Notes

Is there an equivalent word to "side" when speaking of the front or rear of something (e.g. a car)? So, a mechanic might say: You damaged your wing-mirror? Ok, which side ? ... or... You damaged your bumper? Ok, which [insert word here]? Answer End Like "two ends of a stick"?

In Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now , there are several places where "ain't" is used instead of "am not", such as: "I ain't afraid of him, if you mean that," continued Lord Nidderdale. — Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now (Kindle Locations 3161-3162). "But then she don't want me, and I ain't quite sure that I want her." — Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now (Kindle Locations 3165-3166). Besides Lord Nidderdale, who belongs to the aristocracy, elsewhere in the book it is the village girl Ruby and other village residents who use "ain't" in the sense of "is not", "are not" and "am not". Is the fact that today "ain't" is regarded as slang a development post-Trollope (who was writing not so long ago), or is His Lordship merely being colloquial? Was Trollope actually a catalyst in this change?

What's the best choice of word for an action/activity that has no benefit (i.e., strictly speaking, "unnecessary") when trying to put emphasis on the fact that the action is, in itself, wasted? Saying "wasteful" is also technically correct because some time/effort is "wasted" on the part of whoever is taking the action, but it might give the impression that it is causing waste externally (general resources / the environment), when, in fact, it makes no difference. Consider this example : some people argue that DST (daylight saving time) saves electricity for lights, while others argue that it causes more energy/resources to be wasted due to use of air-conditioners, disruptions etc. (it's an example, so please don't start a debate on this here!). Some studies on this have found pros and cons in different areas that probably offset each other, so the overall benefits of either case are inconclusive and probably marginal. To me, that sounds like s...

The en- in enemy is a prefix meaning "not": the origin is Latin inimicus, from in- + amicus — a "not friend" or an "unfriend" ( Online Etymology Dictionary—enemy ). The Latin in- changed to en- when the word passed through French and into English. Compare enmity, which keeps the en- form, and inimical, which is the same origin, but uses in-. I assume the difference here is the difference in their relative dates of entry into English. The Online Etymology Dictionary dates enemy to early 13c. and inimical to the 1640s. In the entry for in- , the Online Etymology Dictionary notes: In Old French and Middle English often en-, but most of these forms have not survived in Modern English, and the few that do ( enemy, for instance) no longer are felt as negative. The rule of thumb in English has been to use in- with obviously Latin elements, un- with native or nativized ones. By "these forms have not survived", does this mean the prefixe...

I watched a (Hollywood?) film the other day where a character visiting his just-hospitalised wife (who it seems will actually survive) says "If I would have lost you [I don't know what I'd do]" . I'd always thought this was an error made by non-native speakers (I myself would only expect "If I had lost you" ), but there was nothing to suggest that in the movie. Is it a regionalism? EDIT: Actually, that wasn't true about only expecting "If I had lost you" . I'd have been perfectly happy with "If I'd have lost you" , so long as I didn't think too hard about what was being elided. I'd usually elide "have" there to just a schwa (neutral vowel) anyway, and think no more about it. Answer I think what has happened is the following: Most English speakers would say the clause as If I'd lost you (however they might write it), and thus should pronounce it as /ɪfaydlɔstyu/. But the stressed /-dlɔst-/ syl...

What is a catchy word that means (non-)self-descriptive There are plenty of names for word sets: synonyms: words that have the same meaning palindromes: words that read the same forward or backwards homonyms: words that have the same spelling and different meaning metanyms: words that symbolize other larger concepts But a certain set of words that define word sets are also in that set. Unfortunately, I can only think of one right now: antonym , which is in fact an antonym to the word synonym . Do words like this have a name? Answer An autologous word is one that describes itself, such as curt , sesquipedalian , recherché , and septisyllabically . And autologous . :)

I've seen many people who say: This is a HTML page. Yet I've also seen many people who say: This is an HTML page. Are both usages equally correct? Or, which is the grammatically correct one? Possible Duplicates: “A” vs. “An” in writing vs. pronunciation Do you use “a” or “an” before acronyms? Answer It depends on whether you say aitch or haitch . An aitch tee em el page A haitch tee em el page

The context is that a doctor is asking about somebody's child's symptoms of influenza. Is this question correct: "What symptoms has Anne?" If it's incorrect, then why? It looks strange to me, I would rather ask "What symptoms does Anne have?" but don't know why. Answer As John Lawler says in a comment, this use is possible in British English. But even in Britain, it is rather old-fashioned or literary. The normal British form would be What symptoms has Anne got?

Please do not repeat the mistake. Please do not repeat the mistake again. Should the again be omitted? “Repeat” means “do again”. So to “repeat again” means “to do again again”. Is the second sentence grammatically wrong? Answer Both are grammatical; they mean different things. You use the first sentence the first time someone makes a mistake, and the second sentence when they make the exact same mistake again .

I'm seeking a word or phrase useful for referring to a bad sentence which clumsily, inaccurately and ambiguously attempts to express an idea or concept. Bad-sentence example: "We do a multiplication of 60 of the 10^10 terms to get us to 10^600 and then a multiplication of 10^3 terms to reach 10^603." Phrases incorporating 'mangled', 'tortured ', 'muddled' and 'still-born' may resemble what I want, but seem overly judgmental. Update (Response to questions about example; with 'infelicity' and 'solecism' adopted from an answer) Inaccurate -- The sentence (from a sci.math newsgroup posting by "AP") is inaccurate or misleading in first using the "multiplication of ..." infelicity one way for the (10^10)^60 calculation, and then a different way for the (10^600)*(10^3) calculation. That is, if the first case means (10^10)^60, the second might be thought to mean either (10^10)^(10^3) or (10^600)^(10^3). Clumsy ...

I've seen people write "God bless America", and it drives me nuts. Shouldn't it be "God, bless America"? Answer Grammatically, I like to think of it as "May God bless America." The mood of the verb is subjunctive. The "may" is just dropped for conciseness.

Exact Duplicate: Can anyone tell me what the suffix “-fu” stands for in the following sentence? I was reading an article on MSDN where I found a mention to google-fu. It says, “To search for C++ delimeters and code snippets is going to take a little Google-fu on the reader's part.” what does google-fu mean? Answer Google-fu is defined as "skill in using search engines (especially Google) to quickly find useful information on the Internet." It is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek reference to kung-fu, which is generally perceived as requiring a high degree of skill to master in the western hemisphere. In the example sentence you provided, the author is suggesting that the expected results are somewhat difficult to attain and you will need to use diligence when searching. I used a bit of Google-fu to research this answer.

What is the difference between photo and image ? Answer A "photo" is something that was taken with a camera. Short for "Photograph". Photo means 'light'. An "image" is something generated or a representation of something in any other way. This can be a combination of different photos, part of a photo that has been greatly edited, or really, anything that has been made in Adobe Photoshop. All elephants are gray things, but not all grey things are elephants. All photos are images, but not all images are photos.

In the KJV translation of Matthew 5:18, it reads: For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. If a tittle sits atop an i or a j ( ı or ȷ ), then where do jots sit? So what is a jot , anyway? P.S. Here are the Unicode code points missing their tittles: ‭ i 0069 LATIN SMALL LETTER I * Turkish and Azerbaijani use 0130 for uppercase x (latin small letter dotless i - 0131) x (mathematical italic small dotless i - 1D6A4) ‭ j 006A LATIN SMALL LETTER J x (latin small letter dotless j - 0237) x (mathematical italic small dotless j - 1D6A5) ‭ ı 0131 LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I * Turkish, Azerbaijani * uppercase is 0049 x (latin small letter i - 0069) ‭ ȷ 0237 LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS J x (mathematical italic small dotless j - 1D6A5) ‭ ɟ 025F LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS J WITH STROKE *...

Occasionally, I meet someone who is working hard. He looks so tired and needs to hear some kind words and I don't know what to say. Some time ago, I asked this question of a native speaker and she replied: Tell him “What a great job!” Maybe I couldn’t represent my question properly because I didn’t see that the above formula had decreased his exhaustion in doing the job. What can we say to somebody who looks tired doing a job, in order to soothe his pain? Answer In addition to izx's comment, keep up the good work is often used as a phrase of encouragement and to keep people motivated. You could also substitute any of the following for good -- great, fantastic, exceptional, &c depending upon how impressed you are with their work or how much encouragement you want to give to them.

This is from a recent article: He was rushed to the hospital immediately and a battery of tests was conducted. Now shouldn't it be He was rushed to the hospital immediately and a battery of tests were conducted. Which is correct and why is it correct? :) Answer TL;DR: Both were and was are used when battery of tests is their subject, including in scholarly publications as shown below. Sometimes the choice of number depends on the intended meaning. There may be a relatively recent trend of were becoming a more common choice, but both are frequent. Your intuition is correct — or at least, it accords with how I would myself say it: A battery of tests were conducted. That’s because in English, premodifying phrases such as these act like partitive determiners. That means that they do not alter the grammatical number of the noun that they’re being applied to. So if the noun is plural to start with, it remains plural for purposes of grammatical agreement with a finite verb that ...

What is the earliest printed use in English, including relevant context, of 'white woman' or 'white women'? As nearly as I have been able to discover, the term is first found in print in these contexts: 'white woman' appeared first in John of Trevisa's translation of Angelicus Bartholomaeus's De proprietatibus rerum Dates are uncertain, but OED dates the translation to sometime before 1398. The composition date of the original work in Latin was probably sometime before 1240. As published in 1582 , the context clearly ascribes the color of people's skin to climate and geographical place of birth. And a black woman hath much better milke, and more nourishing then a white woman . 'white women' seems to have first appeared in English in a 1595 publication, The problemes of Aristotle with other philosophers and phisitions . The work is attributed to three authors, Aristotle among them. Alexander of Aphrodisias is also attributed authorship. Th...

From a native speaker standpoint, would it look OK if a company whose name follows the "X Group" pattern omits the use of the definite article when presenting itself on its website, like this (name changed a bit): Boris Group provides full-service marketing research support across Russia. It is a team of highly skilled research professionals fluent in English and Russian. Boris Group offers expertise in multi-country project management all over the world. Boris Group is a preferred research supplier for international organizations in business & consumer sector. The company's name does not include the , but would it merit the omission of the article in an introductory text about the company? Would it be okay to underscore in this way the fact that the company's name, including the word Group , is a proper noun? Or should the be used anyway? I earlier asked a similar question , and according to an answer given there by a native speaker , adding the is standard...

In a recent post , I was trying to describe Spanish vowels succinctly to an unsophisticated participant, and used the Canadian "eh?" as an example. A participant from the U.S. (California, to be specific) commented, 'I thought Canadian "eh" is pronounced "ey", as a diphthong.' Question 1a: How do Canadians pronounce "eh?"? Question 1b: Is it a reasonable approximation of the Spanish pronunciation of the vowel e (as in, for example, bebé )? Question 2: Is there a better way to explain this (succinctly!) to an unsophisticated participant? Edit : For an unsophisticated ELU participant, who is asking, approximately, "Hey, why do non-native English speakers talk different from me?", a very simplified way of explaining that Spanish speakers (the example he gave) pronounce their vowels differently from us. Even if the Canadian "eh?" is not identical to Spanish e as in bebé , is it different enough from the vowel in the Eng...

Is The more, the merrier! a sentence? It doesn't seem to have a main verb, so I'm inclined to say no, but it certainly functions as a sentence in everyday speech. I can think of three ways of analysing it: It's a sentence with no main verb. Is this even possible? It's a sentence with an implicit verb: something like The more we have, the better! It's not a sentence. But then, what is it? Answer As I parse this, it's option number two. Context dictates the way I fill in the ellipsis. "The more [we are], the merrier [we are]" and "The more [we have], the merrier [we are]" are two obvious possibilities. I perform the same sort of analysis on the ellipsis in your question title: "If [it's] not [that], what [is it]?" The only justification I have for claiming that these are ellipses is that I can't make sense of them in any other way. Option number one is not possible in my dialect of English, although it may be possible in othe...

The word dozen is a collective noun, i.e., singular when we think of them as groups and plural when we think of the individuals acting within the whole. So we might say: Talking about eggs: "A dozen is probably not enough." Talking about a party with friends: "A dozen are coming over this afternoon." So, a dozen roses would likely be considered singular (like a bouquet). We might say, "A dozen roses costs ten rupees," as per subject-verb agreement. 1) However, since we have six dozen, does the modification of the noun by a number change the subject to plural, resulting in cost ? Or is it all moot because of the plural roses ? In American English, collective nouns tend to be singular while in British English they may be both. That said, I've seen the suggestion that cost be used, which would be straightforward to me if dozens (plural) were used. From an American perspective, I feel the subject should remain singular when modified by a number: ...

First of all, sorry if it is offensive (I think it somewhat is). I was going through http://bleacherreport.com/articles/424590-the-funniest-promos-and-moments-in-wwe-history#page/20 The Rock owned everyone by calling the Canadians mothercanuckers I heard him saying this in the video but what does that mean? Answer "Canuck" is a slang word for someone from Canada. It's not usually considered offensive — sometimes it's even affectionate (and Canadians use it themselves in quite a few contexts). It's a regional nickname , like "Yankee" and other terms. It is likely that "The Rock" simply took the (offensive) word "motherfuckers", and replaced "fuck" with the rhyming "Canuck" (replaced "f" with "can"), to make the word "mothercanuckers". Thus "mothercanuckers" is a label combining "motherfuckers" and "Canuck" (or, to use Wikipedia's favourite word, it...

An old Norfolk character I knew, used to say: 'Tha's no use you a-putten yar foot down, if you hearnt got a leg to stand on'. In English, that is: 'It's no good putting your foot down if you haven't a leg to stand on'. When I was at school we were always warned against 'mixed metaphors'. So are mixed metaphors of this kind acceptable?

I have wondered about how to make the words silly , ugly , friendly , lively , etc. into adverbs, so I researched in the Internet. I found many different answers, so I tried checking Oxford Dictionaries. However, Oxford Dictionaries still gave me two answers: this is from Oxford Dictionaries’ online grammar reference, “ forming adverbs ” page Adjectives that end in -ly, such as friendly or lively, can’t be made into adverbs by adding -ly. You have to use a different form of words, e.g. ‘in a friendly way’ or ‘in a lively way’ instead from the dictionary entries: there are results from typing sillily , uglily , friendlily , livelily into Oxford Dictionaries’ website (online dictionary) That’s quite an obvious contradiction from one of the most famous dictionary providers of the world! So, are the words sillily, uglily, friendlily, livelily , etc. valid English? Note: I already saw the “comparative and superlative adverbs” question that asked about the word sillily but I don't s...

I'm really confused about the pronunciation of the letter "a". Why is there a difference when it is used in a sentence and when "a" is single? When it is single, we read it like dwelling on it, like /eɪ/. On the contrary, in a sentence, it sounds interruptedly. What's the reason? Answer If you mean ‘a’ the indefinite article, Ebenin, you’re quite right. In normal speech it is pronounced as a schwa, /ə/. Only when it is emphasised for some reason is it pronounced as /eɪ/. Explaining the reason fully would take more time and space than is available here, assuming any of us is qualified to do so.

We can use the following structure Should + have + p.p. with two different meanings. Can someone explain those meanings for me?

Is this sentence correct and if so/not, why? The cyclist's average speed is less than that of a car's.

Is there a word for the ability to sense something someone else is feeling? Kind of like the opposite of autism?

What is the origin of the phrase "the whole nine yards"? Is it a reference to some game of sports I am not familiar with (as a continental European)? Answer There's a lot of exciting possibilities listed on Wikipedia , but it sounds as if nobody knows for sure.

I think most folk happily use either "while" or "whilst". I've a vague recollection that at one time "while" indicated the passing of time and "whilst" was essentially the same as "whereas" or "although". So using while for time passing... While I was walking down the street the sun was shining. ... and whilst for whereas/although... Whilst I was walking down the street I often prefer to hop. Any views? Answer Always taking a bit of a chance using the Internet to answer an Internet question, but Daily Writing Tips says that not only are while and whilst interchangeable, but that in fact while is the original version. The very authoritative Michael Quinion backs this up on World Wide Words (and that is a site well worth visiting for anyone interested in the English language). So I think your question proceeds from a false premise: they haven't come to be used to mean the same thing, they do mean the same thing, a...

Words ending in ch usually take es in the plural form. However, the word stomach is an exception to this paradigm. Its plural form is stomachs . My question is, why does it take only s in the plural form? Answer The use of the spelling "-ches" in plural forms of words that end in "-ch" is based on the presence of a vowel sound before the final /z/ sound. After the sound /t͡ʃ/, the plural suffix is pronounced as /ɪz/ (or /əz/ in some accents). But stomach does not end in the sound /t͡ʃ/: it ends in the sound /k/, and the plural ends in /ks/, with no vowel sound sound before the final /s/. This is why it is not spelled with "-es". Compare the two spellings of the plural of conch that correspond to the two pronunciation variants. The regular plural suffix has the pronunciation /ɪz~əz/ and the spelling "-es" after any sibilant consonant sound: /s z ʃ ʒ t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/. Words ending in these sounds can be spelled in a variety of ways, so it's simp...

How do I spell the truncation 'Cas', as in 'Sports Casual/Sports Cas'? It may be UK only, and may have been spawned by Alan Partridge . Cash/Cas are not right. *As in a slang term, "he was acting all cas".

Wikipedia and The Free Dictionary were not much help — is there a practical difference in the semantics of suffix and postfix , except that the latter is more rare? File name extensions are well known. For example, index.en.xhtml could reasonably be assumed to be the index file of a website directory, in XHTML format, and with primarily English, human-readable contents. I’d normally call the collection of extensions ( .en.xhtml in the example) the suffix or postfix , but it’s not obvious which (if any) is technically and/or semantically more accurate. Answer I think both can be used interchangeably, although the context sometimes determines which word you are more likely to use. For example, in linguistics, an affix after the stem of the word is called a suffix . In computer programming, when an operator appears after the operand, it is known as a postfix operator . As far as a file extension goes, my intuition would be to go with "suffix", but I believe that "po...

In a paper, I need to mention something meaning "intermediate approaches" and looking for a suitable word or phrase for that. For example: Approach 1 is ... Approach 2 is ... (Approaches 1 and 2 are the two opposite extremes of the possible approaches) We have studied many intermediate approaches [between approach 1 and approach 2] and the results are shown in Fig. 1.

I’ve seen the phrase “No offense taken” in the answers to the comments in EL&U site. None of online Cambridge, Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionary registers this usage, nor does Google Ngram. However, I was able to find the definitions of both “No offense taken / meant” as “I am not offended [by what you said] / I did not mean to offend you,” in idioms.thefreedictionary.com and www.urbandictionary.com Since what time around did these expressions come into currency? Are they a polite way of excusing? Can I use “No offense meant (taken)” in both colloquial conversation and formal meeting, for instance with the client advertiser in opposing their idea? Answer The OED’s earliest citation for no offence is from Shakespeare’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’, where it appears as Take no offence . On its own it is first recorded in Henry Fielding’s ‘Tom Jones’, in 1749: No offence, I hope. The OED describes it as ‘colloquial’, so you will need to judge carefully when it is appropriate, whether...

I find it handy when talking about my sons and daughters I can just say my children. It's nice to say nieces instead of sibling's daughters. I wonder if there is a similar term for nieces and nephews together? I imagine I could say sibling's kids but I was hoping for a single word. Answer There seems to be no "official" word for "nieces and nephews". You will find " nibling ", by analogy with sibling . (But it is mentioned only in the " New Words & Slang " section of Merriam-Webster, or in sites like urbandictionary.com ) In this Yahoo answers thread , KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid 's answer also mentions: that there is no encompassing word for aunt/uncle either that there is no male/female form of cousin. The article " There isn't a word for it " (by Neville Goodman, British Journal of General Practice, 2005) also confirms that there is no word for nephews and nieces, and makes the following (humorous) suggesti...

Sometimes, the word 'that' to introduce a dependent clause is optional. For example, these sentences both make sense with or without 'that': Long books [that] religious people like tend to be Bibles. Water tanks [that] fish need are spacious. ... whereas in these sentences, 'that' is mandatory and the sentence is ungrammatical without it: Those that are rotten must be thrown away. Cars that break down endanger pedestrians. I can't quite put my finger on the rule which determines when 'that' must be used. What is it? Answer In both of the examples in which that is optional, the relative pronoun is the object of the embedded clause. Long books [that] religious people like tend to be Bibles. [Religious people like long books .] Water tanks [that] fish need are spacious. [Fish need water tanks .] This is also allowed when the relative pronoun is the object of a preposition or another oblique argument of the embedded clause: This is the boat I esc...

In terms of usage, is it fair to say that an archetype is a broader description of a class than a stereotype? Here’s a reference to the usage of archetype becoming blurry in my mind. Mindy Kaling, in a New York Times article called “ Flick Chicks ”, describes different types of women characters who show up repeatedly in chick flicks. At one point, she refers to the Woman-Who-Runs-An-Art-Gallery type as a film archetype yet her description of this archetypal character is quite one dimensional. Would stereotype be a better term for these chick flick “archetypes”? The piece has a satirical tone, so I do admit that she overstates at times for effect. Answer From OED: archetype - the original pattern or model from which copies are made; a prototype ... an assumed ideal pattern. stereotype - a preconceived and oversimplified idea of the characteristics which typify a person, situation, etc.; an attitude based on such a preconception. Also, a person who appears to conform closely to the...

Is there a term to describe an unprefixed term like sheveled that is used less or not at all compared to its prefixed relative disheveled ? My word Helen, you look very sheveled today! Edit: Below Malvolio brings up the example of kempt which is another example of what I'm talking about. A word that has both prefixed and unprefixed forms in English, but the unprefixed form has mostly fallen out of use. Answer This reminded me of Justice Scalia's telling off of a lawyer for using the word choate , which doesn't exist. According to the New York Times article , it's called back-formation : Stripping the in- from inchoate is known as back-formation, the same process that has given us words like peeve (from peevish), surveil (from surveillance) and enthuse (from enthusiasm). There’s a long linguistic tradition of removing parts of words that look like prefixes and suffixes to come up with “roots” that weren’t there to begin with. Some back-formations work better than oth...

I've just read this interesting article . We were being constantly told back in school years that we couldn't use "more" to modify "perfect". I kept feeling guilty using "more perfect" until I read the following idea from the article: Nothing is perfect. When we say "perfect man", it is an exaggeration. Using "perfect" for things that are not perfect opens the door for "more perfect" and even "most perfect". This is really a sensible and convincing justification to me. Then I think of other words that our teachers wouldn't allow us to modify using "more". For example, people begin to use "more excellent" fairly frequently nowadays. However, the use of "more excellent" might not be justified convincingly by the same logic that applies to "more perfect" above. The reason is people can absolutely be excellent while nobody can be perfect. If the justification logic for ...

I am looking for an idiom/phrase which would mean that someone is trying to explain something to someone who obviously knows how it's done. It would be like a maths student trying to teach/explain to his maths professor in his university how to do calculus - he clearly knows it better than you! My language has for example "nie ucz ojca dzieci robić" - that translates as "don't teach a father how to make kids" - is there an equivalent in English? Answer You don't teach your grandmother how to suck eggs .

If A is dependant, what does one call B? Answer A is dependent, it depends on B. If these were variables, B would be called an independent variable.

My work colleagues and I have been having a discussion about doctors (we work in healthcare), and we're split down the middle as to whether a specialist doctor would have a speciality, or a specialty (no "i"). Is there a specific use for each word, or can they be interchanged? Answer There seems to be divergence on that point: See Wikipedia . Others seem to think so as well. I suspect that specialty is American English and speciality is British English.

How do you describe the the way cattle buffalo chew ("re-chewing", specifically) their food? There is a specific aspect of their food eating habit which is often related to how people work. Answer The sought after word is Ruminate - which means: To think deeply about something (wrt behavior of human beings), or To chew the cud (wrt a ruminant).

What is the difference between might have and could have ? He might have come. He might have studied. He could have come. He could have studied. How would you describe a possibility? For example: It's possible that he came from a different culture. It's possible that he come from a different cutlure.

Can someone explain the etymology of using over in expressions like come over to and go over to as in "pay a casual visit"? Is there a source for the etymology of idiomatic expressions somewhere? Answer I think that this is one example (well, pair of examples) where an analytical approach is better than an overall view - looking at the semantics of the preposition over , rather than treating 'come over to' as a lexeme best considered opaque. (I'll have to bite the bullet and treat over as an intransitive preposition in these examples.) Kota Kodachi, in 'A Study of Prototype Formation of the Meanings of Prepositions...' at http://www.paaljapan.org/resources/proceedings/PAAL10/pdfs/kodachi.pdf , looks at the semantics involved in the various senses of various English prepositions, suggesting a logical hierarchy that the senses fit into. Though he majors on the prepositions at , in and on , I'll suggest an analogous treatment of over . One model il...

Is there any significant difference between Correspond to and Correspond with ? I only mean in the sense of "matching", here, rather than "communication". I've looked at a few sources, but I can't seem to find a good explanation that makes it clear in which context each form would be used. Some sources suggest that only Correspond to is used in the sense of "matching", whereas others suggest Correspond with can also be used in that sense (and sometimes also with slightly different meaning). Answer Your question sent me on a pleasant search. A bit more here . Correspond to is used when two things are analogous or similar ...all of which correspond to real numbers... or agree in amount, position, etc. figures and letters on the left in the list below correspond to similar figures and letters in the statement of differences... ...events A and B also correspond to positions A and B on the train... During the night Lee moved his left up to make ...

That was a lucky escape! You might have been killed. That was a lucky escape! You could have been killed. Which one is more suitable in this situation? Is there any difference between them? Thanks in advance! Answer Could have = it was possible Might have = it was permitted Could is the past tense of can, and might is the past tense of may. Can expresses things that are possible in an objective sense; may expresses things that are permitted or can readily be envisaged. For example:: What will you do if you don't become a model? I can become a zoologist. I know that because I have good grades. What will you do if you don't become a model? I may become a zoologist. I don't know if it will interest me, though. Using present and future tenses instead of past tenses makes the statements much more definite, much less hypothetical. Hypotheticals are usually expressed with past tenses. So, i think " You could have been killed. " is the more suitable.

Today I heard somebody say: This (technology) can be the difference between life or death. And I winced.  While “life or death” can be used as an adjective (e.g., modifying “situation” or “decision”), I believe that “between X or Y ” is wrong, because “between” should always be used with “and”. (Or an implied “and” , as in “between jobs”.) Is “between X or Y ” ever acceptable? Answer You are in good company in wincing at between ... or . Garner in Modern American Usage (p103) calls the construction "a misuse that probably results from confusion between between ... and and either ... or ." Follett in Modern American Usage (p120) calls the combination of between and or "misguided". Fowler in Modern English Usage (p57) states: "where terms are separately specified, the one and only right connexion between those terms is and ." As to whether the combination is ever acceptable, Fowler states; Extenuating circumstances can be pleaded only when one or ea...

on the internet I read the following explanation: "we aren't using "no" to agree, we are using "no" to CONFIRM the negative statement." Does that mean you confirm a negative question with no and agree with yes? That somehow seems strange to me?

This excerpt is from The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. I can't figure out the italicized part. The excerpt follows: "But they take long enough to get well, don't they? ... There was my sister's son, Tom, jest cut his arm with a scythe, tumbled on it in the 'ayfield, and, bless me! he was three months tied up sir. You'd hardly believe it. It's regular given me a dread of a scythe, sir." "I can quite understand that," said the visitor. "He was afraid, one time, that he'd have to have an op'ration—he was that bad, sir." The visitor laughed abruptly, a bark of a laugh that he seemed to bite and kill in his mouth. "Was he?" he said. "He was, sir. And no laughing matter to them as had the doing for him, as I had—my sister being took up with her little ones so much. There was bandages to do, sir, and bandages to undo. So that if I may make so bold as to say it, sir—" "Will you get me some matches?" sa...

Yesterday on talk radio an interviewee speaking about Sudanese Northerner's being forced into the mountains and away from their farmlands by the Sudanese Army said the result was: The men would leave and go foraging to gather nuts and berries, things like this . I don't know where exactly the punctuation belongs since it was on the radio, so I did my best to put the comma in the right place before the phrase in question. Is his phrasing correct? Or would ending with the phrase: … things like that . be correct. Are they both acceptable? Are there meaningful or grammatical differences between the two? For context, he didn't enumerate similar activities in the related line of questioning before or after the above, nor did he explicitly reference anything else he said in prior areas of discussions. Answer I think what you're bumping into is not a question of grammar, but just an idiomatic usage. The only time 'things like this' sounds right to my ears is when there...

Some people adopt the affectation in a message, memo or email where the sender is identified explicitly in the header of the message that the sender is shown as being "From the desk of Joe Smith" rather than just from "Joe Smith". In some situations, "From the office of" makes more sense - I take this as meaning that someone on the staff of a politician or senior executive wrote the contents, but that the office holder is happy to be considered as supporting the message. Is this what Joe Smith is trying to tell us with this construction?

I know that the phrase, "I'm going out on a limb here" means either to take a risk or hazard a guess, but where does it come from? As in, what did it originally refer to before it became an idiom? Answer This one is actually quite straightforward. It alludes to going out on a branch of a tree. Etymonline says that the figurative sense is from 1897. The Phrase Finder supplies a quote from 1895: The first uses of it in a figurative sense, with no reference to actual trees or climbing, come from the USA at the end of the 19th century. For example, the Steubenville Daily Herald , October 1895: [...] If we get the 14 votes of Hamilton we've got 'em out on a limb. All we've got to do then is shake it or saw it off.