texts: Meaning of "Where will wants not, a way opens"

texts:
I have been reading "The Lord of the Rings" and came across this phrase in the "The Return of the King".

  “Where will wants not, a way opens, so we say,” he whispered. “and so I have found myself.” Merry looked up and saw that it was the young Rider whom he had noticed in the morning. “You wish to go whither the Lord of the Mark goes: I see it in your face.” (p. 787, ch. The Muster of Rohan)

Here Eowyn disguised as a man (for she is not supposed to go to the war herself) is speaking to Merry (who is also not supposed to go). However both wish to go and Eowyn offers to take Merry with her hiding him under her cloak.

What does this phrase mean? To me, it appears that this is similar to the common phrase

  Where there is a will, there is a way.

And it also fits the context. But what is the "not" doing in the phrase then? Can someone please explain this phrase. Did I misunderstand the meaning?


texts: why do we say scorching hot while scorching already means very hot?

texts: Scorching means extremely hot. So why do we say scorching hot? Isn't it redundant to bring hot after scorching?


texts: "All I had, and all I have now, (are vs. were) clues."

texts: In the sentence, "All I had, and all I have now, were clues", should the verb be "were" or "are", or should the sentence be rephrased so that I don't have to choose between matching the verb to the past tense indicated by the first part of the sentence or the present tense indicated by the part between the commas?


texts:
I am trying to answer this question asked in acaemia.SE. In my answer, I have 3 subtitles as follows. Which of the two {alternatives} are grammatically correct?

Anxieties of {the Future} or {Future}.
Anxieties of {the Past} or
{Past}.
Anxieties of {the Present} or {Present}.


texts: Use of Thereof? "... feels like home, and a departure thereof"

texts: I would really like to use a sentence like this in reference to a college. Not sure if the usage of "thereof" is correct (it doesn't sound like it) or if there is a better way to express this sentiment. Thanks


texts: Capitalization of president in very specific sentence structure

texts:
I know the general rules about when to capitalize "president" but our opinion is divided on this example. It was a headline along these lines.

Trump meets new Kazakh President Nazarbayev in Washington

Is it not more correct to write:

Trump meets new Kazakh president Nazarbayev in Washington.

The first seems to imply that he is meeting the new President Nazarbayev rather than the old President Nazarbayev, or he is meeting a new Kazakh citizen (called President Nazarbayev)

Thank you!


texts: Does "expecting" mean "pregnant" exactly?

texts:
The term expecting is often used as if it means "pregnant", as shown by Merriam-Webster (for the verb expect)

  3 : to be pregnant : await the birth of one's child —used in progressive tenses
  she's expecting next month

and Oxford Dictionaries says

  informal Be pregnant.
  ‘his wife was expecting again’

but logically you can only be expecting if you are knowingly pregnant and anticipating a successful conclusion.

There seem to be two issues here. One is how we should use terms that are metaphorical in origins in particular contexts where the original meaning seems to be the opposite of the derived meaning.

The other is whether we should go by the dictionary when we suspect the dictionary writers were not specific enough in their definition.

Note that this question was motivated by a news report  that said that surgeons "discovered that [Ebony, who did not previously know she was pregnant] was expecting a baby [while she was in a coma], and I thought, "How could she be expecting a baby or anything else whilst in a coma?"


texts: Can someone explain this quote from 'The Tempest'?

texts:
I was reading a Russian translation of Shakespeare's The Tempest, when the queer word choice by the translator made me open the original work to see what the author actually wrote. And here it is:

  I have not scaped drowning to be afeard now of your four legs; for it hath been said, As proper a man as ever went on four legs cannot make him give ground; and it shall be said so again while Stephano breathes at's nostrils.

I understand it like this, Shakespeare forgive me:
"even the most proper man (among those on four legs) can not make him give ground".

Am I wrong? Also, this phrase seems pretty sarcastic/ironic to me ; is that so?


texts: How would I punctuate Sunday, November 19 6:30 to 7:30 PM when giving the date and start/end time of an event?


texts: Why are names that begin with "Mc" first in order over names that begin with "Ma"?

texts:
Why is it that in lists of people’s names, surnames beginning with Mc
are listed before surnames beginning with Ma?

For example, if a book had a bibliography listing its references, we would
see that McGann, Anthony listed first and Maddox, Graham second, like this:

  References

  McGann, Anthony ...
  Maddox, Graham ...

Why doesn’t the ‹a› in McGann come before the ‹d›
in Maddox here? Does capitalization matter?

Even when you search Wikipedia, their pop-up is ordered strangely when you start typing in the search box and get as far as “ian mac”:

That order is not what I would expect. Why do they do that? Also, how come they showed me Ian McKellan and Ian McShane and such when those don’t start with the same letters as those I searched for when I typed “ian mac”?

Does this happen with other
names more or less like those as well, making names like these appear
in a surprising order as well?

  May, Julian
  Mbombela, Frederica
  McBride, Martina
  Mabrey, Sunny
  Macaluso, Luigi
  Magellan, Ferdinand
  MacGill, James
  Mack, Sennett
  McGill, Jason
  McKinley, William
  Mackerel, Jack
  Machado, Antonio
  Machiavelli, Niccolò
  Ma, Yo-Yo


texts: Can we use "you" to refer to a general person?

texts:
I asked a friend of mine "Does he use workout machines that tone your ass?"

I know it's more clear if I had said "Does he use workout machines that tone his ass?", but is the first question still correct and convey the same meaning as the latter?


texts: Does 'doolally' have an alternate AmE meaning to the BrE?

texts:
The meaning of 'doolally' and 'doolally tap' originating from the Indian town of Deolali ('tap' being a reference to tapa, the Sanskrit word for fever) have been well documented on EL&U.
But a similar question on World Wide Words prompted the following :

Rather curiously, some American subscribers have mentioned that doolally is also known to them as a term for something whose name one couldn’t for the moment remember. It has the same pattern as other US words with the same meaning, like dohickey, doojigger and doodad.
Has doolally been imported or is it an independent local variation on one of these other words? I don’t know.

Does 'doolally' have an alternative meaning in AmE ?

[EDIT NOTE : No, this is not a duplicate. I have specifically asked about the AmE meaning as quoted in the link to World Wide Words.]


texts: "Twice in" ? can preposition be used after twice?

texts:
Which is the correct sentence:

He goes to museum twice a week
He goes to museum twice in a week


texts:
Please help resolve a disputed text message and its meaning.

The question is whether the sender of the message stated that he had left the garage door open when leaving the house.

  I ve left the house and notice she's gone out and left the garage door open.

The possible answers would be either

Yes,
No,
or ambiguous.

(big dispute between myself and a friend).


texts: Capitalization of plural noun given proper adjective and common adjective

texts:
I've recently come across a dilemma of whether to capitalize a plural noun, given that it's described by a proper adjective (like a place) and a common adjective (a descriptive adjective).

Example-

  ...big and Saharan deserts

Or

  ...big and Saharan Deserts

In both of these cases, we're talking about multiple deserts, and one is big, and the other Saharan. Does desert get capitalized? Would the order of the adjectives matter?

I know it's not a great example (I'm not talking specifically about the Saharan Desert, but any proper adjective would do), but can anyone clarify? I've never learned about this specific topic (with one proper and one descriptive adjective). Also, if a question like this exists, please kindly direct me to it! Thanks!


texts: What are phrases without explicit meanings called?

texts:
Do we have a name for those phrases without explicit meanings? At first look, they can't make much sense.

For instance,
'put up with',
'put me through',
'get to (something)',
etc.


texts:
Now and then I come across the constructions indicated in the heading. I'm a bit puzzled regarding their usage as a complement:

  I don't want there to be any more trouble. I'd like there to be more
  time to think. What's the chance of there being an election this year?
  What is the current thinking about there being more than one Universe?

Are they entirely interchangeable or is there some difference in the meaning? Apparently, it ought to be because sometimes it seems that one fits the context better than the other. For example:

  So your experiences, which represent there to be an external world of
  physical objects (including your body), give rise to systematically
  mistaken beliefs about your world (such as that you are now sitting at
  a computer).

If I were the one who wrote this sentence, I would definitely have used there being, but the real author chose the other variant. So, what is the difference (if any)?


texts:
I have a quote that has a misplaced "to":

... they will put you to back to sleep ...

It seems like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I can either:

Just delete the mistaken "to" (then I would be deliberately misquoting them)
Put [sic] next to it (which looks unbelievably pedantic, especially since they  write better than I do)

Is there a way around this?


texts:
Operationally, collective behavior was detected and quantified using correlations, or, more recently, by mutual information estimated either locally or globally.

Here should it be "or more recently" in place of "or, more recently"?


texts:
Passage from the novella "Stories of Your Life" (filmed as "Arrival")

  I remember a conversation we'll have when you're in your junior year of high school. It'll be Sunday morning, and I'll be scrambling some eggs ...

In the New York Review of Books, the accompanying text asks, "What tense is this?" It's a rhetorical question, for the answer is no tense (that is, if you listed all the tenses in English you wouldn't find one that reflects the sense of this passage. You couldn't capture the time sense of this passage in one clause.) . But what's going on is a coupling of the present tense with the future. It's a logically impossible tense in English, but does it exist in another language?


texts: The usage of en dash between two complete dates

texts:
Is it necessary to put a space before and after the symbol en dash (–) put between two complete dates?

Example:

  January 1, 2013 – January 1, 2014


texts: Are there any tools for finding words that commonly modify other words?

texts: For example, the most common modifiers for the word "car" might be "used", "stolen" and "rented". I think this could be a very useful tool when you are writing and you are looking for a particular word, but you can't remember what it is. A web tool would be ideal, but that's not necessary


texts: What does the President being “on the line with China” mean?

texts:
In his bus tour kick-off speech in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney said:

Everywhere I go, I meet people who represent the best of America. They are hopeful, hard-working, determined and proud. But they are also worried and anxious. They are tired of being tired.
…
When Americans rose up and demanded, “Stop borrowing money and sticking our kids with the bill,” the President wasn’t listening. He was on the line with China, taking out another loan.

I wonder what the President being “on the line with China” means.
Was he actually talking with Chinese leadership on other issues which have nothing to do with Americans’ interest? It's unbelievable. I don’t get an idea of the connection among the three copy elements: “Stop borrowing money and sticking our kids with the bill,” “Obama was on the line with China” and “taking out another loan.” Wasn’t there a jump of logic, or word missing from his line?


texts: Shouldn't "which" be replaced with "that" in this sample? Please elborate

texts:
Please see page 3, question 1, letter D for the sample question. (Scroll down for link)

The diction in regards to this is why I'm confused. Isn't the sentence before the word "which" directive? Shouldn't "which" be replaced with "that"?

Given that these sample questions are from CollegeBoard.org, which is a very credible organization, makes me wonder.

The complete link with the aforementioned sample question is here: https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/clep/CompModular_fact_sheet.pdf


texts: Is "Give the gift of safe travel" correct?

texts:
Give the Gift of SAFE TRAVEL

I am putting together a Christmas card and there is some debate as to whether this is grammatically correct. My thoughts are, you don't say give the gift of travels so you wouldn't say give the gift of safe travels.


texts: How do I say that I am interested in a lot of things without coming off either as superficial or arrogant

texts: For example: I like Math but also love History and am pretty good at sports. This is for my Statement of Purpose.


texts:
On the internet, when talking about memes, a "dank meme" means old and out-played. According to Wiktionary, "dank" means "to moisten, dampen; used of mist, dew etc.". This doesn't sound like the definition of "dank" on the context of memes at all.

I would like to know why the word "dank" was chosen.


texts: Specific Term for prejudice/prejudiced behaviour (racial, gender, etc...) that justifies itself by a prior history of prejudice?

texts:
If someone made the following, certainly problematic, statements:
"There is a higher risk (member of oppressed minority) will underperform at a job or task, since it is more likely they are traumatized or disenfranchised by prejudice and/or poor treatment they have suffered in the past."
"(Member of oppressed minority) cannot be trusted, since there is an above average likelihood they will harbor mistrust or resentment due to being treated poorly before."
Is there a specific term for this kind of thinking/prejudiced behaviour - which can easily lead to a factually racist or other anti-minority outcome, WITHOUT a need for the person making that kind of judgement to be themselves categorically racist or against the minority in question?


texts: Non-residential vs non–residential (short or long hyphen)

texts:
Should there be a short or long hyphen separating the two words?

Non-residential vs non–residential


texts: What is the marked-up text/document resulted from proofreading called?

texts:
When a manuscript is proofread, reviewed, revised or corrected, are there any single-word noun to refer to it? (I'm looking for a real noun not edited, unedited etc.)

update
example: "On this table you place the drafts and on that table you can pick up the ...".

Please also mention if you know other words for drafts. I mean a document or some text that may contain errors of any kind (grammar, style, ...)


texts: Why does the dictionary give the pronunciation of the word "of" as '\əv' with a 'v' sound when in some cases it's pronounced with 'f' sound?

texts:
"of" seems to be pronounced with the f sound asˈäf in phrases like "of course". But 'of' is pronounced as \əv in a lot of other cases.

Yet, Merriam Websters gives the one with 'v' sound as the only pronunciation.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/of

Why is that? Why does the dictionary give the one with 'v' sound as the only pronunciation?

In what cases 'of' is pronounced with f versus pronounced with v sound?


texts: Do "hull" and "full" rhyme?— rules for "short U" sounds before L

texts:
I grew up speaking a variety of American English that merges the "short U" sounds before L. The "short U" sounds are the vowels in the words STRUT and FOOT. For me, before an L sound, all words have the vowel from FOOT—that is, for me bull, full, and pull rhyme with dull, gull, and null.

According to Wikipedia, The Atlas of North American English mentions this as one of four mergers before /l/ that may be under way in some accents of North American English, and which require more study. So this merger is known to exist, but it is not well understood the range and extent of the merger.

Regardless, I'd like to have a full grasp of standard American English, so I have set to the task of memorizing which -UL- words have the STRUT vowel (which I always pronounced with the FOOT vowel). Are there a set of rules I can use to predict if a "short U followed by L" word will have the STRUT vowel?


texts: Why does a rooster crow, but a crow caws?

texts: Shouldn't a crow do crow, but why does it a rooster instead? The similar issue is in German language.


texts: Is there a difference between the meaning of the words "route" and "path" or can these words be used interchangeably?


texts: Omnipresent is to Ubiquitous as Omnipotent is to _____?

texts: "Omnipresent" means everywhere at once, while "ubiquitous" means seeming to be everywhere at once. My question is whether "omnipotent" (all-powerful) has a similar 'seeming to be all-powerful' counterpart.


texts: What is the Grammatical mistakes in "The pity is that no sooner he had left the place than the fire broke out"?

texts: What is/are the Grammatical mistakes in "The pity is that no sooner he had left the place than the fire broke out" ?


texts: Word for a task which is flawed or doomed to failure but which you have to do anyway?

texts:
I'm looking for a word which describes a task which I think is poorly designed and will lead to either mediocre results or failure, but which I have to do anyway, especially in a work setting.

The word "Dilbertian" comes to mind, however this word is obviously made up and is only meaningful to someone who is familiar with the Dilbert comic strip, so I'm looking for something which captures both the futility and compulsory nature of the task in a way which is meaningful to a broader audience.


texts: What is the exact word for the person who calls the speakers in an event using a mic?

texts: What is a person who speaks on the mic that which person is going to come next to speak called?


texts: I know the word Francophile is someone who likes France and the French. I also know of Anglophiles that is a similar word for the British. Is there such a word for the Spanish though?


texts:
What do you call this oriental building in English?

Gazebo or pavilion doesn't go with this building, I think...


texts:
I was writing a story where Boy A was trying to confess to Boy's B sister. And Boy B doesn't like the thought of that, so he tries to keep his sister away. He overhears someone saying that Boy A will ask his sister out today and Boy B goes,

"Not on my watch, he will." I'm thinking if this makes sense, or should I replace 'he will' to 'he won't'. Either way, I always end up being confused whether to use he will or he won't in different scenarios. Can someone clear it up for me?

Another example I tried fiddling with was this:

The cat was going to puke on my bed and I yell, "Not on my bed, you will/won't!" Should I use will or won't?


texts: Is this phrase correct "The younger you are the more innocent you be"?

texts: Or should it read "The younger you are the more innocent you tend to be" or "The younger you are the more innocent you are"


texts:
FPS stands for 'Frames Per Second' it's a measurement used in games and films. Most people would say, "How much FPS do you get?" but expanding this would turn to "How much frames per second do you get" which doesn't make sense and "How many frames per second do you get?" does make perfect sense.

My Question is what's the rule behind many and much and does this term break any of them?


texts: An expression to say that someone is talking without thinking

texts:
What  idiom can be used define  a the situation where someone is telling something without thinking?  Possibly a slang definition.

Is "Don't say bullshit" a possible answer?

Update:
I fount the answer, "Cut the crap!", of course the answers below are correct too.


texts:
Is it correct to use the past simple with 'Since'?

For example:

  I didn't see him since 1990.

I wouldn't say that as a native speaker but would always use the present perfect:

  I haven't seen him since 1990.


texts: Relative Clause Removal of "Relative Pronoun"

texts:
So I have a grammar book that says you can remove relative pronoun when it is used in defining relative clause, if it is non-defining you can't.
For example:

The man who we met yesterday was a sales representative.
The man we met yesterday was a sales representative.

both correct. But:

My father, who you met yesterday, lives in Germany.

According to the book you can't remove "who" from this sentence. Is this acceptable for all cases or just particular ones?


texts: What is the word that we use to call a father who is the main earner in the family?

texts:
In Asian families, usually the father is the person who goes to work and earns money in order to feed the family, and the mother is a housewife who usually cooks meals, cleans the house, and washes the clothes.

I wonder if there is a word in English that I can use to call that father?


texts: When can you omit the possessive on an honorific?

texts:
I was considering honorifics and I realized that sometimes we include and sometimes we omit a possessive in front of them.

I was wondering if there was a formal rule for such?

For example:

  Your highness, the French delegation has arrived.

vs.

  Highness, the French delegation has arrived.

Obviously, the your has been omitted here (or perhaps elided).

But, there are other honorifics where this is never done.  For example:  when addressing the mayor or a judge (in AmE), you might say "Your Honor", but you'd never say, "Honor".  Rather, you'd say Mr. Mayor or Judge in those cases.

Is there a rule to this, or is merely that your has been elided in the above example, and it should have been written with an apostrophe:

  'Highness, the French delegation has arrived.

Note:  I'm deliberately ignoring the honorifics that never carry a possessive:  Mr., Mrs., Dr., etc.


texts: Is "posit Pluto not a planet" a valid rendering of "posit that Pluto is not a planet"?

texts: The fragment "posit Pluto not a planet" is particularly awkward, but would "posit tomato a fruit" or "posit tomatoes as fruits" be any better as a rendering of "posit that tomatoes are fruits"?


texts: How can I (programmatically) distinguish between descriptive and non-descriptive adjectives?

texts:
I have a large corpus of hotel and restaurant reviews and I'm trying to figure out which adjectives are most commonly associated with a aspect (e.g., "rooms", "tables", "ambience", "food") to generate some form of summary. Using off-the-shelf Part-of-Speech tagger and regular expressions, I can quite reliably extract adjective-noun-pairs (ANPs). So, from a technical point of view I kind of solved my task (IT background).

However, when I a run it for say "tables" over my corpus of restaurant reviews, I get the following adjectives ranked according to their frequency (in brackets):

other (333)
few (206)
many (179)
close (152)
outside (96)
occupied (72)
long (65)
outdoor (61)
large (54)
full (54)
wooden (53)
most (50)
...

In the context of a summary, adjectives such as "other", "few", "many", etc. make arguably not much sense. If I understand correctly after some Google search, I'm interested in descriptive adjectives. My naive approach would be to collect list of such adjectives (e.g., from http://descriptivewords.org/) and filter out all found adjectives that are not in the list.

I wonder now, if there is a more linguistic approach to distinguish between "good" (meaningful for creating a summary) and "bad" adjectives. I assume it boils down to identify descriptive adjectives, but I'm nor sure. Language it's not by background and I'm not even a native English speaker.

EDIT: It seems that the class of descriptive adjectives is still to large. It's probably rather qualitative adjectives. Ideally, I would like to keep only adjectives where writing "The tables are ADJ" is grammatically correct and meaningful. For "small", "wooden", "long" etc. that's perfect. I'm even OK with "reserved", "occupied", "close". But "few", "more", "same", "many" etc. doesn't make much sense.


texts:
I want to send farewell message via group email to all my colleagues. I am uncertain what to put in subject line.

I've considered:

Bis wir uns wiedersehen : Until We Meet Again

Adios Amigos

Adieu

Any good suggestions?


texts: Why is there an extra "t" in Lemmatization?

texts:
When we say :

  Specify, it becomes Specification (no t)
  Value, it becomes Valuation (no t)
  Custom, it becomes Customization (no t)

Lemma is a code used in programming, to describe the process of doing this Lemma, the word used is "Lemmatization".

I wonder where did the "t" in Lemmatization come from?

https://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/html/htmledition/stemming-and-lemmatization-1.html


texts: Is there a term for words that have the same transliteration?

texts:
Context: I'm working on Anki decks (think fancy flashcards). One of the goals is to be able to recognize/spell words by their transliterations, but some words have identical transliterations and I'd need to list them: if I show basilēa I want to accept either βασίλεια ('queen') or βασιλεία ('kingdom') because they're words-with-the-same-transliteration, though they have different pronunciation and spelling.  If I show yú I want to accept 魚, 於, etc.

I don't want to call them homographs because I would use that for words that are homographs in the original script, which can be but aren't always words-with-the-same-transliteration — Chinese 行 might be háng ('line, profession') or xíng ('walk, do, OK').

So,
Question: If I wanted to list a word's words-with-the-same-transliteration, what would be the best thing to call them?


texts:
When did the noun sex acquire its corresponding adjective and abstract noun? I would really like to know a few things about the history of these two word formations.

As far as I know, these lexical formations are unique to English. Hence their universalism.


texts:
In the course of asking person B to do something (which that person resists, for various reasons) person A is evoking imagery, using flattery or making sentimental appeals with the intention of "moving" (in the sentimental sense) person B. What might be an appropriate, succinct, informal, colloquial rebuke from person B conveying the following message:

Hey, I can see your game, you are trying to make me agree with you by appealing to my emotions.

I guess "you are trying to move me" is not correct as the "I was moved (touched)" sense can not be conveyed using this verb form (or can it?).

update: As explained in the comments I am looking for an expression that's only (or mostly) applicable to attempts to leverage on somebody's benevolent emotions as opposed to their calculating brain or their "darker" emotions (lust, greed, anger).


texts: Use of "brother" in non-family and non-religious contexts

texts:
I  think the word brother (sometimes spelled brotha or  bro) has been used for a long time among African Americans when talking to one another with the meaning of "pal" and not in a family context.

From the novels I read and the series I watch I have the feeling that for some years (difficult to date) the word is used more and more frequently by non-African Americans.

I've always gathered it was OK for African Americans to use the word when talking to one another.

To fully understand the feelings between the characters in the fiction I read or watch I'd like to know:

what effect is conveyed when non-African Americans use it when talking to one another,
if African Americans would call a non-African American brother,
how African Americans would react if called brother by a non-African American, and
how non-African Americans would react if called brother by an African American.


texts: Do the words 'poster' and 'mixer' have one or two morphemes?

texts:
The words 'Driver', 'writer' and 'player' are composed of base and -er morpheme, which have the meaning of the one who writes or drives..., whereas 'mixer' doesn't mean the one who mixes, does it mean it is composed of just one morpheme?

The same for 'poster'.

Thank you!


texts: What's a word for a person who has one or more unlikely events happen to them that are neither beneficial nor detrimental?

texts:
The work 'lucky' often implies that the unlikely event is beneficial. However this is the closest I can think of besides something like 'non-unlucky' which is ambiguous at best.

Example:

  If you are __________ you may get two of the same image. Do not be deceived, the images are both picked from a random pool separately.


texts: "Little improvement" vs. "Little improvements"?

texts:
If the term Little improvement refers to the stagnance of progress, and Little improvements refer to a number of small additions, what is the plural of many stagnances of progress?

As in, "You have very little improvement. All of you have __ __!"


texts:
I heard an expression today but I did not know how it is written or what it is. And I could not find it with Google.

It's something like:

  it tastes like horspy

Any pointers?


texts: Is "in full length" the same as "fully" here?

texts:
I have no time to unfold my own view on this in full length.
  (self-made)

Is this “in full length” the same as “fully”? So it is correct to use it here?


texts:
I often catch myself trying to write ?explaination, phonetically spelling the word in my head. To my chagrin I get part way through and have to stop myself.

So I’m wondering why is the i dropped? I can’t think of other words ending ‑ain that take the ‑ation suffix for comparison.


texts: Think about ~~. 's answer is ?? I am or I do

texts:
I watch the drama, "Criminal Mind : Beyond Borders".

In 3rd episode, investigator chasing the suspect who is going to suicide said "Think about your daughter!"

Then the suspect answers "I AM"

I am confused. Because I think that "I DO" is right.

"Think" is not Be-verb but Do-verb. (Be-verb and Do-verb is right expression?)

Why did the suspect answer "I AM"?


texts: A statement with "There are"-- is it grammatically correct?

texts:
Is the statement below grammatically correct?

  "There are a cupboard, a tea table, and a carpet."


texts: Term for all relatives not in direct ancestry?

texts:
Is there a word or phrase to describe all familial relatives who are a part of the same family tree, but not either direct ancestors or direct descendants?

Included in that list would be:

siblings
siblings of parents (aunts/uncles)
siblings of other ancestors (great-aunts/uncles, etc)
children and descendants of the above (cousins, nieces/nephews, etc)

The term collateral descendant appears to cover a subset of that group, but not the descendants of ancestors not in the same direct line, such as aunts/uncles.


texts: I am working on a statistic problem. I define "A" as the number of all the products in the warehouse, but some of the products are not qualified and I need another parameter to describe the number of the qualified products, for example, "B". Then, what should I say about B? Could I say that B is the number of all the products except for the unqualified ones? Is "except for" a proper expression? May I have other words or phrases that fit the situation better? Thanks a lot!


texts:
Does anybody know the etymology of the main greeting in English: hallo?

Besides that I wish to know the difference between the terms hallo and hello.

I have to know!


texts: What is the meaning of 'without' in the phrase "was willing to live with him without"?

texts:
The context involves a woman in love with an abusive man. We are told of this relationship that:

  As he drank and was of a violent character, she did not want to marry
  him, but was willing to live with him without.

“About Love.” In Anton Chekhov's Selected Stories. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2014.

It seems 'without' is short for 'without marriage'. If so, how can we explain this usage? What warrants the apparent ellipsis here?


texts: When "etc." is followed by "that", does it still require a comma?

texts:
Example:

  The lights, displays, sounds, shakers, etc. that attract the operators' attention to various situations (...)

Compared to:

  The lights, displays, sounds, shakers, etc., that attract the operators' attention to various situations (...)

In that context, if it wasn't for "etc.", there wouldn't have been a comma:

  The lights, displays, sounds, and shakers that attract the operators' attention to various situations (...)

... unlike if "which" was used instead of "that":

  The lights, displays, sounds, and shakers, which attract the operators' attention to various situations (...)


texts: I need one-word expression for "Ignoring someone intentionally"

texts:
How can we express the "intentional ignoring" or someone in one word?
Particularly if someone is ignoring others by his/her behaviour, showing that he/she isn't interested in talking or communicating, etc.


texts: Less wordy version of 'you don't know what you don't know'

texts:
I am looking for a less wordy version of the phrase:

'you don't [or can't] know what you don't know'

I would like something suitable for an essay format.  Ideally a single word or short phrase that conveys the same concept.

This is a different question to http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/59145/usage-of-the-phrase-you-dont-know-what-you-dont-know which asks about usage without requesting alternatives.

Thankyou


texts:
I have recently encountered a person from Uganda who insisted that the phrase “It’s no use of doing something” is correct, as opposed to “It’s no use _ doing something.”

Taking the descriptive approach, would that usage be correct in Ugandan English as opposed to the person’s idiolect? Would it be marginally acceptable in some other variety of English? Would it be acceptable in a major English dialect (if yes, which one)? I don’t know of any corpora for marginal English dialects, so I am at a loss.


texts: Salt tastes salty then water tastes ....?

texts: I want to know what word should I use to describe the taste of water. I always say it tastes nothing to mean that it does not have taste, not sweet, not salty, not spicy, and not sour.


texts: Is there a word to describe a person who makes up nice quotations?


texts: "A dancing lady." In this sentence, is "dancing" an adjective or a verb?

texts:
A dancing lady.

In this sentence, Is dancing an adjective or a verb?


texts: to invest: can you invest in luxury items that you know will lose value?

texts:
A question about the proper usage of the word "to invest".

The dictionary definitions for the verb "invest" that I have found all mention the idea of gaining a financial return from the investment. For example, you can invest in real estate or invest in the stock market.

Is it possible to invest in a luxury item because you think it will bring you happiness even though you know it will always depreciate in value? For example, can you "invest in an expensive coat" or "invest in a good pair of hiking boots"?

I hear people say things like this but I don't believe it is a correct usage. The phrase for something you invest in which drops in value is bad investment. I believe it is possible to say something like "I invested in an expensive set of dining room chairs" but a very valid response to this sentence is, "Then you made a very bad investment".


texts: Comma usage with the coordinating conjunction "or"

texts:
This is the sentence I was having trouble with, using no punctuation:

  Clearly not everyone has been as lucky as me or been able to afford
  to attend such institutions and have such training.

This is what I have come up with:

  Clearly, not everyone has been as lucky as me or, been able to afford
  to attend such institutions and have such training.

I was concerned, primarily, as to whether the comma would come before or after the "or". It just looks funny to me. Perhaps I could phrase it better?
Appreciate any help.


texts: What is the difference between gibbet and gallows?

texts:
I was just reading this communique:

  We got to the moat - crowds were huge. Went up to the Merchant Marine
  Memorial on Tower Hill. On the site of the gibbet.

I initially thought of giblet (wrong!) and then gallows. I read this extensive entry about gibbeting but am no closer to understanding the distinction between gibbet and gallows.


texts:
I'll be back in half an hour.
I'll be back in half hour.

Which is the correct sentence? Are there any differences between British English and American English?


texts: What evidence is there that 'to' belongs to any particular part of speech?

texts:
Reopen note:

There is a quite finite and modest amount of evidence in the literature about this issue, which members can record here as they see fit. Less than there is for example about what a noun is or what a verb is, or how to tell what the Subject of a sentence is. It's a simple question, that people need to be able to get answered on a site such as this. It is of continuing interest as more recent questions such as this attest to. The fact that people disagree about the outcome of the evidence does not mean that there is too much evidence to be documented. Quite the reverse. They disagree because there is relatively little evidence altogether. However, it is seriously interesting evidence.

The question

What part of speech is to as in:

I need to know.
To err is human, to forgive divine.
What am I to do?

This question is not really about the difference in meaning between the examples. It is a question about what grammatical or syntactic reasons we have to classify this item as a particular part of speech. If arguing that it is 'its own part of speech', I'd like to know what grammatical - but not historical - reasons you have for your claim.

Just to clarify, I'm not asking about what assignment any particular authority or publication gives it. I'm interested to know the reasons why. Your own personal insights are also very welcome.

If you're a grammar anorak - like me - then you may want a list of the contenders out there from other grammarians. In no particular order:

preposition
subordinator
non-finite auxiliary verb
modal verb
inflectional element

Can you help?


texts:
I was at a dinner last night where some rather nice herb butter was served with the vegetables. Conversation close to me then turned to the English expression 'Fine words butter no parsnips'.

It seems rather odd in English, because by tradition the English tend to use gravy with their vegetables. That is until one appreciates that the expression exists in French 'Mots doux ne beurrent aucun panais'. Now French cooks, I can well imagine are more inclined to butter their parsnips, so it makes sense.

But I would be interested to hear of the possible use of this expression in other countries where English is used. Do Americans, Australians etc 'butter their parsnips', either actually or metaphorically?


texts: What's the difference between retrospect and hindsight?

texts: Are they synonyms for looking back on the past that have separate contextual applications or do their meanings differ?


texts:
When I saw this sentence first, I thought so powerful to be an objective complement. [ ‘so powerful’ is the result of ‘make’] But now, it may be more reasonable to think ‘so powerful’ is modifying ‘a sleeping potion.’ Can the adjective phrase ‘so powerful’ be a postmodifier?

For your information Potter, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of the Living Death.


texts: The pronunciation of the definite article by American speakers

texts:
I was reading an article the other day and I came across an interesting passage:

  Notice that the weak form of the is typically [ði] before a
  vowel-initial word (the apple) but [ðə] before a consonant-initial
  word (the pear), although this distinction is being lost in the United
  States. [26]

I'm concerned with the United States part. Is it true that American speakers don't make this distiction? I have never found this information in any book on accents for English learners or actors. It seems to have been taken from this book:

  Ladefoged, Peter (2006), A Course in Phonetics, Thomson.

Since I don't have it, and I can't find it anywhere on the Internet, I can't really check its contents. Are there any American speakers here who don't make this distinction when speaking? And even could provide some additional sources? As I can't find any. Thanks for your time.

The link to the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_and_vowel_reduction_in_English


texts: Can anybody help me to explain this phrase 'nonsense seems common sense'?

texts:
Can anybody help me to explain this 'nonsense seems common sense', it comes from the end of this paragraph (about world war I history):

'In the early 1930s, the Great Depression starting in America had thrown people out of work across the world, while the looming menace of Stalin's communist state haunted millions. There are times when the politics of fear become irresistible
and nonsense seems common sense. Eventually, the Nazi Party did very well in elections, Hitler came to power.'


texts: What is a word that means "something that seems true, but isn't?"

texts:
I've been looking for a general word to define an idea that seems true, but simply isn't.
A simple example: "The Earth is flat."  If all you know is the world outside your window, and you've never done any basic experiments, read books, or seen photos to the contrary, this seems like a reasonable explanation.  But it doesn't take too much more examination to find out that it  just isn't so.
The key point here is that it's something a reasonable person could reasonably believe.
The closest I've come to what I'm looking for is "verisimilitude."  I looked at this answer, but it seems to me that words like "spurious" or "nonsense" seem to imply some ill-intent to deceive, which is not what I'm after.  (Or maybe it's more a concept than a word, and that's ok too, if anyone has thoughts on that.)


texts:
I use "that'll do" in circumstances where I acknowledge that something is sufficient.

What is a formal alternative for this phrase, that can take place in a formal letter or a conversation ?

Context:

There's a party that asked for a couple of screenshots from my PC. I have the screenshots but due to a technical limit it may not be enough.

My sentence:

Attached are the screenshots you requested. Explanation for technical stuff. Hope that'll do. OR Will that do?

Thanks,


texts: Definition and etymology of 'disingratiate'

texts:
In Bradbury's story 'The Burning Man' I found:

  In just two minutes of leaping into the red-hot car, with his jungle hair and jungle smell, he had managed to disingratiate himself with the climate, the automobile, Doug, and the honorable and perspiring aunt.

The term disingratiate is unknown to the Oxford dictionary and merely defined by the Urban Dictionary

Why is this?


texts:
I have been charged with taking over a monthly prayer letter which had been managed by several different staff members. Each had a different way of handling a bulleted list. One used a dash while the other used a comma. One used a period at the end of each statement while the other omitted punctuation. I appreciate feedback as to the proper format for separating the students' names from the prayer requests as illustrated below (comma or dash?) and also if punctuation (periods in this case) are correctly omitted from each request.

Students:

• Iris - asking for prayer for her older sister to make right choices in life

• Velzi - that her family remains united

• Isabel - for healing for her mom who is not feeling well lately

• Jenny - for her family

• Zoila - for her as she gets ready for the new school year

OR

Students:

• Iris, asking for prayer for her older sister to make right choices in life

• Velzi, that her family remains united

• Isabel, for healing for her mom who is not feeling well lately

• Jenny, for her family

• Zoila, for her as she gets ready for the new school year


texts: Useage of 'This' and 'That' at the beginning of the sentence

texts:
Dealing with informing people, sometimes in a public way, how a system or concept works can be a challenge. In an effort to educate myself on why people report confusion, feedback said the words 'this' and 'that' are sometimes to blame. I already found articles referring to inward and outward projections of 'this' vs 'that' and I have read examples and opinions of 'this' vs 'that' at the end of sentences.

I say this to prevent redundant responses.  As well as using that last sentence and this one as possible examples. My inquiry is for how they are used at the beginning of a sentence and or paragraph.

How correct is it for me to use the word "this" to refer to what was concluded/identified in the sentence prior? Or sometimes the whole paragraph prior. Either way I only do so if there is only one presumable element available that can be immediately elaborated.

I want to give some additional thoughts that pertain to the question of distance being all the indication of context required. I may be incorrect and I welcome feedback:

Elaboration in some form or degree is what both words "this" and "that" express.  Where "that" is more general and 'this' is specific. Thus, given the nature of time, space, and writing language, using 'that' would be something over a larger distance and 'this' would be close. For intangible ideas the distance argument should hold true relative to written text.

It is important to recognize I am dealing with intangibles, so saying "This dog also was seen sporting a bowtie and.." may not apply to the rule I am trying to confirm. For elaboration of an intangible idea I think it is only correct to use 'this' when referring to something immediately prior and enhancing the description of it immediately. If starting a paragraph or sentence with 'that' then the meaning must be intended as an indication for the reader to collect several points explained across possibly multiple paragraphs. So to prepare for how the collection of notions or facts is to be handled across several coming sentences. Or to change how they would otherwise be handled without such elaboration.

I need to report specific sequence on systems and concepts. The word "this" at the beginning of a sentence is invaluable to me. As sometimes it is an inappropriate use of space and time to attempt redundant articulation of something just said the sentence before. That all said I realize I will always run into people unaware where their reading comprehension is at, but I welcome creative ideas on how to introduce a reader to my usage needs.

Thank you for your time reading this...or that. =)


texts: Can I say that a woman is shocked about something that's happening and standing with 'her eyes ripped wide open'?

texts: I'm writing a story and a woman is negatively surprised about something/ standing in the room in shock. Can I use the phrase 'she stood (in place X), her eyes ripped wide open.' ? I'm not sure if I can use 'ripped' in this case?


texts: What is the word or idiom equivalent to henpecked?

texts:
This is the meaning of hen-pecked from urban dictionary:

When a male complies to ever single demand of his girlfriend or wife, and the female is in complete control of her man. A hen-pecked male will easily sell out to his woman and blow off his friends. Also see Pussy-whipped.
please tell me the other idiom or word with the same meaning.


texts: What is the difference between "brain" and "mind"?

texts:
Could someone please explain the contextual difference of this two words? If I for instance say:

  I am using my brain to decide in what direction to move.

or

  I am using my mind to decide in what direction to move.

what would be the difference between this two phrases?


texts:
I'm having trouble establishing a sequence of events in the following sentences (italicized) and understanding why the past perfect is needed.

"Once upon a time, when I was a child reading fairy tales, I’d ached to have my own adventures. Not that I’d wanted to be some dippy heroine languishing in a tower, awaiting rescue. No, I’d wanted to be the knight, charging into battle against overwhelming odds, or the plucky country lass who gets taken on as an apprentice to a great wizard. As I got older, I’d found out the hard way that adventures are rarely anything like the books say. Half the time you are scared out of your mind, and the rest you’re bored and your feet hurt. I was beginning to believe that maybe I wasn’t the adventurous type."
—Claimed by Shadow by Karen Chance

In the first sentence, a specific time when the author was a child is written in the past simple, and the second verb (past perfect) tells us that the aching happened before her childhood? Why not use the past simple in both cases since they both seem to logically occur at the same time?

In the second sentence, the order is very similar. The author got older in a specific time in the past, and had found out before her getting older. Again, both seem to happen simultaneously, so why not use the same verb tense?


texts: Are there specific rules to build expressions with or without articles?

texts:
In English, there are lots of expressions built using articles like:

at the station
to the cinema
play the piano
have breakfast (no article)
take a bath
take a shower

Are there specific rules or tips to help determine whether or not to use an article before the noun? Or do we always need to depend on a dictionary?


texts: Capitalization With Hyphen in Length-Limited Title

texts:
Imagine a scenario where you had to write the following title:

A Scientific Breakthrough

However, you were limited in length and had to split it. Do you capitalize “through” even though the original word is not hyphenated? AP and MLA both seem to be missing specific instructions for this. Which of the following is preferable?

A Scientific Break-
      through

Or

A Scientific Break-
      Through


texts: What is a word that describes a belief (or nonbelief) in an afterlife?


texts:
How to use 'whereupon'?  I'm making sense of it in the following example by taking 'whereupon' to mean 'which at'.

'This Is Jinsy is one of those weird British comedies, like The League of Gentleman and The Mighty Boosh, whereupon a first viewing, it seems inaccessibly strange but, given time, you come to embrace its eccentricities.'

Can anyone tell me if there's anything wrong with this, specifically if the 'it' can be om-it-ted?

Cheers


texts: 'd instead of would - when is it acceptable?

texts:
I am a teacher of English as a second language (secondary school). I've been correcting a test on the 3rd conditional - the task was to change the given sentences from a 2nd conditional form to a 3rd conditional one - and many students wrote the following:
1) The manager'd pay high salaries if more profits were made.

I want to point out to them that they should have written the complete form "The manager would pay high salaries ... " instead of the abbreviation "'d", but I don't know how to explain the grammatical reason why. I just know (or feel) it's wrong, but I need to provide an adequate explanation.


texts:
I am writing this sentence:
There are many fruits available, including apples, bananas, oranges, to choose from.
I am confused where I should put "available". Which of the following is correct?
(1) There are many fruits available, including apples, bananas, oranges, to choose from.

(2) There are many fruits, including apples, bananas, oranges, available to choose from.

Thanks in advance! :)


texts:
The usage of the word "mind" in the following sentence:

  King Solomon was the greatest mind that ever lived.


texts: Word to describe putting a body part in a place thus not allowing fresh air in...?

texts:
I'm trying to look for a word that describes an act, a word that describes the action of putting a body part for example, foot, into a place where there is little or no fresh air, or where little or no fresh air will be able to enter (such as a shoe, a sock, or anything that surrounds, covers, wraps it etc.) in a way that has a negative effect on that body part (esp. an injured body part).

When a part of your body is injured, or has a open wound, it's obvious that you should allow as much air to pass through it as possible to promote healing, and avoid having anything surrounds or covers it that lessens the air flow to the area. So if someone's foot is injured and I want to tell them not to put it in a place where there are little or no fresh air, or where little or no fresh air will be able to enter, is there a verb to describe that? i.e. "don't [...] your foot while it's healing".


texts: "Are you sure sure" — is this repetition grammatically correct?

texts:
A typical conversation among members of my age demographic could go like this:

  Person 1: Did you know that x > y?!?

  Person 2: Are you sure?

  Person 1: Yeah, I'm sure.

  Person 2: Are you sure sure?

Is this grammatically correct?


texts: what is the best source to find tenses of verbs

texts: If I don't know/remember the past tense of a verb, I google for it. Often the returned searches are not  indicative. I just looked for the past tense of seek, and it took me 2 minutes to figure out that it was sought. What online sources  do you use to find tenses of verbs?


texts: When and why did we start using auxiliary verbs, particularly "do", to ask questions and make negatives?


texts:
I need a word for an item in a game which is not actually damaged but needs maintenance or servicing (preemptively replacing worn parts ...), like they do on airliners after every so many hours of flight time.

My current best guess so far would be "a car needing maintenance".

I want to differentiate from a similar item not yet needing it. But this way too long. I was hoping for a two-word solution.

Update

The proposed scheduled maintenance is not what I was looking for - Maybe the comparison to Airliners was misleading.

I want an expression for the circumstance that my hypothetical car is, lets say, not trustworthy anymore. It is not damaged, but certainly needs an inspection or such and maybe preemtive repairs. But it is still in working order, I could not call it a damaged or broken car.

I was hoping for an adjective which summarises the state of the car: working, not trustworthy, but not broken though.

Update 2

Seems not to be so easy. Im German, we can just concatenate maintenance and need to (roughly-translated) maintenanceneedy. I was hoping for a similar word; but I guess I settle for beaten down which I guess is short enough and fits the circumstance well.

Thank you all!


texts: Has any authority recognized what we could call "half-syllables"? I.e., "Air" being pronounced /ay-r or /eh-r; not quite two whole syllables, but more than one. Or "I" pronounced /ah-e {except in the U.S. South, where it's just /ah.}


texts: "When I last saw him he was dying, but now you'd hardly know he'd been ill"

texts:
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, page 122, reads

  He was dying is an implicature because of the possibility of cancellation, as in When I last saw him he was dying, but now you
  would hardly know he had been ill; other speakers might insist on he
  seemed to be dying or the like, and for them subsequent reaching of
  the terminal point has the strength of an entailment

Why does the verb seem changes the implicature of die into an entailment?


texts: Questions "for chapter" or "to chapter"?

texts:
I always have a hard time in these cases: to choose for or to. Suppose I want to make a list of questions and as a headline I would like to name it something like: Questions for chapter 2. Is that correct? I think it sounds correct but the following I am less certain about. Is the following sentence correct:

"If you keep on reading, you will find the questions to chapter 2 in the book".

I could use the longer version:

"If you keep on reading, you will find the questions related to chapter 2 in the book". Which I am almost certain is correct with respect to to and for. But I would like to write as short as possible, please help me out.


texts:
What is the plural of the word "index"? It seems that there are two that are acceptable: "indexes" and "indices". I happen to prefer "indices" but I was wondering if one was generally preferred over the other.

I am using "index" as a programming term to indicate the position of an element in a array.


texts: When is it appropriate to indent a paragraph?

texts: I'm working on a short novel and I was wondering when it is appropriate for me to indent my paragraphs. Is it when I start a new paragraph? Is it when a new subject occurs(as in storyline)? Does this include dialogue? Does it just depend on what I'm writing?


texts:
I was wondering if anyone would care to explain why some universities use AT in  their names (University of Illinois AT Chicago/ University AT Buffalo) when the preposition used with cities is usually IN. Is that supposed to imply AT that campus or something of the kind??

thanks a lot

ps: I have checked Shoe's answer to the question "at vs in followed by a city name" and I don't quite feel it fits the bill here. I am aware of Yule's  explanation about the speaker's point of view in "Explaining English Grammar" , which, by the way, gives an example very similar to Shoe's, but I don't think that example actually fits here. Any thoughts on the matter?


texts: Is there an English equivalent to the German word "Substanzwissenschaftler"?

texts:
As a German statistician, I distinguish between statisticians and "Substanzwissenschaftler" (my best translation so far substantive researchers). While the former know which regression model should be used for the given data and how to estimate such models and what the regression coefficients technical mean, the latter know what variables to study in the model and what the model outcome really tells us about, e.g. the harmfulness of smog.

In this comment it was suggested to use "statisticians" and "scientists", but I disagree as imho statisticians are also scientists.

So: is there an English equivalent to the German word "Substanzwissenschaftler"?

Update:
I used the figure from @Canis Lupus, to illustrate what I'm looking for: a word for the group of those scientists, that are not computer scientists, nor mathematicians or statisticians.


texts: How do you use "which" when asking a question

texts:
I am wondering how to state this question and do not know which one is correct so is #1 correct or #2 correct or are they both grammatically fine?

Ferrous metals contain which element?
Which element do ferrous metals contain?


texts:
I am looking for a certain noun similar to "High spirits". It carries two pieces of information:

The regarded person is in a very happy state, acts this way and knows no danger.
It indicates that his actions will result in some bad consequences for him.

Ideally it would fit in the following sentence:

His [noun] lead to his demise.

I looked up a few candidates in the dictionary and I find that they are all flawed in some sense:

Cockiness, high spirits, wantonness, exuberance, devilment.

Might fitting: larkiness, coltishness, friskiness

However I am not sure, since I am not too familiar with any of those. Does there exist one in the English language?


texts:
Is the following sentence grammatically correct in regards subject-verb agreement?

  One of the main facets of the soul is the feelings humans treasure
  above all: love and compassion.

The sentence seems to retain its meaning when flipped around, revealing that "the feelings" might be the true subject, and indicating that the verb form "is" could be incorrect. For example:

  The feelings humans treasure above all -- love and compassion -- are one of the main facets of the soul.


texts:
Is there a political hypothesis that has the same meaning as "dividing the divided"?

I've seen it in Arabic but didn't find the English equivalent. It's used in the context of countries. It is like "divide and rule" concept.


texts: "He's unarguably the best" or "He's arguably the best"

texts:
I keep hearing the phrases unarguably the best and arguably the best. Some people say one, some people say the other when they mean he's the best.

However which one is actually correct?

If he's unarguably the best, then no one can argue about it. He is the best.
If he's arguably the best, then some people can argue about it. He may be the best but he it can be argued, maybe there is someone better.

People just keep using one or the other. My mind is exploding trying to understand which one to use.

Please help me understand this!


texts: Was “drama queen” a gay slang expression originally?

texts:
According to Greens Dictionary of Slang the expression  drama queen is a from gay slang and dates to the early nineties.

  (orig. gay) anyone considered to be making an excessive fuss or ‘making a mountain out of a molehill’;

  1991    [US]    D. Gaines Teenage Wasteland 71: Joe was very intense, a real drama queen.

Actually earlier usages appear to have a different connotation, such as the following from
Rock singer Marianne Faifhfull who used the expression in a interview on  Billboard  some ten years earlier:  (Oct 17, 1981)

  “That root of anger and sorrow was exorcised”,  she continues "This is a bit of affirmation I didn't want to be known as the great drama queen of rock'n'roll, though I could have been”.

and the website wordsmith.org suggests a much earlier origin:

  From Greek drama (action, play) + Old English cwen (woman, queen). Earliest documented use: 1923.

but I couldn’t  find examples of such early usages.

Was the expression from gay slang or was it originally a theatrical expression which was later adopted by the gay community with the current connotation?


texts: Yes/no answer to "Have you closed all of your tickets?" if there were no tickets to begin with

texts: My boss asked the question, "Have you closed all of your tickets?" to me and my co-workers.  One of my co-workers, who did not have any tickets to begin with, answered yes.  We are conflicted as to weather yes is the correct answer to this question, vs. "Are all of your tickets closed?" or, "Do you have any open tickets?"


texts:
In Starcraft II there was a mission called The Moebius Factor. Unrelated to that, a new Futurama episode called Möbius Dick was recently released.

Does anyone have any idea what does the word mean? Either generally, or in connection with any of the aforementioned phrases.


texts: Where does A/C abbreviation for aircraft come from?

texts:
I am wondering where did A/C abbreviation originate, and especially the slash since aircraft is one word.

For instance, I can understand why there is a slash while abbreviating air conditioning.


texts: Is there a name for syllables connected with hyphens which might be read as multiple words?

texts:
Is there a name for syllables connected with hyphens which can be read as multiple words?
For example in one of my songs I have the lines:
When you escape from, re-hab-its
… more than your soul, cares to recall.
In the song you hear "rehab it's" but in the printed lyrics it's overlaying rehab and habits.
Another example is the line "I see where our time can bend ... new talk or just a-mend."
In other words I not only want to indicate to the reader that this is wordplay but have a name for it.
Thanks.


texts: How to describe a person who has many faces inside him

texts: I need a phrase to describe a person who has many faces such as good, bad, pure soul, kind but also evil. A person who can't be judged or categorised.


texts: How do I express the possession of multiple objects by one proper noun and one pronoun?

texts:
As far as I can tell, my question is not a duplicate of either of these two similar  questions. It is very close (maybe a duplicate, but I don't quite think so) of this question.

I want to construct a sentence, where there are two things each possessed by one of two people, one of whom is myself. The best I have come up with is something like:

  Fred's and my houses are both green.

Two houses, two people (Fred and myself). I'm not sure how to phrase it at all!

I suppose I could go with a longer form like:

  Fred's house is green and my house is also green.

But it would be nice if there was a shorter form.


texts: What does “organizing a Trust that would skin the taxcollars off the whole herd” mean?

texts:
From A Dog's Tale by Mark Twain:

  He was a renowned scientist. I do not know what the word means, but my mother would know how to use it and get effects. She would know how to depress a rat-terrier with it and make a lap-dog look sorry he came. But that is not the best one; the best one was Laboratory. My mother could organize a Trust on that one that would skin the taxcollars off the whole herd.

I don't understand the last sentence.


texts: What do you call a single row of keys on a keyboard if it has more than one (for example on an organ)? Is "claviature" the right word for it (example: "The keyboard of the organ has 4 claviatures.")?


texts: Why do you say “to step down” in Englisch but the German equivalent translates to “to step back”?

texts: Why do you say “to step down” (as in resign) in Englisch but in German you “zurücktreten” (i.e. “to step back”)?


texts: How to punctuate a phrase that has words between the possessor and possession?

texts:
Example: the security policy for Acme Group owned and operated computers...
Obviously I could just reword it as "the security policy for computers owned and operated by Acme Group...," but if I wanted to word it like the example would there be hyphens, and if so, where?


texts: There are how many types of dictionaries?

texts:
There are so many dictionaries e.g. unbridged, concise, bridge, etymological, etc..

So, can anyone please tell me. There are how many types of dictionaries and their usages. Even some site link describing the differences will be ok!

Thanks in advance


texts: Perfect of modal "to have to" in infinitive-clause

texts:
Take the following sentence:

  I claim to have had to have done something.

As I understand it, it means that I was obliged at some point to have done/finished something at that time.

Is that sentence grammatically correct?
Is my interpretation correct?


texts:
I want to convey a meaning that, a person was and is owner of that place. Obviously, saying "he was always an owner of that place" is other way of saying it, but it means- right from the start.

This is not a law question but I want to say that, a person was an owner of that place when some incident happened in the past (may be or roughly 25 years a go or who knows, may be 35), and now also he is owner of that place. So, how to use a verb indicating that he was and he is the owner of the place?

Update:

A comment and an answer suggest that I should use present perfect tense.

Is this sentence correct? Does it convey, what I want to say?

He has been owner of that house when incident happened.


texts:
also .. who coined it ?

I am interested as it would probably point to a time when "mindlessness" invaded television. I am not trying to be overtly biased against TV. There are some good shows and channels, but these are very few and most programs/news are just sensationalization or plain non-sense.

I found a related link on Yahoo Answers, but this does not answer my question and also does not seem very authoritative


texts: I can't understand this: You wouldn’t have to spout embarrassing platitude in public

texts:
I was watching a movie in which this conversation happened in a bar:

  Person 1: You wouldn’t have to spout embarrassing platitude in public.
  Person 2: The fact is I won't spout platitude much longer.

What does this mean?


texts: how do you translate the word Patron if the word is used for a person in a university

texts:
I'm translating the Welcome Guide of my uni, Nicolaus Copernicus University.
There is a "Patron" section in which Nicolaus Copernicus is introduced, I wonder how can i translate this word, I actually don't even know how to define patron here.
Copernicus is a meaningful figure of this uni, but in what way should i understand the word Patron?


texts:
What tense is the phrase "is thought to have been" in the sentence "Bruce Lee is thought to have been the first actor to do his own stunts"?

Also, why is it correct to say "to do his own stunts" instead of "to have done"?


texts:
If there is a group of individuals identified by a name, what's the right way for one of the group to refer to them all?

For example, if one of a group of 10 Americans wants to refer to the group, is it more correct to say "Us Americans" or "We Americans"?


texts: Is there a term for a grammatical construction like "Exhibit A"?

texts:
Is there a term for names that consist of a noun or noun phrase followed by an ordinal letter or numeral? For example:

Exhibit A
The Land Before Time IV
Patient Zero

Perhaps ordinal proper noun or ordinal titular appositive would be appropriate?


texts:
What is a trade-off?

Consider a hypotethetical situation: I want to by my fiancee flowers. Her ideal flowers would be blue, have 3 petals, and a beautiful fragrance.

Flower Shop A sells blue flowers with 20 petals and a beautiful fragrance.
Flower Shop B sells blue flowers with 3 petals and an unpleasant fragrance.
Flower Shop C sells red flowers with 3 petals and a beautiful fragrance.

I'm not limited financially, so I can buy flowers from as many shops as I like, but I cannot buy flowers that are blue, have 3 petals, and a beautiful fragrance because they do not exist in that combination (and never will, in this imaginary world).

Does the inability to obtain blue flowers with 3 petals and a beautiful fragrance constitute a trade-off?

I have discussed this with another who insists that this is not a trade-off because "all factors are available at the same time", as per the Merriam-Webster definition of trade-off:

  a balancing of factors all of which are not attainable at the same time

i.e. one can obtain 3-petal flowers, blue flowers, and fragrant flowers, at the same time. It seems that this hinges on taking various definitions of "at the same time" referring to a purely temporal relationship, rather than a physical and combinatorial sense. Is there a a better, more technical definition, which encompasses a physical sense of the inter-relatedness of the factors, or is this not an example of a trade-off?


texts: Past Subjunctive vs Future Subjunctive form

texts:
What is the difference between the three sentences:

If i were to play, i would win the match. (Depicts future tense)
If i were to play, i would have won the match. (Depicts past tense)
If i were there, i would have helped here. (Depicts Past)

My question is that how do we identify where the past subjunctive is being used and where the future subjunctive is being used?


texts: Is "tickety-boo" connected to "bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo"?

texts:
Is there a connection between "tickety-boo" and
bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo"?


texts:
I saw this for the first time in something recent: "just wed".

I wonder how and when it is used (BrE only, under certain conditions). Does it mean exactly the same as "married"?


texts: Ignoring the linguistically incorrect and wrong-headed things said in this video, the more puzzling problem: I have no idea what dialect or type of English the man in the video is speaking. I have never heard English that sounds like this. I can't even tell whether or not he is a native speaker; his website implies that he is American, but doesn't say outright. Any ideas?


texts: Does a single "s" in a word pronounced z? To be pronounced "s" should be a double s? (ss)


texts: For the context of the storytelling aspect to deliver a message, what punctuation would be best used for the flow and structure of the speech given?

texts:
Below is the body of work for the self-driven character that is declaring and establishing their agency. My question is if there should be a semicolon, comma, or period in-between "I'll keep walking. I'll keep moving forward." given the context and flow of the declaration speech:

I do realize that this road will take time to travel. With the path that I have chosen, there is no way out of it, no turning back, and no telling what kind of adversity I'll face up ahead. My road will not always take me where I wish to go, and I am uncertain if I will live to see it to fruition, but I will travel down it nonetheless. No matter how much pain my own path brings, I'll keep walking. I'll keep moving forward. I will forge ahead with the guts to never give up and be the magnanimous individual I know I can be; but what's more important than how I achieve this goal, is the power to believe that it will happen. And the fact is, I believe in myself completely!


texts: I hope you enjoyed/have enjoyed staying in Italy

texts: A friend has written me a message in which she tells me that she is leaving tomorrow from Italy. I want to say that I hope that she had/ has had a great time here in Italy. What is the right way to say it? "I hope you enjoyed staying in Italy" or "I hope you have enjoyed etc.." Thanks.


texts: Word to describe a sensation of death coming over your entire body?

texts:
This is the context where I want to use the word:

  He closed his eyes. The living did not come to mind, neither friend,
  nor family—only the dance of death, plain to see. The dancing figures
  of death were beckoning him. How could he not end his life? The
  sense of death already enveloped him. His body grew cold and he felt stiff like lead.

What words can be used here? Can 'aura' be used here? Doesn't your body have an 'aura' intrinsically?

  The sense of death already enveloped him.

  The aura of death already enveloped him.

The OED definitions I found are:

  Sense
  noun

  1 a faculty by which the body perceives an external stimulus; one of the faculties of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch::the bear has a keen sense of smell that enables it to hunt at dusk

  2 a feeling that something is the case:: she had the sense of being a political outsider

  an awareness or feeling that one is in a specified state:: you can improve your general health and sense of well-being
  (sense of) a keen intuitive awareness of or sensitivity to the presence or importance of something:: she had a fine sense of comic timing

  Aura
  noun (plural auras)
  [usually in singular]

  1 the distinctive atmosphere or quality that seems to surround and be generated by a person, thing, or place:
  the ceremony retains an aura of mystery

  2 a supposed emanation surrounding the body of a living creature, viewed by mystics, spiritualists, and some practitioners of complementary medicine as the essence of the individual, and allegedly discernible by people with special sensibilities.
  any invisible emanation, especially a scent or odor:
  there was a faint aura of disinfectant


texts: "What is your name and address" - why "is" instead of "are"?

texts: We use "is" with singular but here we use "is" with two things: "name and address". Why?


texts:
I remember someone once telling me a saying in the form: "Is the [blank] worth the shake?"

The meaning was similar to the saying, "Is the end worth the means?"

I can't remember what the [blank] word was though. Has anyone heard of this saying before?

I think the term "shake" in this sense might mean amount of work, or hustle.


texts: Using "decadent" to describe a building or town in neglect or ruin

texts: I have often seen decadent used to refer to a non-physical state, like a person who is spiritually  or morally  decadent. Could decadent be applied to something physical like a building or a town to describe a state of neglect and ruin? If not, what adjective could best describe this physical state?


texts: Using the structure "noun-adjective" as a noun (e.g. "innovation-inclined")

texts:
Is it correct to use the structure noun + hyphen + adjective as a noun? For example, can you say "We innovation-inclined tend to act quickly" or "The technology-inclined always update their devices frequently"?

Thank you!


texts: What does "meadow is calling" means in this context

texts:
In the the following quotation, what does meadow is calling mean?

  " I could tell you more of the story. But the meadow is calling."

EDIT::
As some of the answers required extra context, here is the whole paragraph.

  This was the icing on the cake. She told me that no one can do that.
  That anyone who tried alternative means always ended up having to come
  back to her to have it cut out! Yikes! Finally, she said that she
  would give me eight weeks to shrink the tumor then she would cut it
  out. Ha! I have yet to have surgery. And I am alive and well. I could
  tell you more of the story. But the meadow is calling.


texts: What is the shortest commonly-used word or expression that describes both the delivery of services and of goods?

texts:
I'm trying to find one general expression that describes all sorts of businesses that serve you where you are as opposed to being a destination, that is, food delivery, electricians, personal trainers, doctors who make house calls, etc.

The resulting sentence would look like:

  "What is the best business category that sought-after expression North Beach?"

Example:

  "What is the best Indian restaurant that delivers to North Beach?"

This is a category-dependent example though ("delivers to" doesn't work for services), so what I need is the shortest term that covers both delivery and on-site services (even if it ends up being a compound expression like "serves/delivers to").


texts: If you are a person who avidly recycles, are you a recyclist?


texts:
This is a feature when we use tools like Draw.io or PowerPoint.

As you can see below, I have two rectangles on the canvas.
When I drag the green one close enough to the blue one, the green one will be auto attached to the blue one like a magnet.

What's this "auto attached" behavior called in English?
Is there a proper noun for it?


texts: What happened to word gender in English?

texts:
I know English is a Germanic language and I know at least the German language still has genders — three of them in fact — masculine, feminine, neuter. So did the English nouns and adjectives have genders at some point? Do any modern nouns and adjectives still have gender and us non-linguists/laymen/uninformed just don't realize it?

I know some nouns do; actor/actress and steward/stewardess come to mind. I just remember trying to learn German verb conjugations and the der/die/das/die memorization was a PITA.

Update: So it looks like there is no definitive answer as to how or why English lost genders in general but I am still wondering if at some point English did have genders and if there are any holdout nouns or adjectives that still have a gendered form. I'm guessing based on this information that actress with the ‑ress is a feminine word leftover but does that mean the ‑or is a leftover masculine form.

  It should also be noted that only a relatively small number of English nouns have distinct male and female forms; many of them are loanwords from non-Germanic languages (the suffixes ‑ress and ‑rix in words such as actress and aviatrix, for instance, derive from Latin ‑rix, in the first case via the French ‑rice)

Or are they referring to biological sexes and not word genders, or are they one in the same in this example?


texts: What is the origin of the term “good-bye?

texts: Where did the term “good-bye” come from and what does it originally mean?


texts: Proper syntax of gender-neutral statements, order of his/her

texts:
I know that in certain cases, you can form a gender-neutral sentence with a form of "they", e.g.:

  If a person goes out to their car...

You could also use "his or her" or some variation:

  If a person goes out to his or her car...

But can the gender pronouns be reversed in order? Is this technique used a lot? Example of this:

  If a person goes out to her or his car...

Why or why not?


texts: Ambiguous ownership when discussing multiple character body parts

texts:
Up front apologies for the vague title, happy for editing suggestions on that as I'm not sure how else to describe it. Apologies again.
I have come across a few situations where in a simple sentence I'd like to say that one character's body part is doing something in relation to another character's body part, all this without confusing which part belongs to who and which is making contact with who. Nothing weird here, please see example below for clarity:

John took Jack's hand and placed it on his shoulder.
John took Jack's    hand and placed it on his own shoulder. (similar,
but no less vague    I'd say)

Now to me, this could read as either John placing Jack's hand on Jack's shoulder or on his own (John's) shoulder could it not? Similarly in the second example, and my concern is this ambiguity. For example; how would the above look if John is placing the hand on his own (John's) shoulder now? If John is now instead placing the hand on Jack's shoulder that is straight forward. I could say the following, which looks unnecessarily verbose (every word counts) but it could be just me:

John took Jack's hand and placed it on John's own shoulder.

Is this the most concise solution or is there a better way I can punctuate or reword the above? Ideally I'd prefer not to split it into multiple sentences, but if (together) they aren't any more verbose than perhaps that could still work. Thank you and looking forward to suggestions.


texts:
I'm struggling with a line of text.

I'm trying to write an instruction for someone to add up the lowest balance/s in multiple bank accounts in a monthly period and enter the total into a text field. And it needs to be in very plain English.

I've currently got:

Add the lowest balance in each account last month and enter the total

Does that make sense? Should it be 'balances' instead?

Thanks.


texts:
Today, some friends and I were having a discussion about "nature vs. nurture", specifically with regard to whether or not people choose to be gay. One friend suggested that he believes it's more "nurture" rather than "nature", i.e. that maybe some event occurred in a person's early childhood that caused them to tend towards homosexuality, as opposed to their homosexuality being inherent in their DNA.

It seems to me that in either case, it's not the person's choice. He responded by saying, "Yes, it is a choice--it's a subconscious choice."

The Oxford English dictionary defines 'choice' as "An act of choosing between two or more possibilities", and it defines to 'choose' as to "Pick out (someone or something) as being the best or most appropriate of two or more alternatives". This tells me that there's no such thing as a subconscious choice, and so, if my friend's belief is true, people still don't choose to be gay.

Am I correct? Or is there such a thing as a "subconscious choice"?


texts:
I want to know if these two sentences have the same meaning or not

  Everyone freaks out at first.
  Everybody scares in the start.

If they are not similar what is the best way to use scares.


texts: Which is correct: "special thanks go to" or "special thanks goes to"?

texts:
what is grammatically correct:

Special thanks go to Tom...
Special thanks goes to Tom...

IMHO I'd say thanks is one of those plural nouns which implies it requires go but I'm not sure.
It's for the acknowledgements section of my thesis; it should be formal English.


texts: What's the main difference between "in charge (of)" and "charged (with)"?

texts:
What's the main difference between: I was charged with  and I was in charge of?

Be charged with - means to be responsible, be in the command or in the control of something.

Apparently, they seem to perform the same function. Nevertheless, I presume "Be in charge of something" is used when the object is a noun -

I am in charge of the work

Whereas "Be charged with something" is used when the object is a verb (which is always followed by -ING)

As you can see in here: charge - Cambridge

I am charged with supervising the kitchen


texts:
Here's my problem:

I've been confused about the placement of adverbs in present/past perfect phrases. For example, which sentence would sound better:

  "We had been slowly drifting down the river when a bear attacked."

  or

  "We had slowly been drifting down the river when a bear attacked."

Personally, I'd go with the former, and this led me to believe that if the sentence contains both "had been" and a verb, the adverb should be placed after "had been"--if the adverb is indeed modifying the verb.

This, however, led to me to think of other uses of the present/past perfect, where another verb isn't present. The is the best example I could formulate:

  "He has always been an academic and a charitable person."

See, right there, always--an adverb of frequency--was placed in between has and been.

Does this mean only adverbs of frequency (e.g., always, usually, etc.) should be placed in between such constructs?

A final example to put this topic over the edge is "He had been either sick or exhausted." Now, if you were to move "either" in between "had been," would the sentence be grammatically incorrect? I've noticed that the former is used more frequently, but the sandwiched version doesn't sound wrong either.

Thanks!


texts:
The following is a GRE-style sentence-completion question, where you must fill each blank with a suitable option from the three given. I emboldened the right choices.

  For environmental advocates, the increased focus on ecoefficiency (measures to reduce negative environmental impact brought on by businesses processes) might seem (i) ______. Were these advocates more informed on the possible ramifications of ecoefficient practices, they would likely regard those businesses conforming to ecoefficient standards with (ii) ______. For one, businesses that conform to such standards and become profitable can reinvest this money into industries that are ecoinefficient, or these businesses, if wildly successful, can through sheer scale create more (iii) ______ than they did before.

an outdated approach
a counterproductive strategy
an unqualified gain

outright opposition
measured skepticism
a conciliatory stance

waste
opportunities
improvements

Why is the answer for the last blank "waste"? Is it not a good thing to reinvest into businesses that are ecoinefficient (to make them ecoefficient)? Also if these businesses are "wildly successful" then can't they make more improvements (through other businesses?). I don't understand it. I can understand from the sentence before it that the last word probably has a negative connotation, but I don't understand the last sentence itself.


texts: Which versions of historical English are mutually intelligible?

texts: English has changed tremendously from Old English to Modern English. Which intermediate versions are considered to be mutually intelligible? For that matter, what about asymmetrical intelligible?


texts: Word to describe something that in itself may be admirable, but which happens too often, too predictably, to be 'good'?

texts:
I know boring is one option, but it does not always
apply to the case that something maybe desirable at start,
but once it happens too often, it becomes bad.

For example, in movies and literature, heroes always win over the evil
at last which has become too often to be good, so under that context which word could be used to describe that phenomenon?

I also want to ask can I use cliche? but the dictionary says it applies to phrase or opinion?


texts: Difference in articulation (or voiceness?) of /z/ between Ame and RP?

texts: I have observed some differences between Americans and British people when pronouncing /z/ in almost any word. But I don't know exactly what is the difference, I would describe it as Ame /z/ being more exaggerated, more sonorous, while for British I think I have heard them to make quite often the voiced sound but not fully voiced, in the sense that the voiceness stops before the sibilant sound does. I haven't been able to find anything on the internet so maybe you can help me.


texts: How to elucidate a *speciously* threefold "correlative comparative" in written form

texts:
Consider this sentence:

  The more complex a law, the more difficult it is to comprehend, the
  easier it becomes for the experts to evade it.

As RegDwigнt has pointed out

  ...the chain is not limited to just two items. In fact, there is no
  theoretical limit, only a practical one that depends entirely on
  context.

But what if there aren't actually three links in the chain?

What if the speaker (whose transcribed words I'm now translating) is merely flipping the first link for a sec, making an additional remark, before moving on to the second (and last) one?

Consider:

  The more complex a law and the more difficult it is to comprehend, the
  easier it becomes for the experts to evade it.

Is there any way, by means of formulation or punctuation perhaps, to convey this nuance, without resorting to the utilization of the conjunction and, which somehow seems to rob the sentence of some vague sense of rhythm?

Have I perhaps already taken a step in that direction by omitting the object [it] in the "backside-clause" of my first link?

Compare my first sentence with this one:

  The more complex a law, the more difficult it is to comprehend it, the
  easier it becomes for the experts to evade it.

Is this a more tangible instance of a threefold correlative comparative?

Lastly, consider:

  The more complex a law, the more difficult to comprehend, the
  easier it becomes for the experts to evade it.

Am I there? Or is this ungrammatical?


texts:
Yesterday, I went to a restaurant, drinking some beer with a friend whom I had not seen for several years. I found that he had changed very much. He was lean, now he was very fat...(self-made)

I feel strongly unhappy about these sentences. Yes, I met him in the past. But his change is a fact when I telling the story. I am confused about the usage of the tenses.


texts: Single word request: a non-changing temporal trend

texts:
Is there a word for describing a non-changing temporal trend? Stasis?
E.g. expenditure on health care did not change between 2000-2020.


texts: What is the exact wordings for “There is a single stupid question in the world ... " in Stephen King's "Under the Dome"?,

texts:
The Yomiuri, Japan’s leading newspaper, quoted a phrase

  There is a single stupid question in the world. That is the question which is not put on your mouth

translated from Stephen King’s novel, “Under the Dome” in its August 13 issue.

The quote was made in reference to the remark of Oleg Verniaiev, Ukrainian Silver medal winner of the artistic gymnastics in Rio Janeiro Olympics, who cut in when Kohei Uchimura, the Gold medalist was asked by a reporter if he gained such high score because the judges were all "sympathetic" to him, and said, “It’s a useless question once the score was published. It’s the fair result.” Oleg Verniaiev lost the Gold medal to Uchimura by a narrow margin of 0.099 points.

Ensuing Stephen King’s “There is a single stupid question in the world” phrase, Yomiuri columnist wrote that the reporter’s question looks like “a single stupid question in the world,” but it wasn’t, because it pulled out Verniaiev’s sportsmanly and laudable remarks, which was reported worldwide.

I'm curious to know if somebody knows the exact line of Stephen King that matches the Yomiuri columnist’s quote "There is a single stupid question. That is the question which is not put on your mouth."

I'm simply asking what is the original English version of "There's no stupid question," which I found interesting because it's equivalent to Japanese proverb, "Asking a question is a momentary shame. Not asking a question is an eternal shame," to which quoted line of Stephen King exactly matches. I'm only following the wisdom of this proverb.

I tried to find it by googling, but wasn't able to locate it.


texts: How did 'countenance' evolve to mean 'support or approval'?

texts:
[OED:] The extension of sense from ‘mien, aspect’ to ‘face’ appears to be English: compare French use of mine.
[ Etymonline for 'countenance (v.)' ] late 15c., "to behave or act," from countenance (n.). Sense of "to favor, patronize" is from 1560s, from notion of "to look upon with sanction or smiles." ...
[ Etymonline for 'countenance (n.)' ] mid-13c., from Old French contenance "demeanor, bearing, conduct," from Latin continentia "restraint, abstemiousness, moderation," literally "way one contains oneself," from continentem, present participle of continere (see contain). Meaning evolving Middle English from "appearance" to "facial expression betraying a state of mind," to "face" itself (late 14c.).

Please help me dig deeper than the definition, which I already understand and so ask NOT about. I heed the Etymological Fallacy. But what are some right ways of interpreting the etymology to make it feel reasonable and intuitive?
1. Particularly, how did the meaning (that I bolded) evolve?
2. OED doesn't answer 1, but how does its reference to French (which I quoted) matter here?


texts:
Q. Did the customers stop for narrow selection of food?

  A. The customers stopped for wider selection of food.

Does it mean the customers just ignored or didn't shop for food?


texts: Can I use "In love with" something instead of somebody?

texts: Does it sound fluent when a sportsman says "I'm in love with sport" or a musician says "I'm in love with music"? Or there are better ways to say this?


texts:
Just to save your time, I know the difference between type 2 and 3, but I got confused about the following statement.

  -If you went to bed earlier, you would not be so tired.

I was thinking that, since the speaker probably means something unreal in the past (going to bed earlier), then we should use type 3:

  -If you had gone to bed earlier, you wouldn't be so tired.

Or, is it so that type 2 and 3 can be used sometimes interchangeably? If so, I still suspect there's a slight difference in the meaning; in this case, what's the difference?

Can we say ''If you had gone to bed earlier, you wouldn't have been so tired'' instead of ''If you had gone to bed earlier, you wouldn't be so tired''?


texts: How to list down actions that are done in the past and are still being done in the present?

texts:
Which is more correct?

  "I have conquered sleepless nights, have studied various topics, have
  participated in extra-curricular activities, and have juggled my time
  for school and home duties"

or

  "I have conquered sleepless nights, studied various topics,
  participated in extra-curricular activities, and juggled my time for
  school and home duties"?

Does putting "have" (like in the first sentence) make it look redundant and quite annoying? If none of those are correct, then how should those actions be sequenced?


texts: "Soft-peddle" vs. "Soft-pedal": eggcorn blunder or sly play on words?

texts:
In chat the other day I asked the following question:

  "Recently I've been seeing writers using "soft-peddle" in print (in reputable publications, to boot) when I am certain the trope is "soft-pedal": anybody have an opinion on this?"

My reasoning is that the term comes from the soft pedal of the piano, which the musical among you will recognize as being the pedal that composers want you to use to play a passage quietly and without force.

@tchrist noted that the OED only lists "soft-pedal": "OED attests all three of soft pedal, soft-pedal, soft-pedalling, but not the other." @BarrieEngland agreed, and said he thought "soft-peddle" might be an eggcorn of "soft-pedal."

Further research on my part yielded information that "soft-peddle" is even included on The Eggcorn Database, a Web site I hadn't known existed till now. The term soft-pedal when spoken might be thought by the listener to be related to the "soft sell".

The use of soft-pedal peaked in the middle of the last century, while "soft-peddle" began around the same time and gained a bit of currency since then, though it is still seen far less often — overwhelmingly so — than its forebear.

It gets down to this: Are we seeing a play on words or a blunder? Certainly someone with sufficient writing credentials could be given the benefit of the doubt. Yet it seems that even (or especially) the best writers might want to underscore such a subtle pun with quotes, or set it off some other way that suggests it wasn't just a typo or brain cramp. And if "soft-peddle" makes steady gains, might it not one day supplant the term that spawned it? Bonus points for anyone who can provide at least a single documented instance of "soft-peddle" being used unequivocally as a pun, not a misspelling or misapprehension.


texts: An arabic phrase 'not doing something to a person's likings, deficient' equivalent?

texts:
The phrase in arabic is 'مقصر في شيء', it literally means 'deficient in something'. So for example, if a wife said it about her husband, it would  mean that he's doing some of what is asked and expected of him, but not enough, or not to her liking. A friend can also say it to a friend, it may mean that he hasn't asked about his health, work or even life as often as usual; he is not caring as is expected of him.

It can also mean not helping, not being there, a lack of presence, a lack of doing what you should be doing towards someone/something.

A government or a company can also be a victim of this, towards their people and employees respectively.

It's a criticism, usually said out of love.


texts: According to the AP styleguide should the degree symbol by omitted when writing the GPS coordinates in decimal degrees?

texts: The closest answer I could find was the wikipedia entry for decimal degrees which states that in most systems the degree symbol is omitted.