texts:
The role is the kind of high-wire dare certain types of actors and
directors cannot resist. T. Scott Cunningham, who has created a number
of lovable losers onstage in the last decade, lets the audience share
the passionate satisfaction he finds in making this shattered man a
very funny tour guide through human bewilderment. And the director,
Jessica Bauman, translates the strange, jazzy rhythms of Mr.
Rutherford's prose into movements of one man and one chair around a
stage in what appears to be a dance macabre for people of
undefeatable good cheer. [
Source ]

In the above excerpt from The New York Times there is an example of dance macabre usage.
As far as I know, the correct phrase is danse macabre, but I'm not sure whether this is simply a typo or a grammatical error, and whether macabre dance is the correct form.
The phrase dance macabre occurs rather frequently in comparison with macabre dance as this Ngram shows:

In the light of the above remarks, which is correct: dance macabre or macabre dance?


texts: Asymmetric spacing of dashes in interpolated phrases

texts:
I have come across a dash-spacing style that I haven't seen anywhere else, and I'm wondering where it may come from. The person who writes in this style asserts that he has learnt it in school in the UK.

Briefly on dash styles: Style manuals vary in how they recommend using dashes to separate interpolated phrases, the two most common appearing to be the spaced en-dash and the unspaced em-dash (see Wikipedia article Dash, and the questions Is it wrong to space en dashes and em dashes? and When should I use an em-dash, an en-dash, and a hyphen? on this site).

But the style I have come across is different and seems to have the following rules that are a mix of other rules I have seen:

When a phrase is interpolated so that the main sentence continues, it is set off by the sequence "space, en-dash" in the beginning, and "en-dash, space" at the end. Example: This sentence –being an example– makes no sense.
When a phrase is interpolated at the end of the main sentence, it is set off by the sequence "space, en-dash, space". Example: This sentence makes no sense – it is an example.

Has anyone come across this style before? Where could it originate from? Is the rule set above complete and correct for this style, and is there any rationale for the style?


texts: What does a single letter "J" mean in emailing?

texts:
Today is Halloween. After a successful party, many conversations have been going on in my company's email box.

The end of one email said "Till next time J". I had no idea what "J" meant in this sentence and thought it could be a typo. Then I opened another email which read "Thanks to Diana for all her hard work J".

I figure the letter "J" must mean something here, but I'm not sure whether it only makes sense within my company or if it has a universally accepted meaning.


texts: Similar to antediluvian, is there a word that literally means before the Fall of Man?


texts: Name for answers that reject the premise of a question

texts:
What would you consider too much money to have? ∞

How much of it would you like to share? 0

What is 1.0 divided by 0.0? NaN (Not a Number)

What is your middle name? N/A (Not Applicable)

When are you going to retire? TBD (To Be Determined)

When is the next Game of Thrones going to air? TBA (To Be Announced)

What are you going to do, option A or option B? C

In Mathematics and in English, particularly in the age of fill-in-the-blank forms, there are special answers that reject a questions assumptions. Do these answers have a collective name that could be used like so:

"If a question doesn't have an answer put a ___"


texts: Zero article after "of" in "a change of place"

texts:
Given the sentence

  The use of apples instead of pears is unexpected in the dish.

I don't think we can use apple instead of apples. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) But then, how come we can say the following?

  I need a change of hotel.
  A change of situation will give another result.

In the above two cases, both hotel and situation are countable nouns. Why is the indefinite article omitted before them?


texts: Could "bastard" have a positive connotation?

texts:
I'd always thought that the word "bastard" had a negative and impolite meaning, but when I came across this wine (Fat bastard Chardonnay) I started to doubt my belief.

Can some native speaker explain if this usage of "bastard" is possible in positive sense nowadays? If so, what is the positive sense in this case?


texts:
The German word for these patterns is "Schliere, pl. Schlieren", and apparently this word has entered the English language as a loanword (cf. article Schlieren in Wikipedia or entry schliere in OED). But the German loanword is probably not something most native speakers of English understand without the help of a dictionary, so what would you call, or how would you describe, the following patterns?

Concrete:

Air:

Oil on water:

Coffee and milk:

Paint:

Smoke:

Rock:

Marbled paper:

And so on.

"Waves" is not applicable, because waves are vertical undulations of the surface, while these are a pattern on, or inside, the surface level, with no amplitude.

"Striæ" does not really fit either, because those refer more to the parallel layers, than to the curly forms.


texts: castle's defensive architecture terminology

texts:
what is difference between battlement,parapet,crenellations,ramparts they all seem same to me,something that is used for guarding castle.please shed some light on this.please try and use images if possible

i have googled for it and didn't find any difference

i have to know the nuances of this, because currently, i am reading George R.R. martin's widely acclaimed epic fantasy 'A song of ice and fire'...

thanks in advance


texts: Does the spelling of "brainy" change when suffix is added?

texts:
Which is the correct form, "brainyency" or "brainiency" - when the suffix "ency", which describes the condition of being "brainy" is added?

Thanks!


texts: Which word you would choose as a superlative of "wrong"?


texts: "Two additional days" but "an additional two weeks"

texts:
[Google ngrams]
I'd like to know what are the grammatical differences between both structures, as well as one or the other predominates for days and weeks.


texts: Is there a synonym for "flunky" that specifically denotes a failed student at university?

texts: Am searching for a term to denote a person who has failed within a university, ie. someone who could not excel in his or her course of study. Not a dropout, per se, or someone who simply could not continue on in their studies, but someone who fails to understand the majority of their course work.


texts: Active vs passive voice with inanimate object as the subject

texts:
I have asked the same question in ELL Stackexchange forum. There all the answers and comments I received was really helpful, but still I was looking for something more. So I have decided to ask this same question here also.

I have seen some sentences like this -

  The film was announced to be released on this coming Friday.
  The film was announced to release on this coming Friday.

Both the sentences are used, and I know they are interchangeable and does bear the same meaning. But I have some doubt about the second sentence - why is it "to release", when the film cant release itself.

Some other sentences of similar structure that arises my confusion -

  The product sells well.
  The book reads well.
  The glass broke.

The sentences are understandable, but in each of the sentences the subjects can't perform any job, as they all are inanimate object. The verbs are active, but they acts like they are used as passive.

Now my question is how to decide which verb to use this way and which not?


texts: "I've gotten better-looking as I get older" When did "gotten" re-enter the BrEng vernacular?

texts:
This summer I went to Ireland, to be more precise Dublin. Overall good weather and good fun. Anyway, while I was staying in Dublin I'd buy the local newspaper and one tabloid headline caught my eye.

Now I've thought long and hard before posting this question because I don't want to know or hear that sentence is correct if it's spoken by a native speaker. Tell me it's dialectal, tell me it's peculiar to Irish (Is Miriam an Irish speaker? I don't know any more because I've thrown out the rag), tell me that it's American English "slang" which has caught on in the UK and in Ireland. But more than anything else, please tell me if that statement is grammatical.

If it had been me, I would have said:

  I've become better-looking as I've got older

  or at a stretch

  I'm better-looking as I get older

I prefer the hyphen in better-looking, am I mistaken? Is this punctuation symbol superfluous? Isn't gotten AmEng? In BrEng the conjugation of the verb get is get, got, got but wiktionary tells me that gotten is archaic British English. I can't pinpoint why that headline bothers me so much, but it does. Can someone explain if this sentence is grammatical/ungrammatical and why?

Thank you.

EDIT

Some users have commented the dissonance of different tenses used in the statement. The present perfect I've gotten, with the present simple I get older.

Perhaps the present perfect continuous  I've been getting older  would be more appropriate  because it expresses an action that began in the past but  is still in progress.  Whereas the present perfect I've gotten better-looking might be "perfect" for describing an action that began in the past whose results are felt in the present. All of which leads me to conclude that the following sentence is more grammatically acceptable

  I've got better-looking as I've been getting older.

EDIT TWO

On EL&U today I saw this question pop up: Differences between "I have got" and "I have gotten" The highest voted answer says

  In general, "have got" is the present perfect form of "to get" in UK
  English, while "have gotten" is the US English version.

While a second contributor quoting from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of English Language wrote

  Gotten is probably the most distinctive of all the AmE/BrE grammatical
  differences, but British people who try to use it often get it wrong.

  It is not simply an alternative for have got. Gotten is used in such
  contexts as

  They've gotten a new boat. (= obtain)
  They've gotten interested. (= become)
  He's gotten off the chair. (= moved)

It appears to me the headline in The Irish Daily Mail clearly conflicts with both these claims.

EDIT THREE
As correctly pointed out in @fdb's answer "I do not know why you think that Ireland is part of Britain." I made a serious mistake in my second edit and title, Ireland has been a republic since 1922. The six Northern counties in the north east of Ireland who chose to remain in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland are British.

But because I am no longer resident in the United Kingdom, I was surprised by the Irish headline. As a child I don't think I ever said gotten but I was conscious of it being American and to me it was "slang". If gotten is currently used in Ireland, an island which is only 496 Km from England, and American English is omnipresent, it seems likely that "gotten" should be part of the BrEng vernacular. If that is the case...

When did "gotten" re-enter the BrEng vernacular?


texts: Usage of the phrase " just because" at the end of sentences

texts:
Usually, because links the premise and the conclusion. But there is one usage of the word I come across often, not in contemporary writings but older works.

These are of the form: "[subject did something] just because", where the the phrase "just because" is used to imply that the doer's actions were not guided by any purpose and the act was performed only for the sake of it, or on an impulse.

How can this usage of the word because be explained?


texts: What does it mean to call someone a 'drink of water'?

texts:
What does it mean when you call someone a 'drink of water', like at the end of this clip from the Shawshank Redemption? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD07V7Lwacc

It's intended as an insult from the context, but what does it mean?


texts: Not a decade, but a term for a 9 year span

texts:
Thanks for the help in advance; first time posting here.

I'm curious what the most appropriate single word is to describe a 9 year time span, or a 9 year anniversary. A search on Google didn't turn up much, but it did help me find this information in the Wiki page for "decade": "...Other words for spans of years also come from Latin: biennium (2 years), triennium (3 years), quadrennium (4 years), lustrum (5 years)".

Following this pattern, the most appropriate form of the word I could come up with is novemnium, seeing as novem is Latin for 9. Is this the correct structure/spelling, or are there better alternatives to this problem?


texts: Can "capable of being hurt..." mean a kind of ability?

texts:
"I think that’s what it means to be “real” as a parent or a teacher – to be vulnerable, to be capable of being hurt.  The only way to avoid the pain of vulnerability is by shutting out all emotion and becoming cold, uncaring, heartless and selfish."

Above is a quote from headmaster's newsletter. In the text, can "to be capable of being hurt" mean "to be able to be hurt"?

Actually, I didn't think about the possibility. I interpreted it as "susceptible to being hurt" especially because of the previous word "vulnerable".

But my colleague (who spent most of her school years in an English-speaking environment) claimed that it was supposed to mean "to be able to be hurt" as a kind of ability, and that it shouldn't be viewed as a passive attitude.

Aside from the context, is this usage common? For me, it sounds really awkward that someone has a kind of ability to get hurt. It sounds as strange as being able to die."

Any comments would be greatly appreciated. I am definitely not a native English speaker.


texts:
Is there a word for "not a ratio," e.g. the stock increased by $100 on a something basis which is 50% on a percentage basis.

I used to think the word is nominal but I don't see that definition anywhere.


texts: What is the students' jargon or abbreviation for assignments made up of "only" data downloaded from the internet in English? (If it exists)

texts:
Japanese students call a report and essay made up by only putting data downloaded from the Internet e.g. passages from Wikipedia put together without including  their own thoughts or creative ideas, a “コピペ-Kopipe,” which is pronounced as 'kopipay.'

It is a compound of ‘copied + pasted + paper’. Incidentally ‘copy ,’ ‘paste,’ and ‘paper’ are all adapted to Japanese language, and pronounced as ‘kopi-i, ‘paisuto, and ‘paypah’.

To me 'Kopipe' is akin to plagiarism, but it doesn’t have the same criminal overtone as plagiarism itself. It seems to be just a labor-saving editing or blending job for students.

While riding on the train, I've overheard students say to each other:

  “I submitted a report in time by ‘kopipeing’ articles”

innocently, as if they were playing a game.

Is there a similar student jargon or abbreviation for ‘Kopipe’ in English?


texts:
Is the use of "not to mention getting a promotion" in the following sentence natual? If not, how to rewrite it? The main idea is: working hard is a must to have a job, getting a promotion needs to work even harder.

  It is a hard fact that only diligent employees who devote the majority
  of their time and energy on sharping professional skills can get
  themselves employed, not to mention getting a promotion


texts: Use of an indefinite article associated with a particular person's name

texts:
Indefinite (and definite) articles are sometimes associated with a person's name.
This answer by Jon Hanna is the best summary of the uses I have found.  Also, another question addresses the issue that was not mentioned in the summary with the example sentence "when a defeated Napoleon rode off the battlefield and into exile", and it is followed by a couple of useful answers.

My question is related to the latter.  Let me add three more examples to clarify the point.

"muttered a startled [Michael] Fallon" (Author Alex Nunn or his Twitter)
"an elated Sarah Storey after her victory" (Daily Telegraph)
"one photo showing an unsmiling Francis standing next to a beaming Trump" (Washington Post

In any of these cases, as well as the Napoleon-related example, the person(s) referred to is precisely specified in the text and only one in the world.

I have heard of a hypothesis (from a friend) people sometimes use an indefinite article before a particular person's name when it is accompanied with a preceding modifier, which tends to be (though not necessarily limited?) the present or past participle form of a verb; in other words, the modifier is sandwitched between the article and person's name.  All the cases listed above fit the hypothesis and the modifiers are "startled", "elated", and "unsmiling" and "beaming".  If this hypothesis is correct, there is no expression like "a John Smith delighted with blah-blah" (as long as the referred John Smith is already narrowed down to a particular person in the given context).

An answer to the aforementioned question explains

  It's a literary/oratorial device. You certainly wouldn't often come acrosss it in normal speech - only somewhat flamboyant prose or speechifying.

  Think of it as meaning that Napoleon is a man of many aspects, victorious on other occasions, but defeated this time. Using the article implies that this is only one of several possible Napoleons that have or will exist.

The first part fits my little Googling research; it seems this use of the indefinite article is more commonly seen in novels and fictions than other types of writings.

Applying the second part to my examples, the three example sentences are interpreted as
"Fallon/Storey/Francis/Trump is a person of many aspects, but in this case s/he is only one (=startled/elated/etc) of several possible Fallon/Storey/etc",
which seems fitting.

Now I am asking for further clarifications:

What is the condition where this use of an indefinite article is accepted?  Is the above-mentioned hypothesis (i.e., always(?) having a modifier in between) correct?  Are standard adjectives like "happy", as opposed to verbs in conjugation, accepted for it?
What is the nuance of the expression?  Specifically, what is the difference from the phrase without an indefinite article? For example, how about "'blah-blah', muttered startled Fallon"? I think the definite article "the" would feel a little unnatural in this case, as explained in detail in the paragraph in the previous answer.


texts: Which is the correct possessive pronoun in this example? our vs their

texts:
Which is the correct possessive pronoun in this example?

  "Those of us who wear glasses should have our eyes examined at regular intervals".
  "Those of us who wear glasses should have their eyes examined at regular intervals".


texts: Is there a name for the phobia of not having access to the internet?

texts:
Nomophobia is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact.

Is there a name for the fear or phobia of being away from / not being able to reach the internet?


texts: My coworker and I were trying to solve a problem -- we both tried two different things at once that only worked because of the other's attempt

texts:
Each solution to the problem we were trying to solve would have independently failed. We were each trying many different solutions at the same time. We each happened to try a solution that worked, but only because the other had tried a complimentary solution.

Is there a word, phrase, idiom, or analogy that describes such a solution?

An example: It's like if we had a whole bunch of light switches and were flipping each of them on and off to see if it controlled the light we were trying to turn on. Unbeknownst to us, the light needed two specific switches to be turned on. Had we been trying independently, we'd have flipped one on, seen no reaction, then flipped it off. However, we happened to each flip one of the two correct switches at the same time, causing the light to turn on. We then each thought we had found the correct one switch, but in further experimentation we realized that the light had needed both of us to switch on the two switches at the same time.

It was an interesting (and probably very lucky) event. I've been trying to come up with a word or phrase to describe it, but I am only getting generalizations like it was 'serendipitous' or it was like we had built two halves of a bridge.


texts: What does "suitable offerings" mean in the following context?

texts:
What does "suitable offerings" mean in the sentence below? Does it mean the offerings which are fit to be offered to God or the offerings that man must give to God?

  Suitable offerings for the altar of 'the Lord thy God' include 'the firstlings of thy flocks, and of choice of thy fields, and of the chief of all holy things'. These animal offerings must be firstborn and perfect and, if from the flock, should 'divide the hoof and chew the cud'.


texts: Why did Ylvis use "go" instead of "say" in phrases like "Dog goes 'woof'"?

texts:
Why did Ylvis use the verb "go" instead of "say" in their 2013 pop song "What Does the Fox Say?"

  Dog goes "woof."
  Cat goes "meow."
  Bird goes "tweet."

Is there some specific meaning for "go"?


texts: Why are grammatical subjects called subjects?

texts:
In a monarchical state a subject is "one that is placed under authority or control" (Merriam). If A is subject to B, A is figuratively beneath B. This meaning makes sense with the word's roots of under and throw (again, Merriam; quotation below*).

In grammar, though, the subject, as we all know, acts. (Yes, the grammar structure can be passive so that semantically the subject is not active; even still the subject performs the verb, which in a passive structure, is to receive the action.) It has agency. It is the noun (or noun phrase) doing the throwing under and doing the subjecting, not being thrown under or being subjected.

How did subject develop such seemingly opposed meanings? It can certainly make reading lit theory confusing.

  *Middle English suget, subget, from Anglo-French, from Latin subjectus
  one under authority & subjectum subject of a proposition, from
  masculine & neuter respectively of subjectus, past participle of
  subicere to subject, literally, to throw under, from sub- + jacere to
  throw


texts:
Green about the gills is a common British English expression that is used when someone is feeling queasy, or about to vomit or be sick (there's that AmEng and BrEng divide once again). Cambridge Dictionary defines it as being old-fashioned ... gasp.

  to look ill and pale:

I think I get the green part. I seem to remember reading somewhere that people's complexion change colour when they are either seasick or carsick. Obviously, they look paler, and maybe their skin adopts a sickly-yellow tinge, but green?

Now for the gills, those flaps which fish use to breathe in oxygen, I might be mistaken but I've only ever heard of gills being used for human beings in this idiom.

Why was the term gills used for people?
What part of the body are the gills supposed to represent?
Do people, figuratively, become green around their nose, mouth or ears?
Why is the colour green associated with gills and feeling sickly?


texts: What is the name of a lime-growing tree?

texts: The limetree (linden) doesn't grow limes. What do you call a tree that does?


texts:
I came across this doubt.
If I want to say, for example.

"This inventor is a genius, he can create from a simple chair up to a
sophisticated car engine"

Is that correct?
I don't know how to use the prepositions when you want to use that expression. another example.
"I eat everything from the worst of the meals up to a delicious pizza"
I know the structure but I wonder if I am using these prepositions wrong.
I searched on the internet but couldn't find this, so I came here to ask you guys.
Thanks a lot!


texts: Formatting two adjacent footnote indicators in the body of the footnoted text

texts:
I've run into an issue using Microsoft Word 2013. In the following example, there is no way to know whether or not there exists one reference to footnote 12, or two references to footnotes 1 and 2:

  This line of text is a footnote reference example.12

It's an issue because I'm adding multiple footnotes to the same section of document body text in a "wiki" style document with multiple URL examples used as reference, for example:

  The television character's name was Guy Characterburg.1 2

    ¹ He was named Guy after Guy Fawkes. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes

    ² And Characterburg because I am not very creative. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laziness

In that example, I've placed a space in-between the 1 and the 2 to make it easier to see. And at the end of an isolated sentence, a few extra spaces are certainly not the end of the world. But it adds a lot of awkward white space when done in the middle of a paragraph, for example:

  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec aliquam lectus eget rhoncus aliquet. Duis mollis, ligula quis dapibus mollis, magna velit aliquet mi, nec lacinia erat nulla nec dui. Nunc nec imperdiet1 2 3 quam.4 Aliquam iaculis5 6 7 non tortor nec vestibulum. Curabitur accumsan bibendum tristique. Morbi ac felis massa. Donec eget mauris enim. Phasellus tristique8 9 mauris ipsum, ac euismod felis sollicitudin vitae.

If I put a superscript comma in-between them, for example:

  This is the last example, I promise1,2.

    ¹ This was a lie. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie

    ² brutereason.net/2011/09/23/on-people-who-think-theyre-so-damn-funny

This confuses Microsoft Word, because its proofreading function ignores the footnote references and only sees:

  This is the last example, I promise,.

..and puts squiggly red lines everywhere (well, in the dozen or so places it's an issue). If I try to add hard brackets, à la Wikipedia:

  This[1][2] is another example.

This also confuses Word. It thinks I'm bunching up parentheticals and uses squiggly blue lines to suggest spacing them out:

  This [1] [2] is what Word would prefer.

That would be annoying to have to type in a bunch of superscript brackets and extra spaces, and it's not exactly aesthetically pleasing:

  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec aliquam lectus eget rhoncus aliquet. Duis mollis, ligula quis dapibus mollis, magna velit aliquet mi, nec lacinia erat nulla nec dui. Nunc nec imperdiet [1] [2] [3] quam. [4] Aliquam iaculis [5] [6] [7] non tortor nec vestibulum. Curabitur accumsan bibendum tristique. Morbi ac felis massa. Donec eget mauris enim. Phasellus tristique [8] [9] mauris ipsum, ac euismod felis sollicitudin vitae.

But I guess I'd take it if that was the official, last word on how to do it. So my question is, after all that, is this a situation that has a best practice? Is there a good way to get Microsoft Word to display adjacent footnote references?


texts: Are there any words that are pronounced differently if you add prefixes?

texts:
I know a couple of words that the main part is pronounced differently if you add prefixes(in-, un-, re-...) to it.
 I was just wondering if there is any other words?


texts: "What place are you going to?" or "Where are you going?"

texts:
If I ask the question "Where are you going?", is it okay for me to say,

  "What place are you going to?"

or

  "To what place are you going?"

instead?


texts:
"November 10th is the due date for assignment 1"
"November 10th is the due date of assignment 1"

Are both correct? If so, which one is best?

I don't think it makes any difference but I will be using this to create an all-day event on my calendar.


texts: Looking for a complement that means "sucks it up"

texts:
I am writing a review, and am looking to convey a sense that, even though my report may not agree with, or have reservations about an aspect of their job, they suck it up, and carry out their job duties.
I see a few posts on this phrase, but they don't provide alternatives (the ones I've looked at were asking more about meaning vs synonyms).
EDIT:  I wasn't clear enough that I'd like to emphasize the positive aspect of this, and just use words/phrases with positive connotations; that reflect that they're accepting this unpleasant aspect without complaints.


texts: A question about the word 'spirit' used to mean a phonetic 'breathing'

texts:
The English word 'breathing' describes, among other things, the apostrophe used as a phonetic mark in front of Greek vowels. The 'rough' breathing indicates that an H should be considered present as in 'αμαρτια, amartia, which is then pronounced 'hamartia'. The 'smooth' breathing is less obvious in speech.

Classically, they were referred to as the spiritus asper (rough) and the spiritus lenis (smooth).

In reading Frederick Scrivener's 'Plain Introduction' to textual analysis (published in 1861) I noticed that he referred to 'spirits' in a paragraph beginning 'Breathing and Accents' and it took me a moment to realise that he had used the word 'spirits' to mean 'breathings'.

The twenty-two categories of meaning under 'spirit' in the OED make no mention of this use of the word and I wondered whether this was an individuality of Frederick Scrivener or even a slip on his part.

A Greek scholar such as he would be very familiar with the fact that the Greek word πνευμα, pneuma, is translated equally both 'spirit' and 'breath' and even 'wind'.

Is this a valid way to refer, in English, to breathings ?


texts: What is the origin of "to leave to one's own devices"?

texts:
My father-in-law noted that when I leave my children to their own devices, nowadays it could mean that they were each playing on their own iPhone.

It got me to wondering what the source of this idiom is.

A Google search did not tell me so I thought I would ask here.


texts:
I just had this exchange
Person A: "I ate 2 hours ago"
Person B: "Actually, you ate 1 hour ago; you ate sooner than you thought"

Sooner than you thought

Hit both of our ears wrong. I quickly followed up with earlier than you thought, and we're trying to work out why it felt wrong to use sooner.

Using 'soon' for past occurrences

The top hit, doesn't seem to address our usage.
The question is: Can "soon" be relative to a past event. Can you have eaten sooner than you thought you had? If not, why?


texts: Meaning or definition of "substantional"

texts:
Recently I came across the word substantional.

What's its definition, and how can it be used in a sentence? Are there any common synonyms? Where did this word come from?

I suspect it's related to substantial, but it's not entirely clear.

This was used in a context looking for reference back to an authority of some kind, but I'm unsure if this is relevant.


texts: Term for the colloquial "random" in the sense of "of unknown origin"

texts:
I recently remarked "I hate it when I accidentally touch a random moist paper towel in the trash.", at which point I questioned my usage of the term random in that instance.

There are good discussions of the term random here and here.  But my question is in regard to how to more precisely communicate the meaning of random that I had intended.  The best way I can think of to state it would be "of unknown origin", i.e.:

  "I hate it when I accidentally touch a moist paper towel of unknown origin in the trash."

However this is awkward.  Is there a shorter, but still precise, fashion to communicate this?

If there are multiple words/phrases that might fit this usage, I'd give preference to brevity without losing specificity.  And note that I'm not asking for alternate ways to express arbitrary choices.


texts:
Possible Duplicate:
  Are there any words that are spelled the same but have separate etymologies?

For a blog entry that I am writing, I need at least one good example of what appears, and sounds, to be a single word, but which is really two different words, having completely different origins.

(I'm hoping that with several of you sharing, we could come up with a dozen or two, just for the record. Down-sizing the list should be the criterion that all of the words are simple, ordinary words (i.e., nothing esoteric).)

I realize that dictionaries distinguish such instances by means of separate superscripted entries, and so I could just peruse the dictionary, but I thought it would not only be faster to ask here, but also the examples might be better. What I need is for at least two explicit, different etymologies, and for the two (or more) instances of the word to be of the same part of speech. One thing that makes the peruse-the-dictionary approach even slower than what one would obviously expect is that the etymology of one of the words is often "origin unknown" (such as the two noun meanings of "drill"). This is not sharp enough for my purposes. I need specific different etymologies.


texts:
Possible Duplicate:
  I need <something> yesterday?

For couple of times, mostly in movies, I realized that yesterday is commonly used for future. Here is an example sentence:

  I want it done. I want it done yesterday!

So, what is the exact meaning of yesterday here? Is it used here in order to express the urgency of the situation? If so, what separates it from right now?


texts:
I'm doing a research on English modality (for reference I'm using F.R. Palmer's book "Modality and the English Modals").

In the book the author distinguishes between the three kinds of modality:

Epistemic modality (for possibility)

Deontic (for permission and obligation)

Dynamic (subject oriented "modality" i.e. objective potential)

To test the practical application of the theoretical points given in this book, I turn to native speakers' aid, but the issue is that everyone appears to have their own interpretations of modality in what seems to be the same context (some might understand a modal to be deontic (e.g. you have my permission to do that), while others understand it as dynamic (there is an objective possibility to do that).

To have a better understanding of what I mean, please, take a look at my thread on wordreference.com (particularly at the post #8, where I give a link to yet another one of my posts).

https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/can-will-be-able-to.3627055/

Only few people accepted the use of "can" there, but here (#1, Ex. 4) a similar example was validated:

https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/can-or-be-able-to-in-the-future.3626301/#post-1847635

There seems to be some misconception at play. This might be due to the fact that when we acquire language as children, we absorb it intuitively with no instructions. The language doesn't come in a package together with a user guide like a table from IKEA or some exhaustive grammar book explaining how our mind generates grammar. There's nothing to language but the language, so oftentimes we have to base our inferences on intuition. My objective here is to understand whether "can" is indeed not used to denote objective future possiby or is it just that the native speakers preceive "can" in my examples to be something else (e.g. permission or epistemic possibility).

Could you, please, check if my assumptions about the meaning of "can" in the following sentences are correct. If they are not, how would you interpret them?

Ex.1

A: What is this bank good for?! We all are jobless!

B: When Barclays opens a branch in our town, you [can / will be able to] apply for a job there ("B" merely states a fact about future possibility; "to be able to" is more naural here).

Ex.2

A: I need to find a job.

B: When Barclays opens a branch in our town, you can apply for a job there ("B" suggests a solution; in such situations "can" looks better. In the book this use of "can" is titled as "implication").

Thank you in advance!


texts:
Are the "If you be my everything..." and "If I be wrong" structures correct?
Thank you for the answers!


texts: A word to describe someone who isn't easily fooled or deceived?

texts: Whats a good word to describe someone who isn't easily fooled or isn't gullible?


texts: What does "crack down on 100 character titles and stones" mean?

texts:
I can't correctly understand meaning of this sentence in text below: "They are also cracking down on the 100 character titles and stones for jewelry sellers."
I can't understand what they (Amazon as I understand) want to block or stop.

I've been a pretty big shop on Etsy for a while, but Amazon has been catching up fast.  I have over 1800 items on my main Etsy shop and only 209 listed on H@A.  October they were tied.  I sent in only one item for FBA and my sales soared!  I highly recommend listing as much as you can on H@A and being very diligent about the H@A seo - not duplicating keywords or tags - using words only once in the title / description, etc.  They are also cracking down on the 100 character titles and stones for jewelry sellers.
A few other top sellers have told me that Amazon now outsells their Etsy shops 4 to 1.  I can't wait to see what Christmas brings!"
— NovaWildstar on Reddit


texts:
''The least common multiple''

Why isn't ''fewest'' used since the noun is countable?

And why ''many people?''

Thank you


texts: For the life of me I can't understand this sentence from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight

texts:
To forestall the incursions of the dreadful Threads, the Pernese, with the ingenuity of their forgotten Terran forebears, developed a highly specialized variety of a life-form indigenous to their adopted planet. Such humans as had a high empathy rating and some innate telepathic ability were trained to use and preserve this unusual animal whose ability to teleport was of great value in the fierce struggle to keep Pern bare of Threads.

– Introduction

The confusing part for me is the beginning of the second sentence: "Such humans as had a high empathy rating and some innate telepathic ability..." -- specifically, "Such humans as had..." How is this supposed to be read?


texts:
I am not a native English speaker, the source of my learning is books, websites and of course movies and music.
In the movie — if I remember the name correctly — The Last Samurai, I heard that they said "I bid you good morning".

Can I use it as a professional way to wish good morning or is it informal? Or did I just hear it wrong?


texts: Name of the relationship between something positive you do for someone else and what is done for you by a third party

texts:
Familiar religious example: Luke 6:37 "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:"
Transitive (from mathematics) doesn't quite work because it's not really if A=B & B=C then A=C. If I forgive her and God forgives me, the God forgives her? Maybe theologically correct, but not the right meaning.
Transference in psychology doesn't quite fit either. "God is transferring His forgiveness for me to another person"--don't think so.
Causal is closer: "If I forgive him, God will forgive me"
Any other options?


texts: Whose misadventured piteous overthrows doth . .

texts:
The following is taken from the prologue of Romeo and Juliet. I'd like to know why the plural noun overthrows takes the third-person singular auxiliary doth.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.


texts: I need help to see if this sentence is in correct format

texts:
I suggest that that is the solution we propose.

I read this in a book and I'm not sure if there is supposed to be two thats. I've read it over and over again and I can't decide if it is correct or not. Someone help please.


texts: What symbol to use for pronunciation help

texts:
I am looking to enforce that my letter "a" should be pronounced as "ah".  In my book I am writing I have the name Gorak (Gore-ahk).  What would be the best way to explicitly show that it is Gore-Ahk and not Gore-aek or Gore-ak?

Also if I may, I am also looking to designate the il letter combo to sound like "eel".

I know there are symbols that you place above the letters to help with pronunciation but I am having a hard time googling it to find out what to use with what sounds.  Possibly maybe not asking the right question to google.


texts:
Possible Duplicates:
  “User accounts” or “users account?”
  Is it correct to say “lesson count” or “lessons count”?

I'm wondering whether or not I should use a plural form noun with a collection name. For example, which one is correct, bookList or booksList (obviously they are variables in a programming language)?


texts: "Focus on" or "be focused on": what're the nuances?

texts:
After viewing a couple of threads on the Internet, I found that both the legitimacy or the explanation of "focus on" (active voice form) and "be focused on" (passive voice form) seemed controversial. Some said they were the same (e.g. in this and this threads); some argued that the active case was preferable; some tried to explain the subtleties between the two, stating that the intransitive case might "be a little less forceful."

What's more confusing, both cases can appear in the same sentence. As in Remarks by President Trump in Meeting with Vice Premier Liu He of the People’s Republic of China:

  Both sides agree this agreement is worth nothing — if we can get an agreement, it’s worth nothing without enforcement.  That’s been your instruction from the beginning.  So we’re focusing — we have a lot more issues to cover, but we focused on the structural issues — the ones that you’ve been so focused on — and we talked about enforcement, enforcement, enforcement.

So, my questions are:

What're the nuances between "focus on" and "be focused on"?
For some tricky sentence like "You've been so focused on the stage", should I interpret it as "You focus on the stage very much" or "People focus on you on the stage very much"?

Thanks in advance!


texts:
I am having trouble with articles. Here is the context:

  You are now changing your username. A/the new username must be different.

I think it would be just fine to just use your there, but I want to know which article is okay to be used there.

As it is not definite—not set yet—I think I should use a there, but at the same time as it is kind of The new username (you will have happened to use) must be different, I think I should use the there.


texts: How do you refer to someone who has access to an abundance of resources?

texts:
From what I can gather, "resourceful" seems to refer more to someone who can use the available resources in efficient ways. I'm thinking more about someone who has lots of resources at hand (money, connections, information, etc.), but doesn't necessarily make good use of them. regardless of how well they use them.

edit:
to clarify, I am not looking for a word describing someone who (purposely or not) makes wasteful use of the resources they have at hand. In fact, the use of the resources is irrelevant; I'm looking to describe only the existence (and abundance) of such resources.

edit 2: I was looking for something generic, to place in a sentence similar to: "when choosing the person to perform a task, one should take into account their skills, availability, and X", where X would ideally be "resourcefulness", but instead meaning something like "how good is their access to the relevant resources" (assuming resources could be various things, but mostly material and social).
There doesn't seem to be a single term to define this, so despite many good answers, I'm afraid I'm going to have to go with "influential" (or, in the example sentence above, "influence").


texts: Is "moral lesson" grammatically incorrect or redundant?

texts: Someone pointed this out to me earlier today that the correct usage is either moral or lesson, but not both.


texts:
I am a native speaker of Spanish, and, when moving inside a big house, which may also have a large garden, we sometimes use the verb “viajar” = “to travel”= “to make a trip” if we need to move over thirty or forty metres. When “viajar” is used in this context, the tone is rather informal, and the word can or cannot have an ironic/emphatic connotation.
Then, assuming that a woman is in a large residence, consider the following sentence:

She went from the kitchen to the music room and travelled/made the trip twice.

My questions:
a) Can “to travel” and “to make a trip” also be used in this way in English?
b) Are they formal or informal in this context?
I thank you all.


texts: Why is a restaurant bill called a "check"?

texts: Why is a restaurant bill called a "check" (as in "Check, please!")?


texts:
A friend is going abroad. Does the phrase I wish you a nice flight suit for wishing her a pleasant flight? Doesn't it sound too formal, as if it is said by airline personnel to the passengers?

Yes, I know that "Have a good/nice flight" is obvious here, but is it possible to say "I wish you a nice flight"?

Thanks.


texts: "Turn slightly right" or "Turn slight right"

texts:
This is a grammatical question. For a route navigation, which expression is better to say?
"slight" is adjective and "slightly" is adverb, so I guess "Turn slightly right" would be the correct in this case. But I do not hear the phrase so often.
Anybody knows the correct answer?


texts: "Recommend you to [do something]" or "Recommend to you to [do something]"?

texts:
Will anyone make a clear comparison between "recommend + subject + to infinitive" and "recommend + to + subject + to + infinitive"?

As an example:

We recommend you to buy a new car.
We recommend to you to buy a new car.

Are both sentences correct?
Which one am I most likely to hear in a native atmosphere?


texts: Etymology of the "nick" used in "nickname"?

texts:
I've enjoyed your material on the etymology of the word "nick" meaning:

A)  just in time =  in the nick of time (from notches nicked into wood or also to denote good timing)
B) in good condition = in good nick (maybe the neck & head of horses, or good inter-breeding of horses or related to the word nickel & attractive silver nickel)
C) stolen = he nicked it (copper-looking "nickel" that doesn't actually contain copper)
D) caught or jailed = he got nicked (caught out at that time, or due to demon connotations (old nick))

QUESTION:

why is "nick" used in the word "nick-name" to mean a shortened or pet name - when as you can see set out very briefly above, "nick" didn't seem to mean "short"?
All I can think of is that perhaps because a notch of time is "nicked" into wood, nick might be used to say "little bits" of time, as for time keeping or scoring/counting you would count up all the many notches to make the total, therefore comparatively each "nick" is a smaller part of the whole?

QUESTION:

if "old-Nick" was a reference to the demon or bad sprite, how did it end up being used for Santa Clause ("Saint Nick")?


texts: Statistician's word for a distribution curve tailing less steeply to left or right

texts: I know the word normal distribution. But what does a statistician call it when the curve of the distribution tails less steeply (ie falls more gradually) to the left or right?


texts: Why Côte d’Ivoire ⇒ Ivory Coast but Costa Rica ⇏ Rich Coast?

texts: Why is it that we Anglicize some foreign proper nouns, but not others?


texts: See title. And if not, how should one say "the commonliness(es) between her and me"?


texts: Is "making a hen out of a feather" really not an English expression?

texts:
Today, after learning English for decades, I learned that the expression "to make a hen out of a feather" apparently is Swedish-only, and that nobody outside Sweden would understand this (other than guessing what it means).

Apparently, the English version is "to make a mountain out of a molehill". I frankly have never heard that one before, even though I've consumed insane amounts of English-language media spanning from the early 1900s to the present.

If I had said "you're making a hen out of a feather" to somebody in the USA or UK or any other native-English country, would they look at me funny and wonder what that is about?

Mountain... out of a molehill? It doesn't sound right somehow. Is there really no other variant in English which is more common?


texts: Adjective to describe a person who is easy to work with

texts:
What singular word can be used, to describe a person who is "easy to work with?"

Example sentences are

______ people are easy to work with.
It's easy to work with John, he's very ______.


texts: Single word for being evil but enjoying it?

texts:
I know of words such as 'malign' but I am specifically looking for a word that not only expresses evilness/violence but also an enjoyment/choice to do such 'activity', as oppose to someone who does it because they are ordered to or because they 'have to' for survival for example.
Example: The way John handled himself with Jack, he was clearly ______ .


texts: What do you call the part of a signal between the zero crossing and it's max absolute amplitude?

texts:
On the sine wave above, there are four obvious sections, each a quarter of the length of the wave.

Each half of the wave is (to my knowledge) describable as a pulse.  But what I'm looking for is a word to describe the quarter sections.  In particular the sections [0, pi/2] and [pi, 3pi/2] in which the wave goes from zero amplitude, to the maximum absolute amplitude it will achieve before going back to zero again.

If no specific word exists, any help coming up with one to use would also be nice.

I did find this page (http://zonalandeducation.com/mstm/physics/waves/partsOfAWave/waveParts.htm) which seems like it would have had the answer, though I did not find one.


texts: What did Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great essayist, mean in this quote from a lecture in 1871?

texts:
What does the quote,

  "If a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a
  better mousetrap than his neighbor, even if he builds his house in the
  woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door"

even mean?


texts: World Health Organisation (WHO)... or Organization?

texts:
In an article for the U.S., do you keep the s- or change it to a z-? The organization's official name is, of course, with an s-.
The same reversed: would the World Hemophilia federation become the World Haemophilia Federation if speaking about it in UK?


texts:
You say on schedule or behind schedule which consist of:

  [preposition] + schedule (noun)

However, you say as scheduled and not as schedule. Why? What are the differences between these phrases?


texts: slip rate dependent friction - hyphen needed?

texts:
Should I put a hyphen for friction that depends on slip rate?

Possibilities:

  slip rate-dependent friction

or

  slip-rate dependent friction

or

  slip rate dependent friction

The last one seems to be most widely used, however, I have also seen the first and the second in a few papers.


texts:
The implications for children growing up in poverty-stricken or traumatic environments were significant.

has intensified in Sweden in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and recent incursions into Swedish airspace and territorial waters by Russian planes and submarines.

Pro-Europeans will argue that the report shows that opponents of EU membership have yet to outline a credible alternative.

I would like to know why the first example has "THE" but the other two not. What is the difference?

How about this?

Implications for children growing up in poverty-stricken or traumatic environments were significant.

has intensified in Sweden in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the recent incursions into Swedish airspace and territorial waters by Russian planes and submarines.

Pro-Europeans will argue that the report shows that the opponents of EU membership have yet to outline a credible alternative.


texts:
I'm an ESL teacher.  Normally I teach lower intermediate but I also teach a mixed level grammar review class.  I pride myself on being able to explain things clearly but today I found myself in THREE sticky situations all in the same class!  I'll explain here the two problems involving conditionals.

First Case:  Is it better to say...

If he knew that I WERE/WAS home now, he would call.   OR    If he knew that I AM home now, he would call.

Does the second verb in the if clause also take the subjunctive form because it is in the if clause or should it take the present simple form because it is not a hypothetical (I am home now is not hypothetical, his knowledge of it is.)


texts: Difference between the -genous and -ginous word suffixes

texts:
I was wondering whether anyone knows the exact difference between the English suffixes -agenous and -aginous.

I believe the difference is that the first suffix has to do with describing the rough essence of what something is made up of from a physical or physics standpoint, whereas the second suffix seems more heard towards describing personal character.

However, I am not sure whether this is the right distinction. I would also like to know whether there is an online etymological dictionary resource which deals with, preferably exclusively, with such suffixes, prefixes, and possibly also infixes to the extent that infixes may exist in English (personally, I am not aware of any or never studied any in English).

Thank you for your feedback.


texts: Why "ain't I" and "aren't I" instead of "amn't I"?

texts:
Why do we say "ain't I" or "aren't I" instead of "amn't I"? What's the history of this usage? Are there any other similar patterns in English?

I'm guessing it has something to do with the dispreference of two consecutive nasal consonants, but a more authoritative answer would be great.


texts:
Context - A stranger knocks on your door and asks "Is himself in?"

  himself, a reflexive pronoun, here seems to be used for a nominative pronoun.


texts: Definite or indefinite article when describing a historical person

texts:
According to this question:
Definite and indefinite articles when introducing a person
one can use a definite, indefinite or no article at all when introducing a particular person. Which option is the most natural in case of a historical figure, like

  ruins of a medieval castle built by the Polish king Casimir the Great

or

  ruins of a medieval castle built by a Polish king Casimir the Great

and generally, are both definite and indefinite articles correct here? It will be used as a one-off sentence describing a picture on a stock photography site. Thanks in advance.


texts: Looking for the land cargo equivalent of a "stevedore"

texts: A stevedore is someone who loads/discharges cargo from the docks.   I'm looking for equivalent of this occupation for inland cargo "dischargers/unloaders".


texts: Connotation of "Fool" is perhaps that it is by choice?

texts:
There are words that imply that the person is unintelligent because of genetics or accident but I am looking for a word that describes a person who behaves in an unintelligent fashion because of pride or because they believe they are more competent than they actually are.
But if such a person sat down and evaluated things, they would realize, for example, that maybe they don't have what it takes to get a doctorate and so they would go into a profession for which they are better suited, and therefore, would no longer be a fool.
I realize that the word at one time did simply mean "an unintelligent person" but am I right about "fool" being a good word to describe a person who deludes himself about his own ability and so seems dumb? And if "fool" is not the right word, what is?


texts: I need help in structure of "Have to" within Continuous Tenses

texts:
As I know we can use "Have to" in Simple and Perfect Tenses. Can we use it in Continuous tenses? If I am not wrong, the following sentences are in Present Continuous Tense with "Have to" Structure in it:

She has to be working with me.
She is not have to be working with me.


texts: "Shall" and "will" in legal requirements

texts:
What is the implication of using shall versus will in writing a specification document?

For instance, lets say I have the paragraph, "upon by all parties involved."

  All information between persons involved in this project will be kept confidential and limited distribution of information only to persons agreed upon by all parties involved.

Have I just exposed myself legally to allow a breach of confidentiality because I didn't use shall? What would use of shall/will in this paragraph imply?

Related, but does not fill my need: When should I use "shall" versus "will"?.


texts: Is "start" or "beginning" a better antonym of "end"?

texts:
In many instances, both "start" and "beginning" can be used as an antonym of "end". But which is better? In particular, which is better for units of time like day, week, or month?

I'm thinking of "better" in terms of etymology and accepted usage. For example, just to make something up: if "start" was of Greek origin and "end" of Latin origin, one could argue that they are not the best pairing.

(What I'm really looking for here are the "acronym antonyms" for things like EOD, EOW, EOM for end of day, week, and month. Which is better: SOD, SOW, SOM, or BOD, BOW, BOM?)


texts: When should I use "shall" versus "will"?

texts: Which is the correct use of these two words, and in which context should one be used rather than the other?


texts:
Before[...] you asked if I was _____.

Should there be a comma after 'before' or is the ellipsis okay? Also, should the sentence end with a period or a question mark?


texts: What is the meaning of "make all the lights"?

texts:
What is the meaning of "make all the lights" here?

  A: Do you think I will take more than 10 minutes going to the train station?
  B:Well, if you want to get there in ten, you will have to make all the lights.

I know the meaning of "make light" but not "make all the lights".


texts: Why "would rather" +noun is feasible?Without principal verb

texts:
A sentence from TE,however find no grammatical rules supporting the sentence.
Thanks you in advance.

Many politicians, business people, intellectuals, journalists and even whisky-swilling
generals would far rather a more secular Pakistan.


texts: Specifying geography with cardinal directions

texts:
So here in America we are in "the West".

Would this become "the Western world" or "the western world? "

I'll assume the same applies to "the East" (Asia).


texts: Why do we say "acid rain" and not "acidic rain"?

texts: The term "acid rain" refers to rainwater that are more acidic than regular rainwater. So if acidity is a property of the water, why do we say 'acid' and not 'acidic'?


texts:
In the following example conversation, what will be the best way to ask if the given resources help the person?

Example conversation:

  John: Hey Joe, I need to improve my chess, please help.
  Joe: Hello John, please check these links: http://example1.com and http://example2.com.
  Let me know if [those, they, that] help(s).

Thanks!


texts:
Suppose A, B, and C are friends. One day, A and B were having some conversation. During the conversation A said something about B jokingly. B didn't get the joke, felt offended and left the place angrily. Later on A met C and told him all that had happened. After listening to the whole story C replied: "I think the context is pretty clear. In that context no one would think you were being serious."
Now take this sentence, please:
In that context no one would think you were being serious.
Q: What time does "were" refer to? Does it refer to the time when the event actually took place (ie real past, when A said it to B), or does the sentence have a purely hypothetical meaning: In such a context no one would think you were being serious. (here "were" does not refer to the actual event, rather it refers to a hypothetical time as is referred by "would" in the main clause)


texts: 'I have a certain medical condition, against/for which I take pills'

texts: Which is better between 'against' and 'for' in the above sentence?


texts: "I hesitated to ask." So did I ask or not ask?

texts:
"I hesitated to ask Question X" seems to mean that I hesitated, and then I asked Question X. Often though, the expression seems to imply that I, in fact, never asked Question X.

Here are a few examples (via ludwig.guru). In each case, do you think the question was asked, or not?

"There was a last question I had hesitated to ask: Why, given her history, did she risk remarriage?" - Judith Thurman, The New Yorker

"On previous meetings, I had hesitated to ask the obvious question — Why did you stop writing?" - Alejandro Chacoff, The New Yorker

"Not wanting to appear naïve -- as if I could have appeared otherwise -- I hesitated to ask questions." - The New York Times, Travel


texts: He probably has a very high opinion of himself

texts: What is the best way to describe someone who thinks he is  very knowledgeable on issues like Arts, History and Literature etc.  and behaves like a real scholar, but actually has no adequate studies in his background.


texts: Word for act of observation altering experiment

texts:
There's a phenomenon in scientific research that sometimes the act of performing or observing the experiment affects the outcome. To take a simple example, suppose a researcher wants to know the temperature of some liquid. So he inserts a thermometer. But the thermometer itself has some temperature, and so the act of inserting the thermometer may alter the temperature of the liquid. Or if you were trying to study whether people behave irrationally in some situation, if the subjects know you are observing them, they may be more careful in their behavior because they don't want to embarrass themselves in front of strangers. Etc.

Is there a word or term for this phenomenon?


texts:
"Name12,345" vs "Name12345"
How would you properly write this kind of notation? (If there is any proper way to write it)
I naturally want to include the comma to separate the groups of digits, but I'm not sure if it's the right syntax when used in a name like this.
Perhaps it's better to use "Name-12,345" or something similar?


texts: I'll [verb] it now vs. I'm going to [verb] now

texts:
I want to express the fact that I'm about to do something immediately (e.g : close a window, send an email ).
What's the most appropriate form of the future to use in English ?

"I will close it now".
"I'm closing it now".
"I close it now"


texts: Why "objectionable" and not "objectable"?

texts:
"Objectionable" is strange because unlike most "-able" words it begins with a noun instead of a verb.

I would think it should be "objectable", ie, capable of being objected to.

What is the reason for it being "objectionable"?


texts: Difference in meaning between "on his job" and "in his job"

texts:
What does this sentence mean?

  He is working fifty percent more on his job and fifty percent less in his job. He is 100% happier.


texts: Why is the "J" in San Jacinto pronounced like an English "J" instead of an "H" in Texas?

texts:
Many Spanish words taken into English have a "J" sounding like "H", but San Jacinto follows a different rule:

San Jose
La Jolla
San Juan
Jimenez

Why is San Jacinto not pronounced San Hacinto in English?

The languagehat article mentioned in comments shows that the J in Jacinto is under attack in Texas, but it doesn't explain why Texans don't pronounce Jacinto like every other Spanish J word.


texts: Meaning of "continuing explosion of case law"

texts:
Can somebody please explain to me the meaning of "continuing explosion of case law" in the following paragraph take from EU Intellectual Property Law and Policy by Catherine Seville?

  Digital Single Market and the Innovation Union are currently high-priority strategic objectives for the Commission. Community activity in this field is extensive, and the proposals are increasingly detailed and well publicized. There are significant developments in both high-level policy matters, and practical measures. A continuing explosion of case law affecting intellectual property is decided by a number of EU institutions, within its judicial framework. Their practical impact is considerable.

I have to translate it and I'm having a hard time since I can't fully understand it.


texts: Am I correct that, in terms of conversation, "converse" can in no way be used as a noun?

texts:
The word "Converse" can certainly be used as a noun in other applications of English, but saying anything like that a participant in a conversation "had converse" is surely out of the question?

When you converse, you are having a conversation, or have a conversation (participation implies ownership), and afterward, you have conversed, and have had a conversation. There is  - to me - no conceivable way to have or have had a "converse". Or, e.g. "your converse is heard in conversation". This can only be when you are discussing noun converses.


texts: Verb/subject agreement "Irregularities with nutritional status has/have"

texts:
I am having some trouble with the sentence:

"Irregularities with nutritional status has been recognised as dangerous."

According to https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/subject_verb_agreement.html , this sentence is incorrect, but MS Word's grammar check and my language intuition both say "have" sounds funny.

In my head, I read "Irregularities with nutritional status" as "altered nutritional status" and thus is one thing.

Is there any logic to this?

Edit: I can create more sentences that, to me, would have the same weirdness to it, like:

Multiple suicide ideations has been seen by therapists as a warning sign.

English difficulties has become a problem of this student.

I believe there is a hidden [Having], but I don't know if that plays any role.


texts: Why isn't the ball used in football called "a football ball"?

texts:
We know that you need a ball to play cricket, golf, or tennis, and we refer to the balls used in those sports as "cricket ball", "golf ball" and "tennis ball" respectively: you take the name of the sport and then add the word "ball".

But as "football" is the name of the sport itself, why isn't a football referred to as a "football ball"? The same applies to "netball ball", "basketball ball" and "volleyball ball" of course.


texts:
Imagine I have two sentences. The second one causes or precedes the first one, like:

  It is raining. There are a lot of clouds.

You can say:

  There are a lot of clouds. Hence, it is raining.

I want to know if there is one word to obtain this structure:

  It is raining. ..., there are a lot of clouds.

Is there a word I can put on the ellipsis?
I know I could use a description (for instance "This is because"). Starting the sentence with "Because" is not allowed in my case.


texts:
In following sentence, I'm not sure if I have to use the -ing form or the infinitive.

  I wanted to get rid of X, while at the same time not assuming/ assume
  that...

The -ing form sounds better, but the infinitive doesn't sound too wrong either.
Which one should I prefer?


texts:
Wasting time trying to make progress when in fact you're only reversing your progress. Similar to unproductive.

"This is so... insert word here"


texts: Is an "informed guess" the same as an "educated guess"?

texts: Do these phrases convey the same meaning? Is an informed guess by definition, also, an educated guess?


texts: Using the word "aforementioned" in a sentence

texts: Would I be able to use "aforementioned time" in a sentence?


texts: Accuracy of the term "mother-in-law" in two cases

texts:
Case 1: The wife of a child's father, but not the child's mother (i.e. second >marriage, or bastard child)
Case 2: The mother of one's spouse

Based on what I've found online, "mother-in-law" is used for the second case.
What of the first?


texts: Is “I am getting married with my sister” ambiguous?

texts:
I have seen the following sentences in a book given to us during our training period at The Regional Institute of English, Bangluru

I got married to Priscilla.

I got married with Priscilla

According to the book, the first sentence means "I married
Priscilla" and second sentence means "I and  Priscilla married at the same time. I married a different girl."
It was also mentioned in the book that even if a person says

“I am getting married with my sister”

we need not raise our brows since the speaker and his sister are getting married at the same time.
I would like to know your responses regarding the information given in the book. Do native speakers really understand the sentences in the same way?


texts: Is there a word in the English language that means "can be used as a weapon"?

texts:
Is there a word in the English language that means "that can be used as a weapon"?

As in:

That can be disposed = disposable
That can be thrown = throwable


texts: Use of "I", "we" and the passive voice in a scientific thesis

texts:
Possible Duplicate:
  Style Question: Use of “we” vs. “I” vs. passive voice in a dissertation

When the first person voice is used in scientific writing it is mostly used in the first person plural, as scientific papers almost always have more than one co-author, such as

  We propose a new method to study cell differentiation in nematodes.

Often the "we" also includes the reader

  We may see in Figure 4.2 that...

However, I am writing a thesis which means I am the only author and I even have to testify in writing that the work is my own and I did not receive any help other than from the indicated sources. Therefore it seems I should use "I", but this seems to be very unusual in scientific writing and even discouraged as one may sound pretentious or self-absorbed. However, the alternative is to use the passive voice, which seems to be even more discouraged as it produces hard to read writing and indeed an entire thesis in the passive voice may be indigestible for any reader.

So far, I used the second form of "we" extensively that includes me and the reader. This form is often natural when describing mathematical derivations as the truth is objective and it suggests that I am taking the reader by the hand and walking her through the process. Still, I'm trying not do overdo this form.

However, eventually I will need to refer to methods that I propose and choices that I have made. Should I just follow scientific convention and use "we" although it is factually inaccurate or indeed write in the scorned-upon "I"?


texts:
What is it called to mirror a 2D object / image both vertically and horizontally? Or is this still just referred to as being symmetric?

See the following game map; the engine only needs to generate 1/4 of the map and will then mirror it to make the game fair for all 4 players.

Is there a specific name for this kind of symmetry which is along more then a single axis?

The map is [symmetric] meaning that it is equal for all 4 players.


texts: Is it "louden your voice" or "make your voice louder"?

texts:
Which of these are the correct way of saying it:

"louden your voice"
or
"make your voice louder"?

Or are both acceptable? Thanks :)


texts: Is there a term for the feeling that an object does not weigh enough?

texts:
When I handle small objects, if they don't weigh as much as my brain thinks they should I sometimes get the impression that they are low quality and perhaps cheap.

I believe a term that might be used when they have sufficient weight is 'gravitas'.  Is there a similar term for the opposite,  when something lacks sufficient substance, weight or gravitas?

The latin root of 'Gravitas' is 'gravis' meaning heavy, serious, troublesome, hard or grave.  "Gravitas" conveys an impression of seriousness, weight or importance.  The word I am looking for would similarly convey an impression of a lack of substance, lack of heft, insignificance, triviality, paltriness or unimportance.


texts: "Under/straight from the horse's mouth" — etymology?

texts:
I'm reading Kim Philby's autobiography, My silent war, where in the early pages he describes an acquaintance as being under the horse's mouth, the proverbial horse being some high-ranking official.

Being situated under the horse's mouth is silly because horses, as far as we know, don't talk in a natural language. It would also be somewhat careless as horses are known to bite unprovoked on occasion. But the phrase quickly conjures up the image of a squire or assistant, loyally standing by his mounted master, near the horse's head, quite close to its mouth. In this light the expression makes sense, but I'd like to verify that, hence my question here.

To kill two birds with one stone I'd also like to ask about the etymology of the more canonical expression, straight from the horse's mouth. I'd expect the two to be somewhat related, but with issues of natural language one can never be certain.


texts: What idioms can describe a tough or difficult thing (such as a test)?

texts:
An easy test (or similar undertaking) might be described as

  'a piece of cake'

Are there any idioms to describe a test (etc.) that is difficult?


texts: Can "statistically significant" be written as "significant"?

texts:
I am writing a paper for submission to a scientific journal. The paper calculates statistical significance for many different things. In the Results section, I find myself writing "X was statistically significant. In case B, there was no statistically significant change in Y." And so on.

I feel I am using the term "statistically significant" too frequently. Is it acceptable to simply write "significant" the third, fourth, etc. time I need to use that phrase?


texts: What is the correct use of the negation of "There to be"?

texts:
"There is no man outside the house"
"There is not a man outside the house"

"There was no solution to the problem"
"There was not a solution to the problem"

Can I use both of them? Are the sentences equivalent? Which one is more idiomatic?


texts:
Is it a native way to say "I misremembered the time for the appointment"?

Is therer any alternative way to express this meaning?

Thank you!


texts: What does this sentence convey : "If applicant holds diploma or less, attaching high school certificate is required" Does it say: wether applicant holds diploma or lesser education proving document high school certificate is required?


texts:
One apology   --> many apologies.

One good deed --> many good deeds.

One sorry     --> many _  ?


texts: How to indicate that a function is exponential?

texts:
This may be a very specific question and honestly I am still unsure whether I should be asking this here or in the Math Exchange. Maybe it is something very specific to mathematics, I don't know.
So the question is the following: suppose I have a function
f(x,n) = x^n  (meaning, x to the power of n, both n and x are variables)
I would like to write a sentence like this: "Function f is exponential [OPTION] n".
Now, [OPTION] could be:

with respect to
on
in

Or maybe some other experission/preposition. I guess (1) is the safest option (?) but I have been writing (2) for some time now until a colleague called my attention to it and made me realize I have no idea what is the correct manner of writing the sentence.
Thus, what would be the correct way of writing the sentence?


texts: Does “upshot” denote something positive, negative, or neutral?

texts:
I’m a non-native speaker of English, and I’ve always felt that “upshot” was used to denote positive results. But I’ve come across a few cases recently where negative or neutral outcomes were enumerated after the use of “upshot”. For example,  “The upshot was that everyone got an incurable disease.”

Is “upshot” intended for positive outcomes only? Or mostly? If yes, what word is used for negative outcomes?


texts:
While proofreading this sentence:

They awaited their deliverance with unwavering hope, because they knew that the public opinion was in their favour.

I replaced because they knew with knowing:

They awaited their deliverance with unwavering hope, knowing that the public opinion was in their favour.

Does this use of the gerund knowing as meaning because they knew have a name? Can I call it causal?


texts: What do you call a person who uses a shield?

texts:
What do you call a person who is using a shield? In the same manner as "swordsman" or "axeman", not as in "shielded".

I've found

  Shieldbearer

but that's more of a title for someone carrying someone else's shield.

  Shield User

is something else I've found, but it sounds generic as anything.


texts: Is there a preferred order for niece and nephew?

texts:
Is "niece and nephew" preferred over "nephew and niece", or vice versa?

I tried using Google NGrams, but it gave inconclusive results: one was more common before 1980, then the other form became more common.


texts:
Should you put a period after one-word "sentences?" For example, my boss frequently emails me this way:

Name.
Content content content.
Thanks.

It feels very angry, rude, and standoffish to me and I feel a bit as though it's backed with a dismissive/sarcastic undertone. As if she's not TRULY thankful for my help but rather following some societal requirement for her to at least appear to be grateful.
In other words, I really don't like it. Thoughts?


texts: What does "has been loathe to fully distance itself from" mean?

texts:
The following sentence I read from Huff Post: "Why Egypt Matters: The Implications Of The Protests" gets me quite confused. I've made the key problem boldface. Hope someone can explain to me the position of the Obama administration and what the boldface part means.

  The Obama administration -- from Joe Biden, who refused to call Mubarak
  a dictator, to Obama himself, who emphasized Egypt's role as an ally
  -- has been loathe to fully distance itself from Mubarak, and finds itself in a difficult position, reports theAtlantic.

The original link of the article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/29/why-egypt-matters_n_815863.html#s232358&title=Strong_US_Ally


texts: Is this an example of blackmail or is it called something else?

texts: If someone says "You will only get X, once you're done being my slave" is this blackmail or it is called something else? From my understanding blackmail involves threats and I don't see a clear threat in that statement.


texts: What do you call the person in a group who everyone agrees with? Opposite of iconoclast, maybe?

texts:
What do you call the person in a group whose opinion everyone agrees with?

Here's the background: we have a group of people whose job is to render opinions. At the end of the session we see which person disagreed with others most often ("the iconoclast"), and the person who agreed with others most often ("the what?")

We do not consider it worse to be in agreement with more people. That's why we don't like opposites of iconoclast like "conformist" or "yes-man."

"Trendsetter" is nice, but since opinions are offered separately and secretly, it's not true that other people follow this person's opinion -- they just happen to agree.


texts: ... for the reaction to, and prevention of, waste, loss and theft. (Commas correct?)

texts:
Is the comma correct after "to" and after "of" as shown below? Should a serial comma be inserted after "loss"? I cannot rephrase.

Herb is responsible for the reaction to, and prevention of, waste, loss and theft.

Thank you.


texts:
You have some data and some code that operates on it.  The order in which you process each data element doesn't matter, and hence the task is parallelizable.

The order of computation on each element doesn't matter, or the computation is ____ (not parallelizable!)


texts:
"Looking back through history during the times of the Crusades and the
Inquisition, when violence has been committed in the name of Jesus, it has been
a result of disobeying Jesus’ central command to “love your enemies”
Could you please explain the use of perfect here? I would use past simple with historical events


texts:
I want to know more about this grammar.

-And now, just a few days before the presidential election, one of the most
frequently appearing election terms is the "underdog effect."

I think this sentence can be changed to
"one of the most election terms that appeared frequently" (I am not sure but I tried)

so, I think NOUN THAT VERB ADVERB ---> CHANGE ---> ADVERB VERB+ING NOUN

IS it correct?

If so, could you give me some examples of this?


texts: Is “break for” something an idiom or a set of words? What does it mean?

texts:
In the New York Times’ (October 11) article titled, “Debating points, Vice Presidential Edition” dealing with Vice Presidential debates held on October 11, there was the following sentence:

  “How are the undecided voters breaking after the first debate? Does
  the trend toward Obama, which began in mid-July, continue? It does.
  The still undecided voters continue to break for Obama by more than 2
  to 1. Whether the wave that broke for Romney in most national
  polling after the debate will come later to our cohort, there is of
  course no way to know.”

I thought “break for” is just a casual idiom, and guessed it means to “go for / support” from the context of the above sentence.
However, when I checked dictionaries to make sure of it, I was unable to find “break for” as an idiom in any of Cambridge, Oxford, and Merrimu-Webster dictionary.

Oxford registers “break away (down, forth, in, off, out trough, up, into),” but for “break for.”

Cambridge registers only “break away (off, up)” as idioms.

Merriam-Webster registers only break (down, in, off) as idioms.

Google NGram registers “break for,” whose usage is consistently upward since 1840.

I was barely able to find the following definitions of “break for something” in idioms.thefreedictionary.com/:

to stop working for something else, such as lunch, coffee, etc.
to run suddenly toward something; to increase dramatically one's speed while running.

But neither of the above definitions seems to be applicable to “the wave that broke for Romney in national polling”

Does “break for” in “the wave that broke for Romney” mean “go for / support” Romney, or otherwise?
Isn’t “break for” an established idiom, though no major dictionaries carry the word?


texts: What's the meaning of the sentence "or so he would have us believe"?

texts:
He wrote: 'Pytheas tells us that Thule is one day's sail from the congealed sea... and this Pytheas saw with his own eyes - or so he would have us believe.

Mainly the mood or the conjunction bewildered me.


texts: "Nice" as a response to a negative story

texts:
We all know that "Nice" means "pleasant" but when a friend is telling a story about something negative happening often the response is "Nice."

Example: Person 1: So this woman got the wrong coffee from the barista and just TOTALLY went off the rails and started screaming at the employees and customers in the coffee shop.

Person 2: Nice. (shakes head in disapproval)

How can that response be defined properly and what is the appropriate label for the type of response that it is? Facetious? Sarcastic? Sardonic? What?


texts:
My question is as to the usage of the word such in the following passage .

  The order of the day was, quite simply, self- improvement, national
  improvement, and attainable perfection; the great successes of Europe
  during these years seemed to prove that such was possible.

I feel like the word such means " something like that" in the context but I could not find the structure of  this usage.As far as I know the word such is followed by a noun or adjective or both.

Could you please give me some references as to this usage of the word such.


texts: Alternative to 'at first' in a more formal way

texts:
I am trying to convey the following:

  At first, I aim to perform x.

The 'at first' term should denote that the action that follows will be the first one executed.

I am looking for an alternative, more formal phrasing. I was suggested to use 'first and foremost', but that expression does not relate to time, but importance. In my opinion, 'At first' relates to 90% time order and 10% importance order. I was thinking of 'in first order' or 'in first instance' but these are just calques from my native language.


texts: Is my assumption about sentence structure correct?

texts:
SEO is one of the keys to unlock traffic for your ecommerce store.

Background: This is from a piece I am editing. I think the structure is wrong and the proper form should be:

SEO is one of the keys of unlocking traffic for your ecommerce store.


texts: How do you describe an action that is of increasing importance on a 'critical path'?

texts:
A critical path is a project management concept in which a series of dependencies is linked together to form a complete project.

For example, a whole project is complete when E has been done, but E depends on C and D, of which C depends on B, which depends on A. (For simplicity, I'm ignoring the expected time for each dependency.) Something like this:

A --> B --> C --> E
            D -->

Now, as individual dependencies (for example A) get accomplished, the other dependencies increase in importance for project completion.

One can speak of the current dependencies/blockers as the 'constraints'. In the example above, once A is complete, B is the constraining dependency, but what can one say of D? It's clearly more pressing than it was (and is independent of A, B and C), but is not yet the most critical constraint.

How does one describe the change in importance of such later dependencies on the critical path?

Can one say that they are 'rising up the critical path'?
Can one say that they are 'becoming a constraint'?


texts:
I am calligraphing holiday ornaments.  I have been given a list of names.  Which is correct when a name ends in an es, "The Jones's, or The Joneses, or The Jones'?"

Also, when it does not end in an es, is it "The Smith's, The Smithes, or The Smiths', or The Smiths ?"


texts:
I am reading "The Reader Over Your Shoulder" by Robert Graves (author of I, Claudius), which is a clarity\grace guide for written English. He has a section about punctuation, which gives examples of mistakes found in the wild. This is one of them:

"The fire of Prometheus is as a rush-light compared to the volcano of steam..."

The examination noting the punctuation error (one of many errors in this single sentence): "Without a comma at 'rush-light' it is the rush-light, not the fire of Prometheus, which is being compared to the volcano."

It's an interesting point, but I cannot find a further break down of this example (and how to use it) in my other grammar resources.

It is similar to how he pointed out the difference between these two sentences: "I did not go to the party, because I was not wanted" and "I did not go to the party because I was not wanted." The first one meaning what you think and the second meaning "I went to the party but the reason I went wasn't merely for the reason that I was not wanted (ie, I didn't go out of spite)." I had never heard of that usage either, though explanations of it were easier to find online than the rush-light example.


texts:
I'm writing a formal paper and have a section about the process of adapting a model to a new situation.

Should I title the section model adaption or model adaptation?

I'm rather confused by the difference between the two words. I am inclined to use adaption but I don't know why.


texts:
Sorry for the title, it is not very evident and intuitive but I really do not how to tell it better...

Well, you know, several times, or better, many times, we use this form:

If I want to say:

  "development of special weapons was
  the first point in Hitler's
  program..."

I will say this (a better form):

  "special weapon development was..."

OK...

is it

  "special weapon development"

or

  "special weapons development" (note
  the plural...)

what's the grammar rule in order to understand how to use this very used form?


texts: When is it acceptable to say a company is headquartered

texts:
Quite often, I read a company is headquartered somewhere. When is this acceptable? To my ear, headquartering sound distinctly wrong, but http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/headquarter lists it as

transitive verb:  to place in headquarters
intransitive verb:  to make one's headquarters

I'm not sure what "to make one's headquarters" means here.


texts: Do all “epicene” pronouns mean the same thing as one another?

texts:
There have been many proposed epicene or gender-neutral
pronouns
that have been proposed over the years and have received some level
of use.  My question is: do all of them mean the same thing?
Are they synonyms for each other? Is it even possible for
pronouns to have synonyms?
That is, if a person has indicated that others should refer
to them with gender-neutral pronouns, is the choice of which
pronoun to use (e.g.  singular they, Spivak pronouns, thon,
etc.) a question of personal preference, style (e.g.  perhaps
a specific magazine decides to standardize on using thon
for all persons not identifying as “he” or “she”), or pragmatics,
or is there a deeper issue of meaning?
For example, is there a pronoun that refers only to transmen,
and where use of the pronoun to refer to people who are not
transmen (e.g. women or cismen) is to some extent discouraged
or considered incorrect?

Please note
This question is obviously related to the recent controversy
on Stack Exchange, but is intended to be an independent question
about the English language and not an attempt to bring the
controversy here. To be clear, I’m not asking for opinions on the current
controversy. I’m asking if there has been any indication (e.g.
through research, or even activism) to indicate that these
pronouns have distinct meanings as opposed to simply being
preferred or designated by different communities, or
recommended based on social, political, or regulatory
reasons.


texts: "Make curtain" --Is this a well known usage of this expression?

texts:
"We were busy [working in the kitchen] for pretheater, a mad rush to
get them in and get them out in time to make curtain."

This quotes is from Anthony Bourdain's book describing that they are busy working for people going to theaters before the show.
My question is: Is "make curtain" a well known, well used expression to say make the show in time, or this is quite casual saying by Anthony? When I googled this expression, I could not find anything.
Thanks.


texts: Meaning of "this view [is] similar to that which informs the rendering [...], and addresses the same set of concerns that motivated the former"

texts:
From the Wikipedia entry on Swing (Java):

  Conceptually, this view of the layout management is quite similar to
  that which informs the rendering of HTML content in browsers, and
  addresses the same set of concerns that motivated the former.

There are a few points I can't understand:

What does "informs" mean here?
I don't understand "address the same set of concerns that motivated
the former."


texts: Is the given usage of Outrage is correct?

texts:
Outrage in my mind, Smile on my face. This is Life.

Can outrage be used the way I used above?


texts: What is the difference between 'what a contrast' and 'such a contrast'?

texts:
I was wondering what the difference between 'such a contrast' and 'what a contrast' is. Where do I use them? Do they have different meanings?

For example:
I touched the cold ice and warm water. [What/Such] a contrast!

Which do I use?


texts:
"Every student can learn, just not on the same day or the same way." - George Evans

or is it:

  "Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or the same way." - George Evans


texts:
I saw a swimming dog.
I saw a dog swimming.

What is the difference between the two sentences in meaning.
And is there any reason why we should change the order of the word( dog, swimming)?


texts:
Where does the word what come from?

Why do we say wot when it's spelt the way it is?


texts: Difference in terms of location between "been to" and "been in" at the time of speaking(now) in sentences using present perfect

texts:
I would like to ask a question about the proper use of "been to" and "been in" in sentences using present perfect. Currently I'm reading English Grammar in Use (2nd Edition Cambridge Press — Intermediate level). At page 14 here is what we can read:

Note the difference between gone (to) and been (to):

Jim is away on holiday. He has gone to Spain. ( = he is there now or on his way there)
Jane is back home from holiday now. She has been to Italy. (= she has now come back from Italy)

What I understand from the above example is that when we use gone to a location the person is still in that location or is heading there at the time of speaking.
On the contrary when we use been to a location the person is no more at that location at the time of speaking (now)
Then, at the next chapter there was the following exercise:

Read the situations and write sentences as shown in the example:

Jack is driving a car but he's very nervous and not sure what to do.
You ask: Have you driven a car before?
He says: No this is the first time I've driven a car.

Maria is in London. She has just arrived and it's very new for her.
You ask:  ..................................................
She says: ..................................................

Here is how I answered the 2nd Exercise.

You ask: Have you been in London before?
She says: No this is the first time I've been in London

The reason of my choice was the following:
gone to doesn't seem to be appropriate as it indicates just some movement/motion, a trip to London rather than a long/short stay in London.
Also been to cannot work because if we use it that would mean that Maria is no more in London now and she has come back. I arrive at this conclusion based on the example in the grammar book that I provided above (Jane has come back from Italy)
Therefore I thought using been in London would be the best choice.
However, when I checked the answer at the end of the book, the suggested solution was:

Maria is in London. She has just arrived and it's very new for her.
You ask:  Have you been to London before?
She says: No, this is the first time I've been to London

I really don't understand the choice of been to here. It has been specified explicitly at the beginning of the exercise: "Maria is in London". So if at the moment of speaking she is in London how it is possible to use been to. Wouldn't been in be more appropriate in this context?
Could you kindly make some clarification on this?


texts: Pronunciation of words that end with two syllabic R's

texts:
There are a few words in English that end with two adjacent syllabic R's (in theory). For example, let's take the word deliverer. As a non-native speaker, I find it very hard to pronounce those two syllabic R's one after the other. So far, these variants have come to my mind:

[dɪˈlɪ.vr̩.r̩]
[dɪˈlɪ.vr̩.ər]
[dɪˈlɪ.vər.r̩]
[dɪˈlɪ.və.rər]

So, how do native speakers of American English normally pronounce such words?


texts:
What do we mean by the word "epitome"?

Here is the sentence

"The epitome of the entire drama is Artificial intelligence.."

The above sentence is from the book
AI - the very idea
By Sir John Haugeland

Also, examples in which the given word is used....


texts:
In Italian  the term "tartaruga"  (turtle) is used also to refer to well defined abdominal muscles on the notion that they look like a turtle shell:

Is there a slang/colloquial term or short phrase to refer to "defined addominal muscles" in AmE or BrE?


texts: Proper title capitalization of parenthesis

texts:
How should Capitalizing for example "Exit Music (for a Film)"? Usually in a title the parenthetical phrase serves as subtitle, but in this case it is evidently a continuation, accordingly "for" should be capitalized or not?

Thanks.


texts: In which part of the world do people use sentences like "I be doing this" (missing out the 'will' after the 'I')? Sounds like some of the 'street-ghetto' to me. What is it exactly?


texts: When I use a ruler and a pen, is it a line or a rule that I draw? What are the dimensions of the line/rule, length and width, or length and thickness?


texts:
Would you please explain to me what does “gopher” mean as a job? The dictionary says it means someone who run errands but I cannot understand it.

Thanks in advance.


texts: What is the actual origin of the prefix 'bi-'?

texts: How can anybody be sure the prefix 'bi-' (and its presumed source in Latin 'bis'= twice) did not originally come from Basque, in which the word for '2' is actually 'bi'?


texts:
What is the difference between prevention and avoidance?

Can you give generic examples?
The reason for my question is, that I want to know the difference between preventing and avoiding a threat against a (technical) system.


texts: How does adverb placement affect the meaning of a sentence?

texts:
I want to correct the following sentence so that it is grammatically correct and still conveys the original meaning:

  Many alcoholics attempt to conceal their problem from their fellow workers, but invariably failing to keep their secret.

The bold-faced part of this sentence is where the error occurs.

It would be great if you guys could help me decide between these two choices.:

but they invariably fail to keep their secret.
but fail, invariably, to keep their secret.

1 is good but lacks parallelism and is not as succinct (short and clear) as 2.

But the problem with 2 is its awkward adverb placement that might affect the original meaning.


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For context: the participant who is on the 1st place now has earned 10 points, and the participant on the 2nd place has earned 5 points. How can I say that 5 points separate the second place from the first?
Like in the sentence: "5 points separate/keep you from the 1st place."


texts: What do you call a person who doesn't keep his word?

texts: What do you call a person who doesn't/can't usually keep his/her word ?


texts: Do we use a preposition after the verb "signal"?

texts:
"He signaled me to drive away."
OR
"He signaled to me to drive away."


texts: If I had done some pottery, I would have [word] things

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If I went to a pottery course and made a clay bowl, what have I done?

For example, I want to say "I pottered a bowl", but that doesn't sound right. Is there a word that could replace 'pottered'?

According to dictionary.com, an example of the word 'pottered' is:

  He pottered back to the fireplace, and rubbed his shoulders reflectively against the mantelpiece.

So I'm quite sure that it's not the word I'm looking for. I have also looked through wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_pottery_terms, but still haven't found the word I want.


texts: What's a word for "a setting for adventure/an epic"?

texts: It's for an RPG worldbuilding blog I'd like to make.