Notes

Receipt? Receiving? I'm trying to come up with a name for "the acceptance of a delivery." I'd like to be able to say Ten deliveries were made but there are only five [fill_in_the_blank_here] on record. Any suggestions? Answer Receipt works. As in, "receipt of the items has been acknowledged." Receipt Re*ceipt" (r[-e]*s[=e]t"), n. [OE. receite, OF. recete, recepte, F. recette, fr. L. recipere, receptum, to receive. See {Receive}.] 1. The act of receiving; reception. "At the receipt of your letter." --Shak. [1913 Webster] Likely variations for your case would include "Ten deliveries were made but there are only five received items on record." "Ten deliveries were made but the records show only five items were received."

I'm aware there are different prepositions possible after disappointed : with , in , of , at . I'm particulary interested in the difference between with and in . I'm disappointed with you. I'm disappointed in you. Which one is correct? Or do they have a slightly different meaning? Answer I don't know about any official documentation on this, but it seems from usage that "disappointed with" typically precedes a demonstrative pronoun, while "disappointed in" directly precedes a subject or an article and subject: I'm disappointed in the ruling. I'm disappointed in Tom. I'm disappointed with that result. I'm disappointed with her performance. The 'that' and 'her' are demonstrative pronouns, while 'Tom' and 'the ruling' are subjects ('the' obviously being the article).

Do I need to capitalize "modernism" or "modernist"?

In two different text the first one I used to "combine" the elements in the "or" sentence in the other I only have 2 choices. Both sentences are from boardgames: "Play if at least 3 Imperial systems contain EITHER a sabotage marker or a Rebel unit" In my understanding this can be used (play) when I have 2 sabotage marker and 2 rebel units on Imperial systems. The second one: "You may EITHER exchange your cards with another player or discard any number of cards and draw en equal number of cards" In this case the rulebook clarify the ruling saying you "CHOOSE" one action. I think the key is in the "or" placement in the second one you select actions in the first one items that can be combined. If I'm wrong in my interpretation (I'm not English native) excuse me and thanks for any help in this matter if I'm correct: Is the wording in the first one ambiguous or bad wrote? Thanks again (In forums about rules of the first...

Are you his dependency , dependendee or something else? What is this type of opposite word called? I believe it is not called antonym, as that would be independent .

I understand that the word “precious” in the following quote of Maureen Dowd’s article “Heart of Darkness” (NYT, March 20) literally means “2. valuable or important and not to be wasted” as defined in OALD: Congressman Jones read an e-mail from a former boss of General Allen’s, giving the congressman this unvarnished assessment: “Attempting to find a true military and political answer to the problems in Afghanistan would take decades. Would drain our nation of precious resources, with the most precious being our sons and daughters. Simply put, the United States cannot solve the Afghan problem, no matter how brave and determined our troops are. But I didn’t know “precious” has another meaning as defined in OALD: 5. (disapproving, people and their behavior) very formal, exaggerated and not natural, and Readers English Dictionary: 2.(colloquial) terrible, almost worthless, until I was told by my respected forum mate a few days ago. Being encouraged by his suggestion for me to “ask anoth...

If someone asked you where you bought something, you could say, I got it at Walmart. but what if instead of referring to a store you were referring to a city? Would you say, I got it at Chicago. or I got it in Chicago. Somehow when referring to a city, using "in" instead of "at" seems more appropriate. Am I right? Why is that? Answer Walmart and Chicago are both places, but we use different prepositions to refer to them. From this article on them : Prepositions of Place: at, on, and in We use at for specific addresses. Grammar English lives at 55 Boretz Road in Durham. We use on to designate names of streets, avenues, etc. Her house is on Boretz Road. And we use in for the names of land-areas (towns, counties, states, countries, and continents). She lives in Durham. Durham is in Windham County. Windham County is in Connecticut. Because Walmart is a specific place or address, we say that someone shops at Walmart . However, since Chicago is a land-area, we ...

Consider the sentence: While this assumption, on its own, is relatively innocuous, if implausible, in practice, it is supplemented by assumptions... The 'if' here really means something more like 'but perhaps also'. Another sentence: He appeared very happy, if not exuberant, at her arrival. 'if not' here means something like 'and perhaps even', as if the latter statement should be a more extreme version of the former. But it also feels like an exclusive disjunction. That is, it is one or maybe the other, but not both. On the other hand, 'if' by itself feels like both statements could be true. I can conjure up many examples where both 'if' and 'if not' violate my above descriptions and many more which just seem malformed and awkward but fit them, e.g., ' He seems happy, if not a little confused' . or 'The proof appeared correct, if sloppily constructed,'.. . Adding further confusion, if I make a small change to the ...

I thought the word irritance was a word — but it isn’t one according to Google and my dictionary. It sounds correct; what is the word I should use? By irritance I mean something that’s being irritating, like a person kicking the back of your plane seat is an irritance. After researching more, I’ve found the word I was looking for was nuisance . Answer Although irritancy certainly exists as a noun, something that is irritating is normally referred to as an irritant or an irritation — or less commonly and usually with a human agent only, an irritator . (lifted out of ephemeral comments) I haven’t found any dictionaries that yet contain irritance , although there do exist published books that happen to use it. This usually means that a word is too new or too rare to bother mentioning, since even catachrestic uses are documented by full dictionaries. So although anyone would instantly understand what you meant by the word irritance , your computerized spellchecker might not like it ...

Obviously something can be sub-optimal or poor, minimal, bad or terrible... But is there a word that means the exact opposite , the antonym, of optimal? Answer Taking the classical approach, optimal derives from optimus , the Latin superlative to bonus , meaning good . Looking at the Latin for bad , that is malus . bonus -> melior -> optimus malus -> peior -> pessimus So analogous to optimus becoming optimal , pessimus would become pessimal . All that said, I have never heard that word used . We do use plenty of the forms of Latin good and bad , as in ameliorate , pejorative , optimal , optimist and pessimist . However, pessimal never seems to have made it far in the popularity contests - it did get into the dictionaries though!

Is there a word (or a phrase at least) that means to love in a hating way (hatefully, execrably) ? There is "Love–hate relationship" but it is more like a psychological term. I'm looking for a "noun" or "verb" mainly. Answer I like "brawling love", because I like quoting Shakespeare. He was neither the first nor the last to discuss relationships combining love and hate (nor was that his only time), so there are in fact thousands of different phrases describing it. So many in fact that I'd avoid set phrases that have been used before; see if this tired old trope can be made fresh again!

I have been studying Longman's English grammar book, and something is really confusing me: We can put it and them after the verb: Give it to me. Buy them for me. Do it for me. With e.g. give and buy, we can say: Give me it . Buy me them . (But not *Do me it . ) We say: Give it to John. Buy them for John. (Not * Give John it - * Buy John them . ) Why can't I say Buy John it or Give John them ? There is another post related to it that talks about the same topic: Direct and Indirect Objects with the verbs: Give, Buy, and Bring . However, the most voted answer was, indeed, useful for me, but didn't get everything clear. What's the main rule for inverting the position and dropping the preposition? As far as I managed to understand, if the direct object is it or them and the indirect object is a pronoun, the normal construction's placement is necessary, i.e.: Subject + Verb + Direct object + To/For + Indirect object Is this right?

Initially, my question was: is "focussed" or "focused" the correct past tense of "focus", but since this applies to a lot of words, I would like to generalize and ask: is there supposed to be a rule when to double the consonant? Answer The rules are much more complicated, and I don't think it's a good idea to post them all here. Re: doubling of the final consonant in an unstressed syllable. Pam Peters (in "The Cambridge Guide to English Usage") argues that when the final syllable is identical with a monosyllabic word, the final consonant is also doubled in British English: eavesdropped, kidnapped, formatted, worshipped, zigzagged etc. Michael Swan argues that doubling in such cases is caused by a full vowel, which hasn't been reduced to a schwa. Burchfield, the editor of the most current Fowler's, also mentions such words, as benefitted , targetted etc., without any explanation. (BrE) It's interesting that Fowler's reco...

What is the difference between the following sentences: You may be prevented from crossing the border, although you are in possession of a valid visa. You may be prevented from crossing the border, even if you are in possession of a valid visa. If they have the same meaning, in which circumstances would it be better to use each one?

What is the semantic difference between apostrophe and single quote ? I see people use both of them interchangeably, but people never create two words to denote one concept. There should be a difference. Answer An easy way to differentiate: An apostrophe is only used within or at the very end of a word - it is part of the word. In English, it serves three purposes: The marking of the omission of one or more letters (as in the contraction of do not to don't ). The marking of possessive case (as in the cat's whiskers ). The marking as plural of written items that are not words established in English orthography (as in P's and Q's, the late 1950's ). (This is considered incorrect by some; see Use in forming certain plurals . The use of the apostrophe to form plurals of proper words, as in apple's , banana's , etc., is universally considered incorrect.) Single quotes are only used around words - they come in pairs, and are not part of any word. Single...

Our local newspaper had the headline today "Gadhafi forces retreat" and I read it with "retreat" as the verb instead of "forces" as the verb. I know it is a poorly written headline, but which way is the more common way to read it? (In other words, is it likely that no-one at the newspaper noticed the ambiguity?) Answer This is a type of ambiguous headline known as a crash blossom . From the Wikipedia link: Newspaper headlines are written in a telegraphic style (headlinese) which often omits the copula and therefore lends itself to syntactic ambiguity, usually of the garden path type. The name 'crash blossoms' was proposed for these ambiguous headlines by Dan Bloom and Mike O'Connell in the Testy Copy Editors discussion group in August 2009 based on a headline " Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms ".[3] The Columbia Journalism Review regularly reprints such headlines in its "The Lower case" column, and has collected them ...

I heard that ' petrichor ', which is defined as a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather , is the only noun in English that means a specific scent. Is this true? Answer There are definitely at least two, because the word " nidor " refers specifically to the smell of burning fat. The word "musk" may or may not qualify. I've been looking for more examples of this myself. If I knew any, I would add them to this Wiktionary category .

What does a dry sense of humor mean? This article explains how to develop it, but not what it is. How to Develop a Dry Sense of Humor Developing a dry sense of humor can be challenging and fun. Learn how to develop one. If you really want to (and you know you do) then read the article. Answer Here is a relevant definition that says it all: dry adjective (of a joke or sense of humor) subtle, expressed in a matter-of-fact way, and having the appearance of being unconscious or unintentional: he delighted his friends with a dry, covert sense of humor NOAD

When we want to change a statement from active to passive, in the present continuous, we have to change the verb that is continuous from the active verb to the continuous for of be and the past participle of the active verb. E.g. if we start with is painting then we have to change it to is being painted by . However I'm not sure how to change the subject and the object. If we start with: John is painting his room. Is the passive construction: His room is being painted by John. Something seems wrong when comparing the two sentences, but I'm not sure what. Does his in the passive construction refer to the same person as in the active?

The following examples are clearly wrong: × I am very much tired × She is very much clever But the following sounds fine (at least according to OALD ): I am very much afraid that ... I am very much aware of ... Worse, the following sounds awkward to me: × I am very aware of ... I wonder some sound ok while the others do not. Does it have to do with the type of adjectives being used? Or is there a subtle nuance between "very" and "very much"? Is "very much" the same as "extremely" (I would guess not, at least in the "afraid" example)? When should/can one use "very much", as opposed to "very"? Are there differences between spoken and written uses? Answer I'd say "very much" isn't used with adjectives of characteristics/qualities that tend to be inherent or permanent (She's very intelligent.) And we tend to use very much with other adjectives, especially if they go with a preposition. (I'm ver...