonic'. Google does not work, either. Will someone be kind enough to give me a pronunciation for this word? It is a word from mathematics. I guess since it is a compound word, 'pluri-harmonic' may be its correct form. So will someone give me some information on the 'pluri' part? How is it pronounced? Thank you very much!

Is "that's two words" grammatically correct? Or should it be "those are two words"? I think the second example using "those" is correct since it refers to the word in its plural form. I could only find examples on the internet where people write "that's two words", and I am not sure if that is right.

The term "Dutch wife" is listed as having several somewhat related meanings. Wiktionary describes it as meaning 1) a body-length pillow, 2) a wicker or bamboo tube that someone sleeps in (also called a bamboo wife) 3) a prostitute and 4) a sex doll, and Wikipedia also mentions it being 5) a hot water bottle. Meanwhile, this page claims that a Dutch wife is a real wife, merely an unpleasant one. The Wikipedia article on Bamboo wife claims without any citation The origin of the English term "Dutch wife" is thought to be from the Dutch colony of Indonesia where Dutch traders would spend long periods away from their wives. But I'm a bit skeptical. It seems to be more like one of those Dutch words Since c.1600, Dutch (adj.) has been a "pejorative label pinned by English speakers on almost anything they regard as inferior, irregular, or contrary to 'normal' (i.e., their own) practice" [Rawson]. E.g. Dutch treat (1887), Dutch uncle (1838), etc. --...

Why is 'present perfect' present if it happened in the past? And why is it 'perfect'? Answer Present Perfect is called like that because it combines the present grammatical tense (you have ) and the perfect grammatical aspect ( done ). Compare that to Past Perfect which uses the past tense (you had + done ), or the Future Perfect which uses the future "tense" (you will have + done ). As to why it's perfect , the term comes from Latin perfectus , "achieved, finished, completed". Which is quite literally what you have done whenever you have done something.

How would you define augmentation in terms of Computer Science? I've heard it used as ‘ strengthening ’: “In jQuery, you design a page, and then you make it dynamic. This is because jQuery was designed for augmentation...)” or as ‘ extension ’: “I heard about cases where adding an extra requirement to a binary search (for example) can be called augmentation.” A Google search for ‘ augmentation computer science ’ brings up a Stack Overflow question, but that's for quite a specific context. Wikipedia defines Augmentation for numerous disciplines but not for Computer Science. There are lots of examples if you search for augmentation on programmers.SE. I had asked this question on programmers.SE - but was pointed here instead. Answer Augmentation means the same thing in computer science as it does in general English, which I would summarise as: extending something to make it better. Oxford Dictionaries Online gives this definition for the verb augment : Pronunciation: /ɔːgˈmɛnt/...

I'm a bit confused. Is it correct to use "me too" and "I too"? (Also with other pronouns.) For example, if I want to say that Juan gives a present to Ana and I give a present to Ana: Juan gives a present to Ana, [me/I] too. Or if I want to say that Juan gives a present to Ana and Pedro gives a present to Ana: Juan gives a present to Ana, [him/he] too. Answer When I write, I would not use any of these “[pronoun] too,” and I would write Juan gives a present to Ana, and so do I. Juan gives a present to Ana, and so does he. When speaking informally, I may say Juan gives a present to Ana, and me too. but this is ambiguous because “me too” can mean both “I give a present to Ana, too” and “Juan gives a present to me, too.” I would never use “I too” in the informal context. (By the way, all of these examples have a separate issue: using the simple present sounds strange because it implies Juan, Pedro or I give a present to Ana routinely .) ( Added : Kosmonaut pointed o...

Which is correct? I'm what you made me or I'm who you made me

When we have a series of episodes where every single episode depends on and develops from the previous, we may call that a sequel, or maybe a continuum. Now let us say that we have a collection of fables, episodes or anecdotes that have the same characters, the same milieu, and the same themes; yet, this time, the episodes are NOT interdependent. They don't depend on each other in that you can watch/read 'any' one of them be it (in terms of order) from a beginning, medial, or final season, without having to watch/read the previous to understand, appreciate, and enjoy it (the one you're watching/reading). What do we call the 'episode' in this case? Examples: a sitcom comedy show, or a show like Dr Who . Or, in literature, the novels of Sherlock Holmes . Is there a specific term to describe the 'independent episodes' of these works?

We're making a website in which users can mark some objects as objects they like. Since we're not native English speakers here, a dispute evolved around what's the correct way to call this user-object relationship in the past tense: favored or favorited . For example, should it be Jack favored Jill's video or Jack favorited Jill's video ? From googling, I suspect both forms are correct or at least commonly acceptable, but I'm wondering if one of them is more correct, if there's a slight semantic difference I'm missing or if you'd think one is more proper where the other is more colloquial. Answer You should use the verb favourite and not favour . Favour means show an approval or preference for , while favourite means record to enable quick access . It is true that you favourite a video on a website if you like it, but the sense you want to convey here is not that you like the video but that you mark the video in some way. Of course, the past te...

Recently I was looking at the X-Men box set and saw that currently five have been released. I had it in my head that these would be called a quintology but I have seen them being called a pentalogy . I assume both words are interchangeable, but is one of the terms preferred over the other, or is it a matter of taste? Answer Pentalogy is the "correct" (as these things go) term. It comes from penta + logy which are both Greek. Quintology , on the other hand, is a mixture of Latin and Greek roots, a practice which is not linguistically kosher . Similarly, it should be tetralogy rather than quadrilogy .

What is meaning of erstwhile and where is it used? How can I use this word in real life while texting, talking, and so on? Answer Erstwhile means former, as in, no longer. It is archaic . You can use it in real life so long as you're in period dress at a renaissance fair. Other than that expect people to look at you funny. Well actually, I can't guarantee they won't do that at the fair either...

I'm a native speaker of American English but have a very muddy sounding voice that I'm trying to improve. In my pronunciation the mid-word t/d sound, as in buddy , sweater , or under , is particularly bad. It's kind of hard to explain how I pronounce it. Maybe a little like a mild Indian accent? How do you (people with amazingly good pronunciation;)) pronounce that sound? I'm specifically looking for the standard American English pronunciation. I know the tip of the tongue is supposed to make contact with the alveolar ridge, but the books I've been using don't explain those locations very precisely. How far behind the teeth should the tongue be placed? Does the "tongue tip" refer to the top or bottom part of the end of the tongue, or the endmost point on neither top nor bottom? Does it change depending on the surrounding sounds? Answer First of all, it's likely that although you feel you have problems with your intervocalic /t/ or /d/, you probabl...

I've seen a few questions on this site relating to semi-colons, which I believe I correctly understand, but what I'm not as clear about is colons. For example: The man ate the apple; it tasted good. Is this not correctly also written as: The man ate the apple: it tasted good. In this case, what is the difference between the two sentences? Answer In your example, the first one is correct but the second one is incorrect. Use a semi-colon to connect two related independent clauses. They took the money from the vault; they took it quickly. The ideas are related, the clauses stand on their own, semi-colon is OK here. Use a colon to separate equal things (like an '=' sign). Just remember three things: be on time, bring the money, and come alone. The things here = those three items.

I am a Chinese student beginning to learn English. I am curious to know why the word student is pronounced with the sound of d instead of t . Likewise, why is the sound of b used instead of p when people say suspend ? Answer The 't' in student is not pronounced like a 'd'. You just think it is because there is a mismatch between the consonants in the Chinese language and the consonants in English. Pinyin uses the letter 'd' for an unaspirated voiceless alveolar stop (represented /t/ in IPA), and the letter 't' for an aspirated voiceless alveolar stop (represented /tʰ/ in IPA). English uses the letter 'd' for an unaspirated voiced alveolar stop (represented /d/ in IPA), and the letter 't' for a voiceless alveolar stop, which is either aspirated (/tʰ/) or unaspirated (/t/) depending on its position in the word. Since there are no voiced stops in Chinese, you're not used to distinguishing between stops depending on whether they are...

I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on the origin of the phrase in title.

There is a Hebrew expression explained here: A common Hebrew expression is "Respect them and suspect them". We should always act in a respectful way towards others, but that doesn't obligate us to trust them with our property. The source of this is in a story of the Talmudic sage Rabbi Yehoshua. A complete stranger asked to stay the night. Rabbi Yehoshua obliged him by giving him a room in the attic, but also exercised prudence by removing the ladder so that the guest wouldn't be able to sneak out. The guest turned out in fact to be a thief; he wrapped all the valuables in the top floor in a cloak and tried to sneak out, but fell in the dark because of the missing ladder, and was caught red-handed. ( http://www.aish.com/ci/be/48918612.html ) Do we have an expression in English to this effect? Answer In the US we often hear the phrase " Trust but verify ", popularized by Ronald Reagan with respect to the Soviet Union.

If you look at published books and journals that have blank pages, you'll find some with printed statements: This page intentionally left blank. Why is there no flected verb ("is"): This page is intentionally left blank. There is some information on wikipedia , but no description of why the verb is missing.

When used as an adjective, can the word 'Antarctic' be spelled without a capital letter? I'm confused because 'Arctic' is always lower-cased when we use that as an adjective (e.g.: 'arctic fox', not 'Arctic fox').

There's nothing to tell. There's nothing to say. Can anyone explain the difference between those two statements and give some examples on how they should be used? I think I do have a basic understanding, but I'd like to hear it from someone who knows this to the deepest roots. Answer "There's nothing to tell" is a response to someone's asking for details about an event or a story, where the responder implies that the information the asker wants to know doesn't actually apply to the event or story. For example: Q: "What happened at the party last night?" R: "There's nothing to tell." (Nothing happened or things that you don't really care about happened, but that's it - i.e. I hung out for five minutes and went home.) The responder could also say, "There's nothing to tell," in order to downplay what actually happened. For example: Q: "It must've been really hard to become such a good swimmer. How di...

I would like to know what does "It's only who knows when I will respond." mean? Is this an idiom? Background: She is pretty much busy with her work lately so she seldom replies to him. She said, "I was pretty busy lately. It's only who knows when I will respond. Sorry about that." ? By the way, the two are still getting to know each other virtually. It's quite vague to me but from what I understood, only then she can reply as soon as possible to people who are much closer to her like her parents and the like? It's like she only prioritizes replying to people whom she knows more? Is my understanding correct? Any idea is very much appreciated.

In which of the following cases would a comma be used before the as if clause? Does this follow the restrictive/non-restrictive rule? "Hmmm," giggled the girl as if hearing the funniest joke she had ever heard. He paused for awhile as if he were rearranging his thoughts in his head. He was holding a jar of bright jelly with pink dots floating through it as if they were curious astronauts in space.

Is there any difference here at all? Answer To add more nuance (and confirm what's already been said) to the difference, I find (in AmE): you can say 'a forest' (in general), or 'the forest' (a particular one), and 'the woods' (the one that you're walking through), but it would seem strange to refer to an collection of trees as 'a woods' (because of number agreement) or 'a wood' (because that would refer to a particular piece of lumber. 'forests' are bigger than 'woods'. But a small collection of trees is not necessarily 'the woods'. Something smaller (without specifying actual size) would be called ' a stand of trees '. (i.e. if you can go into the collection and not see the end of the trees, then you're not in a stand of trees) 'forest' has a slightly more official, formal feel to it than 'woods'.

I am editing a sentence that is of the form: A has required for B to effect a change. To my ear, this sounds better: A has required that B effect a change. Am I wrong in my dislike of "has required for?"

It seems that if such a word exists it would be rather useful. Often, whether listening to to certain people or talking with friends, I feel that certain ideas are willingly exaggerated for a certain effect--perhaps to elicit a "wow" response. But instead I am left feeling as though the deliberate exaggeration of the point was exactly what turned me off. Answer Hyperbolize means to use hyperbole; to exaggerate. As you may already know, the noun form, hyperbole , means obvious and intentional exaggeration. So you could say to your friend, "You are hyperbolizing, and I'm done listening now." If they are repeating themselves to make a point, you could use the phrase ad nauseam . (I can't think of a verb form for that.) According to Wikipedia , ad nauseam describes an argument that has been continuing "to [the point of] nausea." If you say, "This has been discussed ad nauseam," it means the topic in question has been discussed extensively,...

A recent story in the New York Times quotes somebody as writing: I want the board to hear from Uber employees that it’s [sic] made the wrong decision ... The [sic] here implies that this usage is incorrect. However, it's can be a contraction of both it is or it has , and expanding it out as the latter seems fine to me: I want the board to hear from Uber employees that it has made the wrong decision ... Is the NYT being hypercorrect? Answer The sic does not appear in the article as currently posted by the New York Times . The sentence is grammatical as stands, that is, as quoted. Why a sic was there is beyond the ken of most educated people.

Could someone help me with this sentence: "It was an awesome weather." Is this sentence correct? Answer One wouldn't say It was an awesome weather but we had awesome weather or the weather was awesome . Another choice is it was awesome weather , especially as an answer to what kind of weather was it? Weather is almost always a mass (or uncountable) noun. See, among others, Oxford dictionary . An exception to this is in (in) all weathers , but this is now rare and could be considered a 'fixed expression'. In Moby Dick you'll find It is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and tides. In 1998 a book called The Ocean: Our Future includes Here, at all times of day and in all weathers, the sea and the maritime environment are a constant, pervasive and complex presence. Today, most speakers do not use weather as a count noun, but usage determines what is gramma...

After reading a question wrongly posted on programmers.SE and especially the post at PR Daily quoted in one of the answers, I have some doubts about the usage of ellipses. In French, ellipses are also used when there are several elements in a list, but only a few are enumerated. Example: Stack Exchange websites include Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User... I always thought that in English, the usage of ellipsis in this context is not very correct , would never be used in books or press, and must be replaced by "etc.", but is still used in email communication. At the same time, the quoted post from PR Daily doesn't mention this usage. So: Are ellipses used in emails by English-spoken people at the end of unfinished enumerations? If yes, what are the guidelines for this usage of ellipses? Is it totally wrong to use them for unfinished enumerations? Answer It is completely normal and understandable to use an ellipsis (or just three dots if you care to make the typog...

When is “L” doubled? I'm confused about the two spellings. In which contexts do I have to use canceling or cancelling ? Google returns 15.6 million results with canceling and 18 million with cancelling , so I don't know what is the good spelling. Why are both possible, and are there other such pairs? Answer There are many words that have different accepted spellings between British and American English. The wiktionary.org entry for "cancelling" says: Alternative forms · canceling (US English) This implies that a single "l" is preferred in American English and a double "l" in British English.

There's a question on English Language Learners that's been making the rounds recently, it's been on the Hot Network Questions list since January 5 this year and has attracted something like 36,000 views (all credit to tchrist's exhaustive and flawless answer for this extraordinary phenomenon). I posted an answer, and from a comment, it seems I've done something terribly wrong, but I don't understand what exactly. Until January 5, I believed that PM, P.M., p.m. or pm was short for post meridian and that it was spelled as two separate words. That's how I've always pronounced it. but it was pointed out to me that the correct Latin spelling is post meridiem . So, I edit the post and add the following reflection … in English spelled postmeridian [emphasis mine]. Shortly after, a user posted the following comment 'Postmeridian' (single word, no space) may be English (although it is certainly antiquated by 'afternoon') but 'P.M.' is...

Is it correct to use with at the beginning of a sentence? Here's an example sentence: With the development of the economy, living standards improved. To my eyes this looks unnatural; I would rewrite it thus: Living standards have improved as a result of economic development. I think it sounds better because, as I understand it, in English it is more natural to put the result at the beginning of the sentence, and then the contributing factors or background information after that. But I am not 100% sure.

Which is the formally correct spelling, dieing or dying ? Is there any history of the alternative spelling? I type dieing naturally, but my spellchecker marks it wrong. This is largely an etymology question in the development of the spelling of the word dying , since when I think of dyeing I see the word meaning to stain a cloth with colors . Answer If someone is passing away, then they are dying . Its origins are: late 13c., "death," verbal noun from die (v.). From mid-15c. as a pp. adj., "in the process of becoming dead." Its confusable " dieing " means : To cut, form, or stamp with or as if with a die. Finally, dyeing means to stain something with color, with the origins : c.1400, verbal noun and pp. adj. from dye. Why is dying the gerund/verb form of to die ? For one thing, it follows a general rule of forming gerunds: The vowel group -ie is changed to - y before adding -ing . As this page also says this, it is safe to say that this is a gene...

I don't know if my title serves well in expressing what I am actually trying to ask, so maybe an example will do better: I have done it already. I have not done it yet. I waited patiently, and he eventually returned. I waited patiently, but he didn't ??? return. My non-native-English-speaking intuition tells me that the same word eventually wouldn't be appropriate in the negative sentence, the same way as already wouldn't in the first example. Is there any truth in this? Assuming there is, I would normally use never + Past Indefinite to express the "opposite" 1 of eventually I waited patiently, and he eventually returned. I waited patiently, but he never returned. However, I started having doubts whether this usage of never expresses what I used to assume it did, the reason being that I was unable to find this meaning of never in the dictionary (I checked Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster). According to Dictionary.com: never can be used instead of no...

I'm worried that 'take advantage' could have a slightly negative connotation. Could you say "make advantage [of a situation]"?

I read New York Times article (May 13) titled "ex-Senator gets 21-month prison term in tax evasion case." It says in abridgment: The former Republican senator, Vincent L. Leibell III had faced 18 to 24 months in prison, based on sentencing guidelines. His lawyer, David L. Lewis asked the judge to take into account Mr. Leibell’s "life of public service" and urged him to consider a "non-guideline" sentence allowing Mr. Leibell to do community service by letting him serve as a diplomat to the Middle East instead of a prison term. "We don’t have public stocks anymore, where he can stand with his head and arms in stocks," Mr. Lewis said, trying to convince the judge that Mr. Leibell’s crime would be forgotten in jail, but that doing some sort of "social restitution" would be more humiliating for Mr. Leibell and would offer a broader, more public lesson. More than being puzzled with the logic that servicing as a diplomat can replace prison te...

I was just studying the various meanings of 'off' on http://english.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/off and I stuck up at just the second example sentence: She dashed off to her room. The meaning of 'off' this sentence is an example of is, "away from the place in question; to or at a distance". If I omit 'off' from the sentence, it seems okay to me: She dashed to her room. [She ran in hurry to her room.] What does 'off' do here? Answer "She dashed off to her room" means that she went away from the place where she was and which isn't mentioned in the sentence, and dashed to her room. So with off there's the added meaning of going away from a particular place which isn't included in "She dashed to her room". EDIT upon comment: There's the phrasal verb dash off which means write or draw something very quickly . Its use is totally different from the use of the preposition off described above.

I often say What is an idiom? When I read Longman Pocket Idioms Dictionary Cased , I saw the sentence What are idioms? Are there any differences between the two forms? Which one is preferred?

According to Etymonline: Example : from Old French essemple "sample, model, example, precedent, cautionary tale," from Latin exemplum "a sample, specimen; from ex- "out" (see ex-) + emere "buy," originally "take," from PIE root *em- "to take, distribute." Exemplary: 1580s, "fit to be an example," from Middle French exemplaire , from Late Latin exemplaris "that serves as an example, pattern, or motto," from exemplum "example, pattern, model" Given that both terms derive from French “essemple, exemplaire” how come that example , unlike exemplary , is spelled with an “a” after the prefix ex , and not with an “e”? Answer Fairly early on in French, the nasal vowel represented by "en/em" merged into the nasal vowel represented by "an/am". The exact details of how the merger developed seem to be fairly complicated, but as far as I can tell, it was in progress by the time the word "e...

When I have seen this expression written, it is usually as "tow the line" as if the subject were a tugboat. I have always thought that "toe the line" made more sense as a fighting expression, where the fighter puts his toe on the line to indicate he is up to scratch and ready to fight. What is the origin of this phrase?

Just now I read the phrase's meaning and was surprised. I always thought that the meaning goes like this: if something is in a really bad or unacceptable condition, but it's serving the purpose, then don't dispose of it, or don't complain unnecessarily about it. Don't you think the meaning I explained is closer to the phrase?

I'm looking for an alternative way of saying "You can't run before you can walk." This is equivalent to saying "you can't take on higher level things before you have mastered the basics". I am looking for either a rewording of the original phrase or a whole new phrase with the same meaning. I prefer that this not have any fancy words nor leave the reader scratching her or his head. I will use it in a semi-informal tutorial for future students of a programming class I am in. I use a short phrase at the beginning of each section which establishes the underlying theme in that section. This tutorial is meant to be something fun (and useful) to read, which is why I want something that catches the attention of the reader. For my purposes, there is nothing wrong with the original. I simply want something that is a bit more inclusive (some people can't walk or run). Thank you. Answer "You must learn to fly before you can soar with eagles." "Y...

Singular or plural following a list Would I use is or are in the following sentence? The Pohutakawa Coast, Hauraki Gulf, and Waiheke Island is/are the backdrop for our day. If I rewrote it so the subject (backdrop) starts the sentence, then it seems to me that as it is singular, the verb should be the singular is . But as it is written above, are seems less clumsy.

There are many (duplicate) questions about the acceptance, popularity and history of singular they (and their , them and themself ) around here, it even got a tag of its own. If I didn’t miss anything, however, the proper verb form hasn’t been questioned yet. As we all know, English third person singular pronouns ( it, she, he and one, +body ), names ( Alice, Bob, … ) and nouns ( student, teacher, … ) demand the +(e)s suffix be added to the finite verb form in simple present, where some auxiliary verbs have a “special” form ( is bes / * ares and has haves ). All other subjects don’t, including plural third person pronoun they . When the plural you replaced thou (with thee , thy / thine ), the other marked verb form that had remained in English – i.e. suffix +(e)st or +t – vanished, too. The first and second persons only ever appear as pronouns ( I, we; you ), not names or nouns, so there was no strong inclination to keep the verbal inflection. The second person precedent wo...