texts: Apostrophe difference (Ones' and Two's Complement)

texts:
Why does the place of the apostrophes differ in the following two titles?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two's_complement
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ones'_complement

Which one is the correct?


texts: Is a salutation necessary in an email to an unknown person?

texts:
I am submitting an unsolicited article to a magazine by email.  The publication's website provides an email address but not a name.  Rather than starting the email "To Whom it May Concern", "Dear Sir or Madam", or "To the Editor", I am inclined to omit a salutation.  Would this be appropriate?

This question differs from related questions that I was able to find.  While another question asks about choice of salutation for unknown individuals in email (as does this question), omitting the salutation is not discussed.  Another question asks about omitting salutations in emails to known individuals but not unknown individuals.


texts: Isn’t it odd to refer the king of winner as the king of loser?

texts:
There was the following sentence in the article titled, “Vegas. Rove attack ads seal victory for Hillary” appearing in May 10 New Yorker magazine:

  “The oddsmaker’s only concern, he added, was that Rove’s involvement
  in the race will dry up all interest in betting on Republican
  candidates for 2016: “Right now I’m offering Marco Rubio at ninety
  thousand to one and I ain’t getting a bite.”

  While acknowledging that “there’s no sure thing” in the world of
  gambling, Mr. Klugian said  that for professional gamblers, betting
  against Karl Rove is “as good as it gets.” “He’s the LeBron James of
  losing,” he said.”

I understand this is simply a metaphoric joke, and I understand clearly what the oddmaker means.

But “the LeBron James of losing” sounds somewhat farfetching just as saying “the Babe Ruth of losing” and “the Great Alexander of losing” instead of "Darius III of losing"?

Doesn’t this contradiction – ‘the ever-victorious of losing’ - matter?

Does the expression, someone like “the LeBron James of losing,” sound natural and reasonable to native English speakers, simply from the view point of rhetoric and logic?


texts:
I am writing to inquire the convention of writing the following percentage range in academic writing:

  We reduce the extra cost from 99.9% to 12%--24% (depending on different configuration schemes).

Or

  We reduce the extra cost from 99.9% to 12--24% (depending on different configuration schemes).

Maybe I ask which one is more proper in academic writing? I tried to search in Google Scholar but it seems that both usage can be found (although the second one seems more frequent).


texts: Is there any dialect of English that uses "positive ever" to mean "once"?

texts:
One of the most interesting things for me is to learn that some construction that seems completely ungrammatical to me is completely okay for speakers of some other dialect of English. For example, things like "I'm done my homework," "The car needs washed," and "Anymore those things are completely useless."

The last of these constructions, called "positive anymore," comes from a reinterpretation of the word "anymore" used in negative sentences like "I don't like nachos anymore" as meaning something like "nowadays."

Recently, I came across a similar example of what seems to me to be "positive ever":

  hmm..actually, i have ever used a fan in an enclosed room for
  about maybe 1hr..and yes it got stuffy but no i did not die. But the
  stuffiness irritated me so i switched it on the aircon with the fan.

(comment from "Ask a Korean!: FAN DEATH IS REAL")

From the context, it seems like "ever" does not mean "always" here (as it can in archaic speech); instead, it seems to mean something like "once." It seems to me that this reinterpretation is understandable if we look at sentences like "Have you ever [done something]?" which could be rephrased as "Have you [done something] once or more than once?"

I'd like to know if this construction has been observed being used by any native speakers, since I'm not sure if the author above was a native speaker or an English language learner.

I tried to search for more examples on Google, and I came up with a fair amount, but many of them seem to be from non-native speakers. I found the most examples searching for the exact sequence of words "actually I have ever."

"is it correct to say: ‘I have ever been to London’?" (BBC Learning English)
"S/O- Actually, I HAVE Ever" -- BabyCenter
"Actually, I have ever coordinated an international conference before. But at that time, organizers were all Japanese, so that communication was not difficult. This time, however, even a short chatting took much time due to a physical distance." (Sing Out Asia-E)
"Actually, I have ever experienced recovery problem and know that the rewritten data cannot be recovered. Therefore, I hope your data has not been completely overwritten." (Put failed Hard Drive in External Case to retrieve data? -- Apple Support Communities)
"Actually, I have ever transfer my Android phone data to my computer before, so I can share my experience with you." (Best method to transfer contacts from HTC Phones to PC -- Android Community | Flickr)
"Actually I have ever saved the percentage field into a KV store before." (Halting the Event Dispatch Thread activity temporarily (v7)| Stack Exchange)

I can't find any mention of it on the Yale Grammatical Diversity project website where I got the three sentences in my first paragraph. I googled "positive ever," but it just turned up a post talking about the aforementioned archaic "always" meaning, and not the apparently newer "once" meaning.

I know that to many of you, this construction will sound as wrong as it does to me. So, I'm not interested in just hearing that. What I'd like to see is more evidence about it, such as examples or a description of it being used by some native speakers, or another source besides the BBC link above that states that it is not used by any native speakers.


texts: In British slang, an "old sweat" is an old, experienced soldier. What is the American equivalent? I don't mean a veteran (someone who's left the military), I mean someone still in service.


texts: Capitalising "subdistrict", "district", "province" or not

texts:
I write about crimes for a small local newspaper and often have to mention the location where the crime had happened.

The official (translated) hierarchy used in the country I live in is province -> district -> subdistrict.

My problem is that I don't know whether these words are supposed to be capitalised or not. I write in British English.

Here are some examples I've made up where I refrain from capitalising.

"(...) a gated community in Donsai subdistrict (...)"
"(...) who lives in the district of Wichasira (...)"
"(...) he was arrested in Chatong province (...)"
"(...) a road connecting the two subdistricts Talang and Saitai (...)"

Is there any rule for this?


texts: Single word for frequently reassessing a task or situation

texts:
Is there a single word that means to reassess or reevaluate a situation at frequent intervals?

How about a two-word alliteration (e.g. "fail fast")?


texts: How did the word "copacetic" come into use?

texts: I once heard the late John Ciardi (NPR's "A Word in Your Ear") try to explain that the 1920s idiom, "copacetic" (meaning completely satisfactory), entered into the African-American vocabulary in Harlem from the days when Jews and African Americans lived there together.  He argued that copacetic has the same meaning as the Israeli idiom "kol b'seder" which literally means "all is in order."  The problem with that, said my Harlem-raised father-in-law, is that the Jews in Harlem spoke Yiddish and kol b'seder was not used in Yiddish.  The dictionary I've got is not helpful. Can someone come up with a better explanation?


texts:
Is the categorization of sentences into simple, compound, and complex established firmly by the rules of the English grammar or is this compartmentalization merely a simplistic way of looking at the English sentence?
Take for instance, the sentence You must be joking about the ongoing crisis in their family.
The part You must be joking can well stand on its own as a complete sentence and the presence or absence of the PP doesn't really change the type of sentence it is.
Similarly, First deserve, then desire lends itself to a similar treatment: (You should) first deserve can stand on its own as a complete sentence. I suppose it is again a simple sentence like the former. But one might as well argue that the clause (You should) first deserve, is (logically) dependent on the second clause that follows the comma, which makes the sentence complex.
As indicated earlier, my question is about the merit of the sentence typology and its scope.


texts: How to refer to those fully-equipped houses people let to university students?

texts:
I have a friend who rents in an one-story house. Just your common house: there's a living room, a kitchen, and three rooms (all of them occupied by university students).

It something like this from the outside:

How would you call this kind of building?


texts: "Bear something in mind" or "Bear in mind something"

texts:
I've been seeing both of these constructions all around, and I'd like to know if there is any rule that controls the usage of this expression.

For what I've read, it seems to me that "Bear something in mind" is used when that something is short, or a single word, like "Bearing this in mind we have that..."

On the other hand, "Bear in mind something" seems to be used when that something in longer, or even just longer than a single word, like "Bearing in mind both of those previous things...".

Any confirmation on this? What would you use if you are referring to an annotation? (e.g. "Bearing [1] in mind..." or "Bearing in mind theorems [1] and [2]...").


texts: Commas before and after "therefore" but not before and after "also"

texts:
Consider the following sentences:

The shirt is pink and is, therefore, very stylish.
The shirt is pink and is also very stylish.

In the first sentence, I feel as though I need to use commas around the word "therefore." However, I don't feel the need to use commas around "also" in the second sentence. This is strange to me because it seems that the two words are acting as the same part of speech in each sentence.
Is the punctuation in one of these sentences incorrect? Is there some subtle difference between the words "therefore" and "also" that explains why commas could be warranted in the first sentence but not in the second?


texts: Word Choice/Phrase: Alternate Term for “Little Opportunity”

texts:
I'm looking to use another word in place of "little opportunity," but can't seem to think of one. Any suggestions?
They left the country to escape the little opportunity.


texts:
I've been reading about "Calabar beans":

Its chemical composition, along with a little armchair psychology,
may explain why the plant had such different effects on the poor souls
facing a trial by ordeal. A person who knew they were innocent might
chew the bean quickly and swallow it with pride, ingesting a quick dose
that would cause them to vomit before the bean could do more damage.
A guilty party, dreading death, might take tiny, slow bites. Ironically,
this attempt to prolong their own life would only hasten their death by
delivering a gradual, well-digested dose of poison.

I feel confused for the meaning of "a little armchair psychology" in the above the sentence.
"Its chemical composition, along with a little armchair psychology,
may explain why the plant had such different effects on the poor souls
facing a trial by ordeal."
= Based on its chemical composition and a little general psychology, we may know
why the plant had such different effects on the poor souls facing a trial by ordeal.
I'm not sure what I think is right.
Could you explain what "a little armchair psychology" means more easily?


texts:
An earlier question (Relative clauses: “I did the best I could.”) asks about the antecedent of the relative clause, and there are two answers there:

The one (by @Man_From_India) accepted as the best answer by the question owner @Araucaria says that the fused-head NP (the best) is the antecedent, whereas the other answer says "best" itself is a noun, which @Araucaria rejects.

I agree with the fused-head analysis but do not agree that the antecedent of the relative clause is the best. I believe it's only best, the fused head itself, that is the antecedent, not the entire the best, because the entire nominal best I could is first formed and then the determines that nominal.

That said, whichever answer you choose -- between the two answers and mine -- all three answers agree that the relative clause (I could) is a postmodifier within an NP (the best I could).

But relative clauses can also be found in an AdjP (Adjective Phrase) or even an AdvP (Adverb Phrase), according to CaGEL* (p 1060):

Here, CaGEL analyzes the phrase (the fastest that he's ever been) in [8i] as an AdjP, not as a fused-head NP. But I wonder why it can't be analyzed as a fused-head NP with fastest being the fused head of fastest and person.

Now, CaGEL does agree with the fused-head analysis in other cases (p 1054):

In [65iii], CaGEL treats the phrase (the biggest that I've ever seen) as a fused-head NP.

If the answers to the quoted question are right in that the phrase (the best I could) is a fused-head NP, and if it's correct to analyze that [8i] has an AdjP whereas [65iii] has an fused-head NP, then how do you determine whether a phrase seemingly headed by a superlative adjective is a fused-head NP or an AdjP?

*The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by Huddleston & Pullum


texts:
I'm trying to clarify why this sentence seems wrong:

  If there is no strict definition, everyone could understand migration slightly differently.

My initial response was that it was wrong, but why? These sentences seem OK:

  If he doesn't look at the map he could get lost.
  If he doesn't do his work, he could get fired.

Are my intuitions wrong here? Is it actually OK? Is there some interference between could for ability and could for possibility?


texts: How did 'to rejoin' evolve to mean 'to retort' (only in English)?

texts:
I know of the 2 different homonyms behind 'rejoin'; I ask only about the one that means 'to retort'.

  rejoin (v.2) [⟸] "to answer," mid-15c., legal term,
   from Middle French rejoin-, stem of rejoindre "to answer to a legal charge,"
  from Old French re- "back" (see re-) + joindre "to join" (see join).
  General (non-legal) meaning first recorded 1630s.

  rejoinder (n.) [⟸]
      mid-15c., from Middle French noun use of rejoindre (see rejoin (v.2)). Originally "defendant's answer to the replication" (the fourth stage in the pleadings in an action at common law). For noun use of infinitive in French law terms, see waiver.

Please help me dig deeper than the definition, which I already understand and so ask NOT about. Please expose and explain all hidden, missing semantic drifts and links. How should the etymology be interpreted, to understand how the semantic drifts abstracted and severed from the original literal meaning?

1. How did  re- "back" + joindre "to join" combine to mean the above?
What or who is joining back, to what, where, or whom?

2. The Modern French verb rejoindre doesn't possess the definition above.
Does anyone know why?


texts: Can single quotes be used as double quotes for the purposes of denoting words?

texts:
I've noticed a whole spate of questions here on this StackExchange using single quotes ' '  as a substitute for double quotes " " , in their function of denoting words as words.  Is this usage kosher as long as one sticks to the same convention within a text?  Is there an idiosyncratic use of single quotes in this manner by an authority, like the New Yorker?

EDIT: I probably should have added an example to make my point more clear.  Which of the following titles is better stylistically:

  Is 'passion' a more descriptive word to use in this sentence versus 'love'?

versus

  Is "passion" a more descriptive word to use in this sentence versus "love"?


texts: Is “'the most tawdry’ race-baiting” ungrammatical?

texts:
When I was transcribing the following sentence of Time magazine’s (September 1st issue) article ’”The Tragedy of Ferguson”;

  “We elected a black man with a Muslim name to be President. What other
  country would do that? The conversation has been blunted by the
  President himself in the face of some of the most tawdry race-baiting
  since Selma.”

the alarm of MS Word grammar checker popped out on the desktop giving the following suggestion, and demanding correction;

  “Comparative Use: When comparing with a one-syllable adjective and
  “er” or “est” to the end of adjective, do not use “more” or “most”.
  When comparing with a two syllable adjective, add “or” or “est” in
  addition to the adjective. Instead of: This star is more bright,
  consider, This star is brightest.

Did the writer neglected “er /est” on one /two-syllable-word rule, or “most tawdry” is perfectlly acceptable, and I should dismiss grammar checker warnings?


texts: Is "It's not a second, seven seconds away" a kind of idiom in English?

texts:
Is "it's not a second, seven seconds away" a kind of idiom in English? What is its meaning?

I am trying to make sense of the chorus in "7 seconds" by Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry and I just can't make it:

  Roughneck and rudeness,
  We should be using, on the ones who practice wicked charms
  For the sword and the stone
  Bad to the bone
  Battle is not over
  Even when it's won
  And when a child is born into this world
  It has no concept
  Of the tone the skin is living in
      It's not a second
      Seven seconds away
      Just as long as I stay
      I'll be waiting
      It's not a second
      Seven seconds away
      Just as long as I stay
      I'll be waiting (x3)


texts: A few miles into the town --- verbless clause, or adverbial phrase?

texts:
A few miles into the town, I saw a beautiful building that was now abandoned.

I don't know if "a few miles into the town" is a verbless clause like this

  (Being) a few miles into the town, I saw a beautiful building that was now abandoned.

if it is just a normal adverb phrase like this

  I saw a beautiful building that was now abandoned a few miles into the town.

Because, when trying to use this prepositional phrase that starts with "into" without "a few miles", it sounds strange.

  Into the town, I saw a beautiful building.<-It sounds strange, unless it is used as a verbless clause.

  Now (being) into the town, I saw a beautiful building. <- Sounds better I think.

Which one is it? Is "a few miles into the town" a verbless clause, or an adverb phrase?


texts:
Can I change a sentence of the adverb of 'Apace' as Apacer in comparative adjective joining 'er'

For example:

"She continued to work apace but he did apacer than her"

I really looked for it in many English dictionaries but I couldn't find it. Do you think that it works in comparison?


texts: auspicious vs auspicial - why two of them and etymology

texts:
I always knew the word auspicious.
A colleague of mine used the word auspicial and I thought this was a spelling mistake.

I made a search and am seeing it in a lot of dictionaries.

Does anyone know the etymology of this word?


texts: What is a verb that means "is possible"?

texts:
These phrases have the same meaning:

  an existing X / X is existing / X exists

As do these:

  a possible X / X is possible / X [sought word]

Is there a verb that corresponds to 'exists', but has the meaning 'is possible'? I would prefer a widely recognised word if one does exist, but will accept neologisms too.

In other words (suggested edit):

verb-ify "[sought word]: is possible" in the vein of "exists: is existing"

ONE CAN SKIP, AS OPTIONAL, ALL TEXT BELOW HERE. IT IDENTIFIES CHALLENGES FOUND IN ANSWERING THE QUESTION. MAY BE IT's HELPFUL.

To illustrate: (1) I went to a store and bought milk, or instead (2) I went to a concert (and did not buy milk). In fact: I went to a concert. (1) is merely possible, (2) is possible AND happened. Both have is-ness in a phase space, occupy a place there, but (2) ALSO corresponds to a dynamical history and so to a physical space.

(2) [sought word]-s AND exists. It is (selected) from (ex) it (nature). (1) [sought word]-s merely; it is present in a place (pos) and allows (ibil) an operation on it, e.g., taking a subset and this subset is nature (all that is).

To be possible means, translated, to be present in a place in a way that allows it to be selected. What exists is selected from this where this is that place, and by the way, is possible (it was in this). This exists is what we observe, it being (in general?) AND being selected.

No short verb can be formed from pos and ibil. For possibil is the original spelling of possible, I suspect. Either pos and ibil with other suffixes (e.g., posit, able) mean something different in the english language.

A) potentialiates (suggested by JB) Problem: what is potential exists (in sense of being selected from the phase space). Merely it exists in one form but can be further selected to also exist in another form. For example, a further excitation of a field or potential is a particle. Both exist. The field is there, in nature, like the particle. It exists, and is possible but not merely possible.

B) avails (suggested by SF). This suggests being present somewhere in a place. This place is not completely isolated off (unlike what is impossible, which also resides in a phase space of all impossibles, but nothing from that list ever interacts with what exists, due to its isolation; we say it's impossible, namely, what is present in that list is not given to be selected into existence.) What is available or avails here allows something done to it: such as have a subset extracted from this.

Problem?  It suggests purpose, while "is possible" does not. Possibility of a thing is observer independent (and so is its existence).

Solution? We interpret the purposive aspect in a non teleological way. If nothing was possible then nothing would exist, and if nothing exists than nothing is possible after all, everything is impossible, including this impossibility. Something is possible therefore and something does exist. Possibility realizes a purpose merely in allowing existence to take place, no more no less, which is merely a universal consistency.

Maybe we are justified so in using "X avails" in this universal sense as a verb corresponding, in its effects, to "X is possible"?


texts:
I have the following sentence and I need your help:

"This and the previous case study show the benefits of optimization approaches."

Is it correct to use the singular for 'case study' altough I am referring to two case study/studies?
I'd appreciate every comment.


texts:
From the SAT:

  When Doris Lessing published The Golden Notebook in 1962, it instantly established herself as one of the most important literary voices of her generation.

It said that it is wrong. Could someone tell me why?


texts: Is the "for + proposition" form still used nowadays?

texts:
I am currently studying English and as such enjoy reading English books from time to time; for instance I have recently been reading the fifth book of A Song of Ice and Fire since the French version was not to be released anytime soon.

As I read it I often came across a grammatical form I had never encountered previously, this form being the usage of "for" to introduce propositions as per this example:

"We must learn english, for it is one of the most widely-spoken language."

My question if the following: is this form correct (I do think it is), and if it is then is it still used today? I really like this usage of the "for" preposition but still, I'd like to be sure it can be used before actually using it (in class or elsewhere).

Thanks!

EDIT: Upon further searches, now knowing that "for" is in that case a conjunction, I found out that this form is perfectly correct - though it is more of a literary form.


texts:
Nothing is so happy as to hear from your family.
Nothing is so happy as hearing from your family.

Which is more natural for native speakers?


texts: What is the correct pronunciation of “regex”?

texts:
The term regular expression is often shortened to regex. What is the correct pronunciation of the g in regex?

Is it like the g1  in gallium, or is it like the g2  in giraffe? I’ve heard it said both ways.

1.   IPA /g/
2.  IPA /dʒ/


texts:
What does "lost sales" mean in the sentence below?

  The most important quality cost, lost sales, is often omitted from quality cost reports.


texts: Which preposition in front of "line" — "on", "in", "at"?

texts:
The result of a Google search for "error" and "PREP line" is:

"error" "on line": 439,000,000 results
"error" "in line": 60.600.000 results
"error" "at line": 35,800,000 results

While on is the indisputable number one, in and at have also very many hits.
In the following context, which one should I use.

__ the first line you create an instance of XXX and XXX leads to the runtime error __ the last line.

I think, both prepositions are different. Although the word create refers to the action which is executed while runtime, the former part refers to the actual code that is written.
In contrast, the latter part is figurative. I don't refer to the written code. The error does not really occur in the code but the code is the representation of the assembly which fails.
Thus, I have two bests guess:

On the first line you create an instance of XXX and XXX leads to the runtime error at the last line.
In the first line you create an instance of XXX and XXX leads to the runtime error on the last line.


texts: Is "Which country are you guys at?" correct?

texts:
I'm not sure whether this sentence is right.
" Which country are you guys at?" I said this without any hesitation but ... I don't think it's right. I'm not 100% sure.

So my own corrections are:

Which country are you guys from?
Which country are you guys in?

I'd like to know how I can put this more naturally.
What else can I say that would be correct?


texts: Place of articulation of /t/ and /d/ in words like "part", "cord", "weird" in Standard AmE

texts:
What is the usual place of articulation of a final /t/ or /d/ after /r/? I am actually only interested in isolated environments when a word like "weird" falls at the end of an utterance (not followed by any other sound) as in the following sentence: That's weird.

In my mind, a sensible pronunciation would be [wiɻd] (or [wiɻʔd~wiɻʔ]) but trying to move the tongue back to the alveolar position after pronouncing the retroflex [ɻ], as I have noticed, requires significant effort (though it is certainly possible; I can do it), and less strenuous would be to replace the alveolar [d] with the retroflex tap [ɽ]. So I really want to know if this is what native American English speakers actually do? What is actually going on there? Or maybe I should keep practicing and practicing until it hopefully becomes easier?


texts: Is it allowed to use 'however' with 'in spite of'?

texts:
Can you please tell me if it is permissible to use "however" with "in spite of" at the beginning of a sentence such as this one:

  The proposed model is efficient. However, in spite of positive impacts such as a, b and c, we conclude that the model should not be implemented as described above.


texts: An Irish-Canadian poet told me that my last name, Stimpson, comes from glimpse.  What is the actual etymology of the proper name and the common noun? Are they related? When did they first appear in the English language?


texts:
"Check out this article"

Where did this term come from and why those choice of words?  I understand it perfectly semantically, but when you think about it it doesn't make sense, check out seems to mean to exit, e.g. “I checked out of the hospital, my toe was fine”.


texts: The process is gradually stabilizing vs the process is stabilizing gradually

texts: I found this sentence in a university test: "the process....gradually", and I was supposed to fill the gap with either the present simple or the present continuous form of the verb "to stabilize". Without context I really didn't know which tense I had to use. I ended up using the present continuous tense because I thought it made a bit more sense. So, is it correct to say "The process is stabilizing gradually"? I do know that adverbs should be placed after the verb "to be", therefore from a grammatical standpoint "the process is gradually stabilizing" is probably the better sentence of the two. It seems to me, though, that in this case putting the adverb at the end of the sentence does not sound terrible.


texts: A word which comes with meaning like "something that works in parallel"

texts:
I need to write about a technology which works with another in parallel.

What is a single word which means something like "something which works in parallel" or "works in parallel"?


texts:
Is the following sentence correctly written?

Maggie sighed, “I don't know,” she complained.

Should Maggie sighed be a separate sentence?

Thanks


texts: Can I use inverse negation in modern English?

texts:
I've seen it used a lot in older texts and was curious if it can still be used in modern writing without too many questions. I think in a lot of places it can make sentences much cleaner.

Example:

"He is a man so self evidently righteous that the thought of sin does not pass through his mind." (Traditional negation)

Vs.

"He is a man so self evidently righteous that the thought of sin passes not through his mind." (Inverse negation)

Thanks in advance (:


texts:
re1

  Pronunciation: /riː/   /reɪ/

  PREPOSITION

  In the matter of (used
  typically as the first word in the heading of an official document or
  to introduce a reference in a formal letter):
  ‘re: invoice 87’

  1.1 About; concerning:
  ‘I saw the deputy head re the incident’

Seen above is the Oxford Dictionaries entry for re, which Google displays as the result of a search for what does re stand for.

Certainly this is the definition, but a few questions:

How did this come about? Oxford Dictionaries claims the origin is from the Latin word "res" meaning "thing", but "thing" hardly seems relevant to a word meaning "regarding".

  Origin
  Latin, ablative of res 'thing'.

How should it be written - "re", "re:", "RE", "RE:", "Re", "Re:" or something else?
How is it pronounced - "ree", "ray" or something else?


texts: "It is a highly unusual form of melody, one that..." — what is the referent of "one"?

texts:
It is a highly unusual form of melody, one that occurs only in this composer's work

In the above sentence, what is the referent of the pronoun one? Is it melody or the entire prepositional phrase form of melody? Or, perhaps the referent is the subject of the sentence, it? I frequently hear the rule that the referent has to be the prior proximate noun.


texts:
My eyes are like cat's eyes.

My eyes and Jim's eyes are like cat's eyes.

My eyes and Jim's eyes are like cats' eyes.

Sentence two or three, which is correct? She is talking about her boyfriend's eyes and her eyes both.

Confused. I am a middle school student. Help.


texts: Who coined the phrase “trickle-down government” and what does it mean?

texts:
“Trickle-down government” or “trickledown government” seems to be one of Mitt Romney’s more memorable lines from the October 3, 2012 political debate between the Republican presidential candidate and President Barack Obama. But he didn’t coin it. Google finds examples in political discourse going back to the 1992 presidential election.

Who invented the term?
What does it mean?


texts: What do you call these plastic that wraps around books/magazines?

texts:
They look like this:

Do you usually just call them plastic wrappers or wrappings?


texts: What does "parliament towns" in "The Wealth of Nations" mean?

texts:
In Chapter III, Book II of The Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith), the author wrote:

  If you except Rouen and Bourdeaux, there is little trade or industry in any of the parliament towns of France; and the inferior ranks of people, being chiefly maintained by the expense of the members of the courts of justice, and of those who come to plead before them, are in general idle and poor.

I have looked into the definitions of "parliament" in Oxford Dictionary but cannot find a appropriate meaning for the word when it comes with "towns".

So what does "parliament towns" mean?


texts: Is thera a meaning for worth "BLUE" = "GAY"?

texts:
i want to ask is there in englisch language a meaining for worth BLUE = GAY/HOMOSEXUAL?
Because i found that meaning in Urbandictionary for sentence "Am I blue?":
"2. A question asked that can be taken as literally "Am I gay?" or "Do I seem gay?"

Sue: Am I blue?
Beth: Not really, but the brunette staring at you is."

Or is it a mistake and i can't use BLUE for GAY?
Thanks for answers (and sorry for my english, that is not my native language)!


texts: Is it correct to say " have been not" in English?

texts:
For example , is it correct to say that " The service has been not available since 3 days ago ". And, Is the meaning of it different from "The service has't been available since 3 days ago"

Edit: changed "have" to "has"


texts:
Would I say:

What follows is the Xs...
What follows are the Xs...

or something else? In my case X is a table.


texts:
He sleeps at 9 pm.

What type of phrase is "at 9 pm"— adverbial or prepositional?? What are the parts of speech of "9", "pm" respectively?


texts: I have been unable to find a definition, or a source for the word mertilize. I've seen it used on TV, in articles, and even in comic strips.


texts:
When you want to describe a set of keys bound to a huge metal ring, like the ones you'd see in a game of movie with medieval settings on the belt of a prison guard,  what word would you use? Key bunch? Key bundle? Key ring? Or just plain Keys? For example, does the sentence,

  "We have to steal his key bunch to escape,"

sound proper English? If not, how would you describe the keys?


texts: Meaning of the word 'apprehension' in following context

texts:
Sentence: As she had never been in such a situation before, her apprehension was understandable.

Options:

eagerness
fear
hesitation
excitement


texts: Substitute for "The thought came to my mind"

texts: I want a substitute for the sentence "The thought came to my mind". It should be a slightly formal substitute as I am writing a formal letter. Can someone help me with that?


texts: Combining future perfect tenses in a sentence

texts:
Which is correct to say?

  On Valentines Day 2013 the iPhone will have been for sale exactly half as long as the iPod has been for sale.

or

  On Valentines Day 2013 the iPhone will have been for sale exactly half as long as the iPod will have been for sale.

I initially wrote the first one as a tweet, but I reread it and thought it might imply that I'm comparing it to how long the iPod has been for sale from the present date. However, the phrasing of the first seems more natural to me. Was my change correct, incorrect, or are they interchangeable?


texts: What idioms could be used to say you are a close relative with someone?

texts:
Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë are such talented writers.
  No wonder, they are cut from the same cloth.

To be cut from the same cloth means to be very similar, according to Cambridge Idioms Dictionary, and I wonder, are there any other idioms that could be used to imply not only that they are similar, but that they share genes?


texts:
Possible Duplicate:
  When should I use “each other” vs. “one another”?

It occurred to me recently that I've been using these phrases interchangeably (basing my decision purely on how formal I want to sound).  Are they really interchangeable?

What's the appropriate usage in:

"Human beings often fail to understand what's most important to [___]..."

Is it "one another", "each other", either, or neither?


texts: Reading a book from 1995, I encountered the word lest in the proof of a theorem. I had not seen it in about twenty years of reading and working on mathematical contexts.  Is this word used nowadays? Babylon suggested to use "against the possibility" instead of it but I found it very easy and beautiful. Did this online software suggest me correctly?


texts: Which one is more correct to use: "Will you turn on the lights in the kitchen?" OR "Will you turn the lights on in the kitchen?"

texts: I'm basically asking if it's "turn on the lights" vs "turn the lights on."


texts: Contextual meaning of "grown in orchards" and "considered a fruit"

texts:
What does grown in orchards and considered a fruit mean here?

  ... but if you're willing to think of both as grown in orchards and considered a fruit, you can, in fact, compare them ...

This refers to a comparison between IBM Lotus Domino and Microsoft Sharepoint.


texts:
I would like to properly use tho in my sentence:

  Tho' I'm small, my effort and guts are risin'

Considering it is words spoken by an individual, I would like to know whether or not it is appropriate for me to use tho with an apostrophe.


texts: I want to say: "The cricket is much more scripted than the WWE". Should I add 'is' at the end, and if so, what is the significance of it?


texts: Is the English-speaking Internet community moving towards Americanized spelling?

texts:
Some of my spelling checking software failed to recognize the American spelling of the words "organize" and "realize" when a British English dictionary is being used. Curious, I looked up the British form of these words, "organise" and "realise" on oxforddictionaries.com and realize that it actually places heavy emphasis on the American spelling instead of the British one.

Upon further investigation, OED actually has this clarification which I quote:

  Why does the OED spell verbs such as organize and recognize in this
  way?

  The suffix -ize comes ultimately from the Greek verb stem -izein. In
  both English and French, many words with this ending have been adopted
  (usually via Latin), and many more have been invented by adding the
  suffix to existing words. In modern French the verb stem has become
  -iser, and this may have encouraged the use of -ise in English, especially in verbs that have reached English via French. The -ise
  spelling of verbs is now very common in British use, and Oxford
  dictionaries published in the UK generally show both forms where they
  are in use, but give -ize first as it reflects both the origin and the
  pronunciation more closely, while indicating that -ise is an allowable
  variant. Usage varies across the English-speaking world, so it is
  important to record both spellings where they exist. There are a
  number of verbs with only one accepted spelling – advise and capsize,
  for example. This is not just perverse: they have different
  etymologies. The important thing is that people should be consistent
  in the form they use in a given document.

Nevertheless, from the way things are being presented, it does give me the impression that the American spelling is given a higher priority in a dictionary that is prepared by a renowned British university. Are we moving towards Americanized spelling and more importantly, are the people of Britain moving towards Americanized spelling?


texts: Does 'their' point to the people or the officials in this sentence

texts:
Can someone clarify whether this sentence is talking of the people's morals or the officials morals? What is the terminology that explains it e.g. Clause/conjunction etc. I don't yet know the keywords to search for this issue.

  The people trust that the officials they have elected will hold steadfast to their morals, ideas, and ethical principles.


texts: Colon or dash as a separator in a headline

texts:
I’m creating a headline (for my online digest), and I’m wondering if I should use a dash

  Web Animations API - grouping and sequencing animations

or a colon

  Web Animations API: grouping and sequencing animations

to separate the category (“Web Animations API”) from the the topic (“grouping and sequencing animations”) of the blog post.


texts: Can "however" and "meanwhile" be used in the middle of a sentence?

texts: Is it acceptable to have the joining words meanwhile and however in the middle of a sentence? I have always thought that they should open a sentence, unlike other conjunctions such as because or although which can used at the beginning of a sentence or in the middle.


texts: Why do distributive adjectives mostly take a singular noun while quantitative adjectives mostly take a plural noun?

texts: I am sure that there are some exceptions to this, but I have noticed that distributive adjectives like “each”, “every”, “either”, “neither”, etc., mostly take a singular noun, while quantitative adjectives like “some”, “many”, “all”, “few” etc., in most cases take a plural noun. Both of these set of words refer to the number of something, sound similar and are used in similar contexts, but they have different rules guiding them. Is there some deep reason for why this is the case?


texts: I have stomach ache vs I have 'a' stomach ache

texts: I'm confused about this particular sentence, and other ones using ache,I know that 'I have a headache' is correct and works, but it sounds a little weird to me if someone says 'I have a stomachache/a toothache/a backache/an earache'. I feel that with the exception of headache, these should all be uncountable, does anyone agree with me or am I barking up the wrong tree?


texts:
Is it "Bob and I"  or "Bob and me" when describing a picture?

I've read the other links but they all use an example with a longer sentence. like "Bob and I went to the store", or "Me and Bob had lunch today."

But what if it's a picture and the sentence below is just "Bob and I"? Is that correct?


texts: Word for "A feeling of lethargy experienced after eating a meal"

texts:
From this link, I found the word to be "the Itis".

Is there a synonym for this word?

  "I got the worst case of ______ after that cheese steak with fries".


texts: ‘Longears’, ‘Tapperbill’, and ‘Painted-wings’

texts:
I was reading The Intruder by James Reeves. I couldn't understand the meaning of the following lines

  Longears helter-skelter shoots
  Into his house among the roots.

  At work upon the highest bark,
  Tapperbill knocks off to hark.

  Painted-wings through sun and shade
  Flounces off along the glade.

What is a longears or a tapperbill? What does he mean when using the word Painted-wings? Being a non-native English speaker, I could not understand the terms used. Can anyone shine a light on this?


texts:
Can anybody explain how to use "times" properly.

"I've done this hundreds times."
or
"I've done this hundreds of times."

Maybe it is difference between British and American.


texts: Can I use simple present tense instead of past tense for recent events?

texts:
So, is this sentence can be use

I am his teammate last match. (but we are not teammates this match now )

instead of

I was his teammate last match

If the last match've just ended recently


texts: What's a good replacement to "cookbook" as referring to general-purpose manual-like computer books?

texts: O'Reilly published a series of "cookbooks" which are general-purpose manual-like computer books that usually have wide but shallow coverage of a topic.  What's a good word that's less rhetorical than "cookbook" but has a similar connotation?


texts: Can a hypothetical "could" main clause stand on its own without an expressed conditional?

texts:
I have been reading Meaning and the English Verb (Leech, Geoffrey N. 2004). I like its systematic treatment on tense, aspect, mood, and modality. I think it's a must-have for any advanced ESL learners. It's just amazing and extremely accessible, really a perfect complement to Practical English Usage by Swan.

But only one thing I still feel uncertain about is whether could can be used alone without adding "if-clause" to express irrealis thoughts. I know it is true of would(e.g. it would be fantastic to get to the moon), but I'm not sure it's also true of could or might.

  Meaning and the English Verb §183

    HYPOTHETICAL POSSIBILITY. Used hypothetically, could and might are substitutes for may in expressing factual possibility (see §121):

    There could be trouble at the World Cup match tomorrow. | The door might be locked already. | Our team might still win the
    race.

    The effect of the hypothetical auxiliary, with its implication ‘contrary to expectation’, is to make the expression of possibility
    more tentative and guarded. Our team might still win the race can
    be paraphrased ‘It is barely possible that…’ or ‘It is possible,
    though unlikely, …’.

  Meaning and the English Verb §186

    To conclude, the following sentences illustrate this multiplicity with examples of seven different meanings of could:

    #1, #2 and #3 are omitted here.
     #4. Hypothetical equivalent of can (= ‘possibility’) (cf. §176)
     The house is one of the most beautiful that could be imagined.
     #5. Hypothetical equivalent of can (= ‘ability’) (cf. §176)
     Do you know anyone who could repair this clock for me?
     #6. Hypothetical equivalent of can (= ‘permission’) (cf. §176)
     I’d be grateful if I could borrow your electric drill.
     #7. Tentative equivalent of may (= ‘factual possibility’) (cf. §183)
     The weather has been terrible up there in the mountains. You could find climbing very difficult.

    The last meaning is rather more anomalous than the others, as it shows could extending its range of meaning into the epistemic
    territory of ‘factual possibility’ which is the domain of may, not
    can.

I would think Leech is making clashing points here. Isn't the usage of could in the three examples in §183 identical with that in #7? If so, why does Leech say #7 is more anomalous? or, to put it another way, why does Leech separate #7 from #4 and #5?

I would think #7 is the most common usage of could. Is the usage of #7 derived form #4 or #5?
For #4 and #5. I would think they are just the same as:

  The house is one of the most beautiful that can be imagined.
   Do you know anyone who can repair this clock for me?

What are the unexpressed conditionals implied in #4 and #5 respectively? If we used can, would any nuances be suggested? Why bother to use hypothetical mood there?


texts: I'm in doubt. I don't know what preposition should be used after don. I couldn't find any. However I found that don means put on... Is it correct to say "oxygen masks were donned on passengers"?


texts: What's the meaning of "very much there" in this context?

texts:
Let them hear once again the strength, courage, and capabilities you see in them, often below the surface, but very much there.

I think "very much there" means being close to the surface.


texts: Can once be used as an adverb in the beginning of the sentence?

texts:
sentence:
Once I left my phone at home and I couldn't pay attention to my work at all....
According to Cambridge Dictionary Online, once can be both conjugation and adverb. It is obvious that in this case, once is functioning as adverb, but it sounds very contrived to me. So I check the Corpus of Contemporary American English. After reading the first page it is clear to me that once has never been used as an adverb at the beginning of the sentence. I think there must be a grammar rule that says that once can only function as conjugation meaning "as soon as "


texts: Is "bird's eye point of view" considered informal?

texts: I am writing a scientific paper, and I want to convey the idea that one advantage of a centralized management approach is that it provides a "bird's eye point of view." However, I found few other papers that use this expression, particularly in my research field. Is it considered informal? Is there a better way to express this?


texts: Is there a term I can use for "Handy things to know"

texts:
I'm currently doing coursework for one of my subjects and I am building an application to assist a student in memorising certain things within Maths that give them an advantageous edge in exams. The issue I am having is within my write up I can't seem to find anything better to say rather than "Helping students remember handy things for the exam". Any term or phrase that can say this in short or in a better sounding way would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance :)


texts: Is “have the steel” an idiom in the statement, “Mitt Romney would have the steel to order the 2011 operation that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan”?

texts:
I found the phrase “have the steel” in the following sentence of Time magazine’s article (April 30) titled, “Why Obama Owns bin Laden.”

“Judging from the Republican response, President Obama's ad asking whether Mitt Romney would have ordered the raid that captured Osama bin Laden raises serious questions

There is a kind of biographical line running between those dusty sparring matches a world away and the ad the Obama re-election campaign has released on the question of whether Mitt Romney would have the steel to order the 2011 operation that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.”

As I assumed “Mitt Romney would ‘have the steel’ to order the 2011 operation” means “Romney had the guts to order the raid,” I checked English dictionaries online to make it sure:

Cambridge English Dictionary registers “have nerves of steel, meaning ‘to be brave,’ but not “have the steel.”

OED registers “have the nerve to” and “get a nerve doing,” but not “have the steel.”

Merriam-Webster registers neither ‘have the steel’ nor “have nerves of steel.”

Is “have the steel” an idiom or common usage meaning “be brave” or “have the guts” as I guessed? Can I say “He had the steel to tell his boss ‘you’re wrong’?”


texts:
Why are you "On a train" yet "In a car" when you are inside both vehicles?

"On a bike" makes sense but "On a plane" seems wrong as you are actually inside the plane rather than on it.


texts: Academic / formal equivalent of : there are two sides to every story

texts:
"Every coin has two sides" or "there are two sides to every story" is often over-used and may even come off as cliche-sounding. I will of course use them still if that's what I really want to say.
However, in the spirit of curiosity, I want to find an existing academic-sounding equivalent of this concept.
To be more specific, what I don't like about it is how wordy it is. I want to reduce the core message to just 2-4 words.
My first thought was to use Latin to convey the core message, but perhaps that's not within the English SE periphery. Just for illustration, here is a somewhat common usage of Latin in English-language publications: chaos begets chaos

abyssus abyssum invocat

How can I shorten or otherwise make "there are two sides to every story" more academic sounding?


texts: What is the correct way to deal with a quantity of gravity in science fiction?

texts:
I'm trying to edit someone's sci-fi novel, and I'm running into a need to refer to levels of gravity in a space station and on other planets in terms of Earth gravity. I cannot find a correct standard for this. Would it be 0.3 g? 0.3 G? 0.3 Gs? 0.3 G's?

And generally it's desirable to spell out units of measure in fiction, I think, but that doesn't really work here, does it? "A third of Earth's gravity" is a fine workaround when it's seldom needed, but when the concept comes up a lot, the correct unit is necessary.

I have had no luck Googling this; believe me, I tried. I'm not even sure if conceptually what I'm dealing with is G (Newton's gravitational constant) or g-force. I have seen both "g" and "G's" used in various places, but what I'm looking for is the accepted standard for use in science fiction novels.

EDIT: For clarity's sake, I should mention that almost all the main characters are humans from Earth or space stations near Earth, so the perspective is based on Earth gravity.


texts:
Given that 'neck deep' is an expression, does 'knee deep' mean it's not that bad?
Or rather do they both have negative connotations that the former just takes to the extreme.

I realize both expressions are not used together.

It's always bothered me intellectually but instinctively, I assume they both imply bad situations. Is this correct?

I've also encountered 'ankle deep'


texts:
I'm looking for a word that indicates that a time interval (or event) will start earlier than previously expected. It should contrast with "to prolong", because that's also something that can happen to the same interval (and "prolongation" is already used in that context).

Summary:

"last longer"   -> "prolongation"
"start earlier" -> ???

Context:

We are sending severe weather warnings to customers, mostly a few hours in advance. Sometimes it happens that the severe weather lasts longer than expected, we call that a "prolongation" internally. In this case we may send "prolongation warnings".

Similarly, it can happen that the severe weather starts earlier than expected. The duration may or may not be affected by this (the event can be longer than we anticipated, have the same duration and just start earlier, or it may even be shorter). I've started calling this an "earlification", which transports the meaning, but is a little lacking in elegance.

Just to clarify, these words are used in internal, informal documentation and source code. They are not used in communication with customers.


texts: A word to describe having good command of the English language?

texts: Is there a word to describe having good command of the English language? The kind of word that could be listed as an attribute?


texts: Was there an idiomatic usage of "horse market" in 1940s New York?

texts:
There's an old article from the New Yorker, called "Eleven Blue Men" (Berton Roueche, 1947), about an outbreak of cyanosis in Manhattan, which public health officials traced back to a mislabeled can of saltpetre at a dingy cafeteria called the Eclipse. One of the officials, describing the Eclipse, says,

  [It was] strictly a horse market, and dirtier than most.

Does "horse market" have a specific meaning in this context?  Is it just a poetic way of saying the place was dirty?  Is he suggesting they served horse meat?  Or maybe that junkies liked to hang out there (since "horse" can sometimes mean heroin)?


texts: About words with a medial /d/ and a flapped /t/

texts:
Are words with a medial /d/ and a flapped /t/ considered homophones in American English?
Ex.
beading/beating
cording/courting
heeding/heating
padding/patting
riding/writing
seeding/seating
siding/(citing/siting)
wedding/wetting
medal/metal
ladder/latter
madder/matter
tidal/title
Adam/atom
bidder/bitter
leader/liter


texts: What is a word or term that describes the disparity between perceived versus actual capability?

texts:
There is a term or word that describes why people with average intelligence tend to be managers because their perceptions of their own capabilities are more in line with what they are actually capable of.  As intelligence increases, the perception of one's capabilities tends to be underestimated while lower intelligence tends to yield an overestimation of one's capabilities.

I'm not saying this statement is true or otherwise, I just know that there's a word or term that describes the phenomenon.  What is that word or expression?


texts:
I recently listend to an audio book and this sentence stuck in my head

  he put her on the cot gently and ever so gently

mainly because I heard it a few more times (not the exact sentence, but the "ever so" phrase) until the end of the book. What does it exactly mean? I can guess that it emphasizes slowly in this case, like he did it really slow?


texts: A phrase structure tree problem.... "All the faith he had had

texts:
I am trying to create a phrase structure tree for the sentence

  All the faith he had had had had no effect on the outcome of his life.

Many people are familiar with this sentence I am sure. The verb phrase I understand, but what about "he had had?" "All the faith" is the noun phrase Det-Det-N, but what about the rest of the noun phrase? What is "he had had" and how can I write this into my phrase structure tree?


texts: Term for space in a bank where tellers work

texts: Is there a term for the work area inside a bank branch, the "behind the counter" area where tellers work and cash, checks, deposit slips, etc. are kept?


texts: Just saw the definition of word miss from some web dictionary, which says "to fail to hit, catch, etc something." I suppose this could be written as "to fail to hit, catch, or do something alike something." Does that etc mean, technically, "or many other things alike"? How? Doesn't et mean "and" in Latin?


texts: Is it grammatically correct to write " Such dark as weighs upon the world every night"?

texts: Upon reading the LOTR, I came across heavy usage of 'such as' but in an unfamiliar way. "Such finery as never seen before". I was just wondering if what I wrote sounds correct.


texts:
I watched news about turkeys this morning and instead of calling them chickens the news anchor called them birds.

In my opinion, turkeys are sub-type of chickens. They are not a bird because they cannot fly. (In my native language, most birds can fly.)

What is the difference between chickens and birds? Why did they call turkeys birds, not chickens?


texts: Difference in pronuncation: ape vs chapel

texts:
I explained the pronunciation of the word chapel to my "English as second language" colleague, sounding the letter /a/ as in cat.

But he was pronouncing it like ch-ay-pel with the /a/ sound of gate and not cat.

When attempting to explain why, I noticed the word ape in chapel in the formulation of the a sound.

How do you explain for the word ape you use the /ay/ sound like gate and yet in the word chapel which contains ape you use the /a/ sound like cat?

Is it the consonant /l/ after the /e/ in the word chapel that changes it from the /ay/ sound in gate to the /a/ sound in cat?


texts: How to refer to the variable being added in a weighted sum?

texts:
Consider a simple weighted sum:

My phrase to describe it is (without the proper math notation):

  The expression corresponds to a weighed sum, where w_i is the variable being added.

(So, the weights are delta_i, which add up to one.)

The aim of the phrase is to differentiate w_i from delta_i. However, I am not satisfied with this phrase. Other options I have think of are even worse (and probably wrong):

the variable upon which the sum is carried out.
the variable to be summed over.
the variable being weighted by delta_i.

Any ideas what expression is preferred to be used here?


texts: Idiom/expression that indicates that you can do something conveniently/quickly?

texts: I'm not sure if I'm being clear enough with my question, but there's this expression which goes like "you can do this at the... blank" which means you can do it easily, but I don't remember what it is. Any similar or equivalent expressions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.


texts: What is a word or a phrase for "finding balance"?

texts: I want a stoic and blissful name for my blog, and unfortunately "finding balance" is not available. Can you suggest something along the lines of that? I basically want this to be about how my life is a balancing act between trying and wanting to be different things at once.


texts: Using "to" as a function word to indicate the result of an action or a process

texts:
I encountered a sentence as follows:

To the audience's consternation, the corpse began to speak.

A bit of googling, brought about this result for the definitions of to from Merriam-Webster:
b—used as a function word to indicate the result of an action or a process:
to their surprise, the train left on time
I know the meaning of the sentences but my questions are:

Is the phrase beginning with to (up to comma) a prepositional phrase?
Is it a valid observation to say that the phrase beginning with to (up to comma) is modifying its adjacent noun (like an adjective)?


texts: "will" and "be going to", which is correct to express this situation?

texts:
I'm wondering which one of "will" and "be going to" is more appropriate to mention the event which seems to definitely happen without fail in the future?
For example:

He is going to be 10 years old next month.
He will be 10 years old next month.


texts:
I've recently been told that "I don't think so" is, in the U.S.A., a southernism, whereas "I think not" is considered more acceptable everywhere else.  Is this true?

Example:

  Q: Is your wrist broken?
  A: I don't think so. / I think not.


texts:
Is there a word for a lack of order and control by authority?
I think I have forgotten the word for it and can't seem to find any help anywhere.


texts:
My current work is creating a kind of node that is connectable to other nodes. However, since the connection is made by wiring these nodes I always use the word wireable.

  This node is wireable to other nodes that are exposing the required interface.

While creating a presentation I recognized that the spelling checker does mark the word as wrong. I first thought that this could be one of the words in which the e is dropped but in none of the dictionaries (several Oxford Dictionaries, Merriam Webster, Urban, Wordnik) I found wireable or wirable. I can only find some unreliable sources, so I wonder if this word does really exist or is just a kind of neologism.

Is it appropriate to use the word wireable or should I go with connectable?


texts: Countries ending with -Y vs. -IA: What is the pattern?

texts:
I wonder why some country names in English are suffixed with -y (Lombardy, Italy, Hungary, Saxony, Sicily) and some with -ia (Bulgaria, Austria, Bavaria, Sardinia).
I understand the etymology:

"-y" ← Middle En. "-y", "-ie" ← Anglo-Norman and Middle French "-ie" ← Latin "-ia"
"-ia" is taken directly from Latin

Since "-y" is derived from Middle French, please, let's only discuss medieval countries which existed in Anglo-Norman and Middle French times. We know that all modern country/region names end with "-ia" (e.g. Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Colombia, California...).
We can see that both suffixes are derived ultimately from Latin "-ia", however I do not understand why some country/region names contain the original Latin suffix, while some contain the modified one.
I do not see any clear pattern as the suffixes are mixed up even within the same region, e.g.:

Lombardy, Tuscany, Sicily vs. Liguria, Sardinia, Calabria
Saxony vs. Bavaria
Hungary vs. Austria
The only exception being France and Spain where suffixing is consistent: Brittany, Normandy, Picardy, Burgundy and Galicia, Andalusia

I am not sure whether any of those "-ia" countries/regions I mentioned were bearing the same/similar name even in Middle Ages or maybe they were reanalyzed and translated to Latin over time - I could not find any information on this.
Thank you for answering and clarifying this issue.


texts: I've been impressed by the quality of research done on this forum. I have "drunk driver" meaning one who drives an automobile while intoxicated from 1948. I'm pretty sure it's older than that. Can anyone find an earliest attested date of that phrase in that sense, with evidence showing it in a reproduction (i.e. digital scan, not transcription) of a dated publication? And would there be an objection if I drop such queries here from time to time?


texts: Why is there no article in "The Child is father of the man"?

texts:
The Rainbow by William Wordsworth:

  My heart leaps up when I behold
  A Rainbow in the sky:
  So was it when my life began;
  So is it now I am a man;
  So be it when I shall grow old,
  Or let me die!
  The Child is father of the man;
  And I wish my days to be
  Bound each to each by natural piety.

I am trying to understand, why there is no "the" before "father" in this poem?
Would you please explain the reason?


texts: What do we call a question which is expected not to be answered?

texts:
What do we call a question when the questioner expects the listener can't answer it?

Example: Asking "who's the mom of the President of Kiribati?"

Here the questioner already knows that the listener can't answer it but they're asking to show that the listener lacks knowledge.


texts: How would you say "something that affects user experience" in 1-2 words?

texts:
I work in game development and I'm trying to create a concise label for my co-workers that will be used to mark all features and bugfixes that will make their way into the next release and affect the end user experience in a noticeable way.

So far I only came up with 'user-affecting' but I think there's a better way to call it. Suggestions?


texts:
Which one of these two phrases is correct:

Enjoying my first listen of the new album.
Enjoying my first listening of the new album.


texts: A word evoking the feeling of being "part" of a work of fiction

texts:
I'm seeking a word for the experience of being intensely, vividly involved in a TV show or novel.

  I have a continuous event occur when I am reading or watching tv...that I'm not exactly sure how to describe. If a show or novel gets really intense I have a habit of getting...overwhelmed by what is occurring. Like...it feels real and like I am a part of it and I get nervous and my heart rate speeds up and I feel like it's actually happening and I end up needing to take a break from what I'm doing sit and breath for awhile and remind myself that it's not real.

Is there a word for this situation?


texts: Does the word "agree" have more than one meaning?

texts:
Suppose the word agree just has the meaning of agreeing with an opinion and to say you agree with that opinion means you have that opinion. Furthermore, suppose that every time somebody says they agree to something, they truthfully mean they have that opinion. Finally, suppose people don't feel forced to have a certain opinion. I will show that a contradiction can be derived from those assumptions and then suggest an alternate way to define things.

Sometimes people sign a form saying they agree to something. Using the first two of the 3 assumptions, we can deduce that they actually have the opinion that what the form is saying is the best way to do things. On the other hand, we know that people have many different opinions so using the third assumption, we can derive that they don't really agree with what they signed that they agree with. Now we can derive the contradiction that they both agree and don't agree with the form.

I know some people say English is flexible. That's probably because they have the opinion that there's nothing wrong with sometimes saying something that isn't literally true to convey a message that's not what the sentence literally means. For example, we could use the word "agree" with another meaning. For example, we could decide that when we sign a form saying we agree, we really mean we promise that we will do what the form said and that doesn't necessarily mean we really have the opinion that what it said is the best way to do things.

Doug Ford is the premier of Ontario and John Tory is the mayor of the capital city of Ontario, Toronto. I once learned, probably by reading the internet, that Mayor Tory and Premier Ford agreed to accept their differences and work together to solve the housing crisis. I suspect they literally said they agreed to accept their differences. If so, could it by that when they said they said they agreed accept their differences, they were using the second meaning of the word "agree" when they actually used the word "agree" in that sentence but were using the first meaning of the word "agree" when they said they accepted their differences. That is, accepting their differences can be thought of as meaning disagreeing with each other using the first meaning of the word "agree". If that is the case, then maybe each of them was disagreeing with the other about some stuff but was like "If I do it a certain way that I agree is better using the first meaning of the word 'agree', the other will destroy my work so there's no point in doing it that way so I promised that I would do it a different way because it's better to do it that way in my opinion because if I do it that way, the other won't destroy my work."

What do you think? I know there is more than one way to define things that some people would have the opinion to define that way. Would it be possible for you to tell me what you think would be different opinions on how people would choose to define things in different contexts?


texts: What word do I use to describe people from India & neighboring countries

texts:
Please note I am not trying to be offensive in this question. If I were to refer to people from China/Korea/Japan without specifying their country I would use the term "Asian" and likewise for people from Germany/France/Greece I would use the term "European".

However people who come from countries neighboring India such as Sri Lanka or Fijian Indians do not like to be classified as "Indian" because this would be similar to calling a Japanese person "Chinese". I understand why this would be offensive.

Is there a word to describe this type of group of people that doesn't assume their country of origin?

For example a colleague of mine wanted to say that they are the only person who isn't Indian in their team however although they look/sound like they could be from the same group of people the team is not made up entirely of Indians so it wouldn't be accurate to describe them as such.


texts: What does "Find focus on your customers." mean?

texts: I am editing a piece of marketing with the headline "Find focus on your customers." Is it redundant to use "find" with "focus"? I'm not sure I understand what "find focus" means. Or am I overthinking it?


texts: Origins of the phase "smash-and-grab capitalism"

texts:
I want to find the first use of the phrase "smash-and-grab capitalism." (I want to use the expression but I want to make sure I am not unwittingly quoting Ronald Reagan.)
I have googled "origin 'smash and grab capitalism'" and similar phrases, but this comes up with current usages of the phrase, and I'm not really sure as to how to improve the search.  I also tried to make a google ngram but both smash-and-grab capitalism and smash and grab capitalism seem to give zero usages, strangely.
Also, since it is a phrase, a dictionary doesn't seem very helpful.
Does anyone know the origin of this expression? If you can advise as to how I can improve my searches to help myself, then that would be great too.


texts: Another formal way of saying musical and non-musical children

texts:
They discovered [musical children] performed better than [non-musical children] in mathematical skills

Here, "musical children" means children with musical training.


texts: "Explicit", "classified", "graphic" - did these words originate as abbreviations of longer phrases?

texts:
Explicit means clearly stated. Classified means assigned to a class. Graphic means pictorial.
But these words have second meanings (respectively: offensive, secret, depicting something violent).
Can these be regarded as some form of abbreviated meaning/phrase? How are they named, if so? What are other examples?

Like "sexually explicit", "classified as top secret" (or other such designation) and "graphic violence" got abbreviated?


texts:
Is "him" a direct object in the sentence:

"They sent him to prison."?

Several online sources claim that direct object answers the question "What?"

But it seems that it is not always the case.


texts:
When enumerating conjoined words that share a common (the last) part, do you apply the same "splitting-" pattern in English as you would do in German, which is for instance:

  This chapter is about the lexical-, syntactical- and semantic
  analysis.

Or, consider another example:

  The goal is, to detect as many stress- and emotion conditions as
  possible.

In the latter, is is correct to write "stress-" or simply "stress"?


texts: Meaning of this phrase which has old text structure

texts:
I'm translating an old English book that's about philosophy and I came across this paragraph which I have trouble understanding.

  If we understand that
  reason derives abstract units out of concrete multiplicities,
  that it constructs truth out of phenomena, substance out
  of attributes, that it perceives all things as parts of a whole,
  as individuals of some genus, as qualities of some object,
  then the question regarding a "thing itself," a something
  which in reality is back of all things, must deeds become
  irrelevant.

since this book is about philosophy, it has some inherent complexity and it's also old so I encounter some phrases with structures that I'm not familiar with (as a non-native English speaker); like the one here.
my major problem is with the phrase "must deeds".
I know all of the meanings of these two words, but I can't make sense of them here. Does it mean something like "deeds that are necessary"? or does it mean something like this "all the deeds should become irrelevant"?
Unfortunately, I just have a few pages of a PDF file that doesn't entail any source or indication about the name of the book or author. Any help would be appreciated.


texts: Term of endearment that was formerly somewhat derogatory

texts:
I'm looking for a word (phrase if necessary) that means "a term of endearment", but more specifically, a term of endearment that was/is somewhat derogatory and even better, a term that is now accepted by the community (or person) for which it was originally derogatory.

Like the term "ham" for a radio amateur.

  Over the years radio amateurs have adopted the my word here "ham" for themselves with seemingly no remorse.


texts:
I was wondering what is the correct way to write the following sentece:

  Radiation is a danger both to electronics and the crew.

or

  Radiation is a danger to both electronics and the crew.

This answer features a similar question, but with verbs instead. Although it is not the case here, does a similar rule exist?


texts:
I have just installed Grammarly and it showed up something which i am not sure of.

It corrected '13 month old' to '13-month-old'.

The context is

  I ask because my 13-month-old God daughter seemed like she was a little resentful towards another child who was visiting at the same time.

Which would be correct, and why?


texts: Is the word put a synonym to throw? If a boy exerts his strength to throw a ball, can we also use "put" to describe such? Some online dictionaries define put as "throw a force or weight," which is confusing.


texts:
I was trying to find a definitive source on whether or not to capitalize "rainforest" when it follows "Amazon" in the Amazon rainforest. Wikipedia seems to have it not capitalized, though they strangely capitalize "Amazon Jungle". I went to look for "Sahara desert" and came across the same phenomenon. Many sources seem to not capitalize the second word in these two examples.

Other rainforests and deserts (such as the Daintree Rainforest and the Mojave Desert) seem to be rather uniformly capitalized.

Are these two different because their names are "the Amazon" and "the Sahara" as opposed to "the Amazon Rainforest" and "the Sahara Desert"?


texts: Term for a method used in solving equations

texts:
Suppose we have an equation:

To solve for x, we would single it out because it appears in both summands. And so we get:

I am wondering what is this step called in English?


texts: Is there a word to encompass the concept of daylight saving time and standard time?

texts:
If I need to talk about the concept of the switching between daylight saving time vs non-daylight saving time, is there a term specific to that?

I can say something like "Tomorrow, we'll change timezones." or "The misunderstanding on delivery time was a timezone issue." because things like EST and EDT are technically timezones (according to IANA), but that word seems too broad and also connotes more a difference in time by geography rather than time of year.


texts: How to identify whether commas is required to separate prepositional phrases at the end of sentence? Why commas hve been used here?

texts:
Skims benefited from a well-timed introduction of pajamas and loungewear, [commas]with product lines such as the “cozy collection” bolstering sales as women have traded form-fitting styles for sweatpants.
Ms. Kardashian West said she was deeply involved in Skims, [comma]from helping to design fabrics and collections to picking photographers for product shoots to studying sales data.
source


texts: Term shorter than "microblog" as generic equivalent of "tweet"

texts: I search rather than Google and vacuum rather than Hoover. Technically I microblog rather than tweet, but it just doesn't sound as snappy. Is there a short (single syllable?), established, generic term I can use in case I switch to identi.ca?


texts: Must the "b" in "Boolean variable" be capitalized?

texts:
Possible Duplicate:
  Should the word Boolean be capitalized?

I notice that many online articles geared toward programmers refer to boolean variables, which are variables that have only two states: true or false. Is this correct usage? I'd contend that the "b" in Boolean should be capitalized because the term Boolean is named after mathematician George Boole.

More generally, are there any grammatically correct examples of terms named after someone that are no longer capitalized?


texts:
I was wondering the validity of the following sentence: “back in the days, I’d go visit my grandmother and […]”
A few questions:

Is the proposition “I’d go visit” correct here? If not, what would you suggest otherwise?
If I were to extend the sentence, say, to make an enumeration, would infinitives be appropriate? Something along those lines: “I’d go visit my grandmother and make her soup; take her out for a walk and bring her safely back home afterwards […]”


texts:
In this example sentence:

  He needs more time off duty for relaxation and rest.

the Longman dictionary says that off in the given example is an adverb. If the sentence was:

  "He needs more time off,"

I would understand that off is an adverb. But in this case, off is followed by a noun, duty. Is this off also an adverb?

From Longman:

  off
  5 not at work, school etc because you are ill or on holiday:
  He needs more time off duty for relaxation and rest.


texts:
I don’t really understand what a meeting agenda is.  I don’t know if it is possible to use meeting agenda

when you have to register all the topics (conclusions, ideas, members, date, etc.) of the meeting,
or whether meeting agenda can only be used for the planning that goes before the meeting.

What is a suitable expression to name this type of record sheet?


texts: Collective term for driving, flying and walking systems/hardware?

texts:
Not sure if this is the correct place to ask but it is about the English language.

I am looking for a collective word that describes the movement hardware for a robot. I am making a game where the player can equip it's own type of movement hardware and I want to name the slot. So whether the player equips legs, wheels, tracks or thrusters the name of the slot they are put in must be fitting. I'd prefer a cool sci-fi or cyberpunk name.


texts:
Now if this party is such as may please one, we hope you'll receive
  them, for here we must leave the, wishing you all the good things of
  the season.

It's from the 19th-century children's poem called King Luckieboy's Party by Walter Crane.
For me, it looks grammatically strange to put 'may' after 'such as'.
How come it is possible and how can I interpret this part?

I leave the internet source of this poem here.
https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00086956/00001/28x


texts: How things are like? vs What things are like

texts:
I wrote, "I don't know how things are like nowadays." And my friend responded

One cannot say "how things are like", it is grammatically incorrect.
You can say "what things are like" because the "what" refers to a
noun, or you can say "how things are" (without "like") because the
"how" refers to a manner.

Is he correct?


texts:
According to my dictionary, "grumbling" is a complaint about something, but "grumble" is also a complaint about something. I am used to using the "normal nouns - verbs as nouns" not gerund form as a noun. Someone told me that in the following sentences, "grumbling" must be used instead of "grumble", but they can't say why.

We didn't hear any grumbling about the food.
She paid up with some grumbling.

Again, I would use "grumble" instead.


texts: What's difference between reservor and reservee?

texts:
Reservee is described as: One to, or for, whom anything is reserved.

Reservor is described as: One who reserves; a reserver.

So, if Alice reserves Bob a room in a hotel, then Alice is a reservor of the room, and Bob is a reservee of the room? (is this understanding correct?)


texts:
What, and why, is the right choice in these cases?

  (*) my supervisor's suggestion, I changed my schedule.

Should (*) be: in, on, at, under,....?


texts: Meaning of "all left reserved" and "all right reserved"?

texts: Could somebody please clarify the meaning of these two expressions and the differences between them: "All Right Reserved" and "All Left Reserved"?


texts:
Seeing that I have 75 Unicoins, I decided to buy "Guaranteed answer" because it claims "No more need to wait: We guarantee you an answer on all of your questions."

I'm very curious to know what answer of the question "What is the meaning of 'life'?" would be.
(PS. I opted for "inspirational" answer.)


texts: How did "When" become the customary answer to "say when"?

texts:
When a waiter at a restaurant comes by with pepper or Parmesan cheese, he says, "say when" and starts putting it on your food.  Many people will say "OK" or "that's enough," but it seems that the customary answer is "when".  How did this become the customary answer?  Did everyone decide to make the exact same joke, until it became commonplace.  I thought it was funny when I was a kid, but even now as an adult, I still say it.

For evidence that this is indeed commonplace, see http://www.gocomics.com/broomhilda/2012/06/20.  The answer "when" is used and is external to the joke of the strip. But even so, I'm curious as to just how commonplace this really is.  I see it a lot in the US.  Is it used elsewhere in the world?

(by the way, I'm new to asking questions on this site, and I have no idea what tags to put on this question)


texts: Never in my life have I been more curious to learn something than this course. Is this sentence correct?

texts:
I was wondering if the following sentence was grammatically correct or not.

Never in my life have I been more curious to learn something than this course.


texts: When should the words "usefulness" versus "utility" be used?

texts:
"Usefulness" and "utility" both mean nearly the same thing.

  Usefulness: the quality or fact of being useful.

  Utility: the state of being useful, profitable, or beneficial

To me, the word "usefulness" sounds rather awkward and could raise doubt among some people as to if it's even a word (although it is). On the other hand, "utility" kind of has the connotations of something like a utilities service or a software utility. Of course it would make sense to reword a sentence when it sounds odd, but this questions serves a purpose when one of these two words must be used.

Is one "better" to use than the other? What is the difference between the two words? When should each be used?


texts: Can you use a contraction on a compound subject?

texts:
For example, it is perfectly normal to write "He's going to the store" but would writing "Bill and she've already left" or similar NOUN and NOUN'xx subjects?
To me, it seems unnatural to do so in writing. But I cant find anything that says its non-standard (or anything on it at all really)


texts: What it means "Decisions in 10 minutes or less, or the next one is free."?

texts:
What does this quote means "Decisions in 10 minutes or less, or the next one is free."?

From: http://news.microsoft.com/2000/02/16/the-motivator-behind-the-windows-2000-development-team/

The next decision is free?
Which doesn't make a lot of sense and that's exactly the point of the (silly) joke?


texts:
If we are using both singular and plural in the same sentence, how do we say or write it?

For example, which one is correct?

one to two minutes
one to two minute(s)
one minute to two minutes


texts: Do you capitalise words like 'Liberalism'?

texts:
Do you capitalise words like 'Liberalism', 'Communism', 'Socialism'?

I'm presuming that such words are proper nouns because they are the specific names of ideologies. If they are not capitalised, why not?

And if they are capitalised, are words like mathematics capitalised? I am led to believe they are not unless they are the name of a specific course subject like 'Maths 101', but isn't mathematics the proper noun of a specific concept?


texts: What is an eloquent word for a disrespectful, impertinent child?

texts:
I’m looking for a word that denotes a child (either a young one or a fully grown one) who acts disrespectfully and spitefully toward their parents.

For instance, if you see your friend being disrespectful toward his or her parent, you might ask your friend,

  Why are you acting like a ________ ?

An adverbial form would be sufficient too, like

  “Why are you acting [adverbial form of word]?”

I do not want any words that have connotations of annoying, whiny, irritating, etc. This includes “brat,” “rascal,” etc.

The word can be archaic (that is, old-fashioned) but preferably not obsolete (i.e. no longer used at all).


texts: Incomplete list of subjects in technical writing

texts:
I want to enumerate an incomplete but exemplary list of stakeholders and a basic property in a scientific/technical paper/proposal.

I'm unsure about what the most appropriate way to do so is.

Currently I do this:

  Stakeholders in sensor bed data include: doctors, for patient data, facility management, for HVAC monitoring, equipment management, to improve bed logistics and the infrastructure provider, for instance Televic, to support preventive maintenance and obtain device statistics.

But it does not sound good and I'm unsure about the ":". Any suggestions?


texts: Difference between Brand (noun) and Branding (gerund?)

texts: I am writing for marketing client. Goal is to clearly define difference between the two terms. A BRAND (noun) is the collective set of perceptions existing about a company in the larger world. BRANDING is the actions a company takes to influence those perceptions. Is Branding simply a gerund in this case? That seems less, uh, active than the situation requires.


texts: Which one is correct? "Offer ends at/on 1 March" or "Offer ends 1 March"

texts:
Today, avast! program (an anti-virus program for computers) showed me a message that contains:

  Offer ends 1 March

But I also saw some sentences in other forms like:

  Offer ends on 1 March

and:

  Offer ends at 1 March

The reason I confused is that all of these sentences used by official organization so the question is, which one is really correct?


texts: I need to find a term for those scholars and intellectuals who are relatively obscure but who many colleagues consider to be great or near-great


texts: When do we use in house acupuncture, and home visit acupuncture in a situation where  organisation works within itself and only for that organisation? But at the same time does house calls?


texts:
What are some ways to say lose money in investment?

In particular, is the usage of swallow in the following example alright?

  My money has been swallowed by the financial market.


texts:
When my doorbell rings and I think it is my friend at the door, what should I say?

It would be my friend at the door.
It could be my friend at the door.

What is the difference between those two versions?


texts: “your heart just shrank” vs. “your heart just shrunk”

texts:
If I say:

  Your heart just shrank two sizes too small.

Is the verb shrank correct as is? Or should it be in participle form?

  Your heart just shrunk two sizes too small.

Which one would be correct in these two cases?


texts: Where can I find a dictionary for homonyms?

texts: I want to know where I can find a dictionary that I can look up homonyms of a word. For instance if I type in alien it will show me the word salient. That dictionary should base on the sound itself, not just the word list. There are new words that these lists don't contain, like pwn (it will sound similar to cow).


texts: What exactly does "heavy conversation" mean?

texts: I think it is a serious conversation which has become boring. Am I right?


texts: "Computational method" or "computation method"?

texts:
I proposed a method for computing the entropy of an image.  In this case, can I refer to the method as a "computational method" or "computation method"?

What is the difference between "computational method" and "computation method"?

Thank you very much!


texts:
Is there a word that means "a way of thought"?

For example, whether someone is interested or not, it is simply how he thinks. Whether someone is confident or not, it is simply how he thinks. So "interest" and "confidence" are simply "ways of thinking".

I was thinking of the word "mental", however "mental" means "relating to the mind" which is too broad. For example, "tiredness" would be "relating to the mind", but it isn't a "way of thought".

What's another word to mean "a way of thought"?


texts:
I can’t believe I make too many mistakes in Turkish.

I’m a native English speaker trying help a friend understand why it sounds off to use “too many” here but I can’t seem to figure out why.

To me, “so many” sounds much better. Does anyone have a grammatical explanation for why it doesn’t really work with “too many”?


texts: The preposition "by" in "I see by your file"

texts:
I often come across some sentences with "by" where I would expect "in" or "on". Examples:

I see by your file that you are no stranger to the court room, Private Terp. (source)
I see by your file that you have had a chequered career. (source)
I see by your file your nickname is Katey. (source)
So, what brings you to New York, Al? I see by your resume, you're from California. (source)
I see by your resume that you graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in accounting. (source)

More examples can be found on Google Books. I feel though "I see in your file/resume" (and maybe "on your file") sounds more natural and "I see by your file/resume" sounds odd and even jarring.
Also it seems "I see by his/her file" is much rarer. Why is "by" used here? What are the differences in meaning?


texts: "Anna(r) and the King" - R liaison in English

texts: Why do native speakers pronounce "Anna and the King" as "Annarand the King?" Why do they put r in between the two a's? Why not use the "y" glide?


texts:
I have an easy question about the usage of time expressions such as "I have to wait 10 minutes", or " the train should arrive in 5 minutes", etc.

What's the correct answer to say? Should it be singular or plural?

A) They're not a lot, they will pass quickly.

B) It's not a lot, it will pass quickly.

The correct answer should be A, in my opinion, minutes are plural!


texts: Why "Middle East" not "Central East", and Why "Central Java" not "Middle Java"

texts:
I'm wondering why Middle East is not called Central East. And why Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Middle Asia (as I read on Wikipedia).

I've looked up the difference between middle and centre here: https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/83300/difference-between-center-and-middle

But it doesn't explain the difference between middle and central when it comes to regional naming.
Just like in America, I read that they have Middle America and Central America. Also, in Indonesia, we have Central Java, but not Middle Java.

I think they're  somehow different, but I can't tell how.


texts: Could 'traceless' mean 'nowhere to be found'?

texts:
In Arabic we say something like 'there is no trace to him' which I presume is equal to the common English idiom or phrase 'nowhere to be found'. However, I was just wondering if the word 'traceless' would be an appropriate fit here?.

I've looked the word up and the simple definition self-evidently is:
Traceless - having or leaving no trace.

The thing is there isn't a sufficient sum of detail, examples or even different ways the word is exercised.

My inquiry is could one say, 'He is traceless' or something along those lines. I know it sounds very infrequent and hyperbolic, but I've discussed its probable usage in this manner with a few people and I've received mixed responses.
Thankyou


texts: what is the prepositional object of "1 in 5 students"?

texts:
"1 in 5 students uses tobacco."

What is the subject?
What is the prepositional object of "in"?
What part of speech is "5"?
What part of speech is "students"?

I don't need a re-wording of the meaning.


texts: Can the word 'loo' mean bathroom (with bath and shower and all)

texts: English is not my first language, so I may be completely wrong, but I always thought that 'loo' meant 'toilet', the thing itself as well as the small room with just a toilet and maybe a small sink, and not 'bathroom'. And yet I read stories in which people brush their teeth in the loo. So am I right or do people actually take a bath in the loo?


texts: Does "prosody" include facial-expressions and gestures?

texts:
Is "prosody" purely aural / auditory or can it also include visual perceptions?

Are facial-expressions (rolling of eyes to indicate sarcasm) considered as contributing to prosody?

What about hand-gestures like air quotes?


texts: What is the verb for developing a chip on one's shoulder?

texts:
I want to say that an individual has a chip on their shoulder, but a month ago, they did not.

Did they "raise a chip on their shoulder", as might be inferred from the first cited history of the custom in Wikipedia?
Did they "place a chip on their shoulder" as might be inferred from the North American fighting custom (Ibid.)?
Did they grow a chip on their shoulder?

What verb can I use to explain the change?  Can you cite any examples of this in literature or professionally-edited media (not personal blogs, but articles, books, TV, etc)?


texts: "whichever is (the) less", vs "whichever is (the) lesser"

texts: I would like to have advice on the differences between "whichever is (the) less" and "whichever is (the) lesser".  Are they both grammatically correct?  If yes, under what circumstances should they be used, especially when being placed at the end of a sentence?  I found both in different legislations and government documents.  Thank you!


texts:
I'm trying to keep this descriptive essay in the past tense.  I bolded the words of my concern (and italicized the ones I believe are in the right tense) in the following passage:

  As a result of the floor containing thousands of small holes, looking down through them yielded the sight of the rushing waters of the Merrimac River.  Passing by this intense stream invoked a fear of falling into the violent, rushing waters.

What my question comes down to is:  Are those verbs that end in -ing considered past tense, as well as those ending in -ed?  If not, how should I re-write this passage?


texts: Neither A nor B could bring themselves to say something

texts:
Why is the following sentence incorrect?

"Neither Gore nor Bush could bring themselves to utter a word in defense of scientific truth."

I was told that it should be:

"Neither Gore nor Bush could bring himself to utter a word in defense of scientific truth."

I really don't understand that due to the fact that "Neither Gore nor Bush" implies that both of them did not say a word not just either one of them.


texts: Is there another word that means 'togglable'?

texts: Using Merriam-Webster as a baseline, the word 'togglable' doesn't exist yet. It has made it into Wiktionary. It also makes enough intuitive sense that I don't have a problem using it. But, I'm wondering if a synonym exists. Is there another word that means "Able to be turned on and off"?


texts: The noun form of the verb "itch" can be either "itch" or "itching", according to all reliable dictionaries. But is there any difference between them?

texts:
The following examples are from the Cambridge online dictionary. Is it possible to use "itching" for the first and "itch" for the second sentence (can we use these two words interchangeably as nouns)?

"I have an itch on the back of my neck."

"The itching is due to an allergic reaction to the mite."


texts: Should one use 'a' or 'an' when the following word is in parentheses?

texts:
Possible Duplicate:
  “a/an” preceding a parenthetical statement

This question is a little hard to summarize in the title.

I sometimes like to use parentheses to add additional (but nonessential) details to a sentence - like I did just there. My criteria for such use is usually that the sentence could be read with the text in the parentheses, or excluding the text, and each would be an equally valid and grammatically correct statement.

So I am curious: in a case where the parenthesis is preceded by the word 'a', and the word in parenthesis begins with a vowel (or unsounded h) that would require it to be changed to 'an', what is the correct statement?

In addition to these three journal articles containing background information, I have included a (anecdotal) reference describing this proposed cure.
In addition to these three journal articles containing background information, I have included an (anecdotal) reference describing this proposed cure.

I feel as though if I use the word 'an' it draws too much attention to the word anectodal, and I might as well just remove the parentheses. I'm just trying to slip the word in there to cover my ass if someone says "That's not a valid reference - it's just an anectote." If you are curious about the context: the anecdotal reference is included because it describes the process in greater detail than is captured by my summary.

Feel free to comment on the validity of my use of parentheses while you're at it.