Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange |
- A word or phrase that describes overlooked structures that are part of the fabric of modern living?
- To like something about someone or in someone?
- Can anyone tell me the subtle difference between "All we do is hide away" and "All we do is to hide away"? [duplicate]
- What does "Bastion of righteousness" mean?
- Does the word arrogancy exist [closed]
- What is a word for a person who trusts (someone else)?
- Over the radio, I heard their voices?
- give me some comment about my ielts writing task 1 [closed]
- What is an idiom for this type of situation?
- Is this considered Author Prominent or Information Prominent?
- Did Charles Dickens make a mistake at the beginning of Ch 3 of 'A Tale of Two Cities
- Why is the 'y' in graveyard pronounced twice? [closed]
- I could see them run towards the shop; I could see them running towards the shop [duplicate]
- "To comprehend x, it is necessary to understand y." Is this a dangling modifier?
- Use of past tense when describing upcoming event
- Predicative use of 'ongoing'
- "Superhands" vs "Super Hans" pronunciation
- A word for something you give and the receiver knows you will come back to get it?
- Was V.S. Naipaul correct that "the buckle of the Bible Belt” contains mixed metaphors?
- one big of a [noun]
- Where did "nightingale" get its second N from?
- "Since" being used in conditional sentences
- Can "what" mean " what role" in this sentence?
- A subordinate clause beginning with "if"
- Term for when someone falsely accuses you of doing to them what they are actually doing to you
- What did Terry Pratchett mean by "avec"?
- Have had or Have been
- What is a 17th-century affectionate term for "Mother"?
| A word or phrase that describes overlooked structures that are part of the fabric of modern living? Posted: 14 Apr 2021 09:51 AM PDT Is there a word or phrase that exactly describes overlooked structures that are part of the fabric of modern living? For instance, these are institutional structures that are there and we take little notice of them:
I'm using it in a semi-academic context to call attention to this bit of the urban/suburban scenery we tend to overlook. I know I could make up a phrase like "urban scenery" or "institutional hardscape" or something, but wondering if anyone in the literature has developed a common phrase or word for it.  |
| To like something about someone or in someone? Posted: 14 Apr 2021 09:32 AM PDT Please advise if there is a difference in meaning between: a. What do you like ABOUT me? b. What do you like IN me? Much Obliged.  |
| Posted: 14 Apr 2021 09:53 AM PDT I thought these 2 sentences, "All we do is hide away" and "All we do is to hide away", meant the same. However, one day, a native English speaker told me there's a subtle difference in meaning between those two sentences. I asked for an explanation but he said it was too subtle to explain. Can anyone tell me what's the difference between those two sentences?  |
| What does "Bastion of righteousness" mean? Posted: 14 Apr 2021 09:51 AM PDT I heard someone use this to describe star wars Obi Wan Kenobi. I know it must mean the quality of being morally right or justifiable but can you define it more specifically.  |
| Does the word arrogancy exist [closed] Posted: 14 Apr 2021 09:01 AM PDT it means arrogance yes check word hippo  |
| What is a word for a person who trusts (someone else)? Posted: 14 Apr 2021 08:56 AM PDT Alfred trusts Bob. In some contexts — especially legal or financial — we might call Bob a trustee. Following this vein (and pursuing a notion of generalization) what might we call Alfred? A truster? Bonus question: Is there a name for the thing that Alfred trusts Bob with? In working around this question I came up with a few other somewhat related concepts.
Are these examples of some broader set of English words (or ideas)?  |
| Over the radio, I heard their voices? Posted: 14 Apr 2021 09:48 AM PDT I want to say that the radio is on, but I can still hear people´s voices. Like, its on and through the sound I hear another sound. How can I say that? Above the sound of the radio I hear their voices? Over the sound of the radio I hear their voices?  |
| give me some comment about my ielts writing task 1 [closed] Posted: 14 Apr 2021 08:29 AM PDT These are the rubric and my answer. I am preparing for my Ielts test. Please help me to mark it and give me some advice that I could
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| What is an idiom for this type of situation? Posted: 14 Apr 2021 06:00 AM PDT What would be an idiom/proverb to describe someone going to the town on something that hardly behooves them, either because the act is beneath their station or because the fervor displayed is disproportionately matched to the situation at hand? Please note that when I say the act is beneath their station to carry such and such act, no ulterior motive need be necessarily implied. It could be just out of sheer fatuousness or a deliberate wallow in infantilism. Just so that I don't have to ask a separate question (because it appears related to this question), what idiom or proverb could be used for a person who carries out the aforementioned act where they should seldom have concerned themselves in the first place?  |
| Is this considered Author Prominent or Information Prominent? Posted: 14 Apr 2021 05:44 AM PDT A more sophisticated study is presented by Perito et al. [16]. Hi, I was reading this paper and came across this in-text citation. I am wondering whether this is author or information prominent?  |
| Did Charles Dickens make a mistake at the beginning of Ch 3 of 'A Tale of Two Cities Posted: 14 Apr 2021 04:51 AM PDT I am coming back to Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities after many years and noticing things I had not noticed before. At the beginning of Chapter 3 he writes:-
What does the mysterious message of this paragraph mean? Who is thinker that is thinking these thoughts, if not the messenger, Jerry Cruncher, taking his message "recalled to life" back to its designated recipient? But can he possibly be first person author of "the dear book I loved"?. None of these is the question I have. Mine is about grammar or punctuation. Are these two sentences sentences at all, when each lacks a main verb? (this does not appear to be a printer's error). I could try to think of it as an exclamation (as in "what a wonderful fact to reflect upon, with "that..." as explanatory of the "fact"). Or perhaps I should assume an ellipse and understand
But that does not not seem right either. It is deliberately a mere sentence fragment to reflect the process of thought - as opposed to communication with others? Is it, even, supposed to be that the writer of this great story is Sidney Carton himself? That seems a long stretch. Or should we just think of it as one of those places where one of two principles can apply:
I have looked up the sentence online. 'e-notes' cites the sentence but seems as unaware of a question like this, so far as I can tell. It seems to take the line that these must be what is going through the mind of Jerry Cruncher. Cliff Notes Takes the whole chapter to relate to Jerry Cruncher, without referring to the question of grammar. The trouble is that these look far more like the thoughts Mr Charles Dickens writing about his Night Walks in the city of London. I should be happy to be told that I am straining at a gnat over the grammar.  |
| Why is the 'y' in graveyard pronounced twice? [closed] Posted: 14 Apr 2021 09:32 AM PDT This is something that has been bothering me for a while. I pronounce it grave-yard. Why is the 'y' pronounced twice?
And here on a YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk97ywS-fGc&t=1362s  |
| I could see them run towards the shop; I could see them running towards the shop [duplicate] Posted: 14 Apr 2021 03:17 AM PDT Which one is right? And WHY? 1 I could see them run towards the shop 2 I could see them running towards the shop  |
| "To comprehend x, it is necessary to understand y." Is this a dangling modifier? Posted: 14 Apr 2021 04:04 AM PDT Because I often think of sentences in the "we must"-form, as in: "To comprehend x, we must first understand y." when I write things that demand I do not write "we," I instead often write sentences like this: "To comprehend x, it is necessary to understand y?" Is this a dangling modifier? Or is it wrong or ugly in some other way?  |
| Use of past tense when describing upcoming event Posted: 14 Apr 2021 08:57 AM PDT
I have encountered the sentences above in a news article featuring a regulatory change that will allow Americans to buy hearing aids without a prescription. I can't wrap my head around why the past tense form got is used instead of are getting or will get in the last sentence. The opening-up of the market is a future event. Indeed, that's why the "be plus -ing" form is used in the following section see how people are reacting to describe an upcoming event. Could you provide an explanation about the use of the past tense? P.S. The news article is not only about existing hearing aids becoming available for purchase over the counter, but also technology companies such as Apple and Bose aiming to enter the market with new types of product. So, the expression what we got appears, to me, to be referring to completely new products yet to be offered. In order to give more context to the sentence in question, I will quote a longer version from the New York Times article.
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| Posted: 14 Apr 2021 03:58 AM PDT As a Spanish employee of a German multinational company, I have always cringed at my German colleagues' tendency to give 'ongoing' a predicative use, e.g. 'The meeting is ongoing'. I was sure that this was at least poor style, and very likely ungrammatical, and that 'ongoing' only worked as an attribute (e.g. 'The ongoing meeting'). However, a couple of years ago I began to hear American fellow workers (English native speakers) occasionally use 'ongoing' in the same ear-grating way. Is this just a case of contagion out of empathy with the German fellow employees? Or is it the result of a recent trend in the English language? Has it perhaps always been correct?  |
| "Superhands" vs "Super Hans" pronunciation Posted: 14 Apr 2021 03:42 AM PDT I've been watching the Peep Show and I just discovered on the internet that the guy named "Superhands" is actually called "Super Hans". Is it normal to confuse these too due to similarities in pronunciation? The 'd' is not silent in 'hands', is it? Or can they be phonetically equivalent in certain dialects?  |
| A word for something you give and the receiver knows you will come back to get it? Posted: 14 Apr 2021 08:46 AM PDT What's the word for something you give someone to ensure that you will come back to get it? For example, if you get a loan, you have to list your valuable assets so they can take those if you don't pay them back.  |
| Was V.S. Naipaul correct that "the buckle of the Bible Belt” contains mixed metaphors? Posted: 14 Apr 2021 08:12 AM PDT In his travel book A Turn in the South, he writes, "The magazine in my hotel room, mixing its metaphors, said that Nashville was 'the buckle of the Bible Belt.'" Was he correct? I can't figure out his reasoning.  |
| Posted: 14 Apr 2021 06:50 AM PDT Asked to comment on the use of the phrase "one big of a question," I responded that it sounded totally off to me. I've always used a noun in the place of "big" here: one hell of a night, one humdinger of a lunch, one devil of a time, etc. Someone countered me with this link and the assertion that it indeed exists because it came up in the Google search. As far as I'm concerned, it's existence on Google doesn't automatically make it grammatical or acceptable, but I wonder if perhaps I'm missing something?  |
| Where did "nightingale" get its second N from? Posted: 14 Apr 2021 08:11 AM PDT I noticed while searching the etymology of the word nightingale that it did not have the second N. The sources I checked only say intrusive N but don't explain it.
As you can see, in Old English and Middle English, it did not have the second N so the present day N is not original. Etymology Dictionary also says "With parasitic -n- that began to appear mid-13c." but doesn't explain the reason English people put it in "Nightegale". Can anyone explain the reason?  |
| "Since" being used in conditional sentences Posted: 14 Apr 2021 08:49 AM PDT I've come across this line in a movie:
I've known about how "since" can only be used in present/past perfect tense but in this case, it's a conditional sentence. Is it true that "since" is usable here? If not, how else should the sentence be rewritten?  |
| Can "what" mean " what role" in this sentence? Posted: 14 Apr 2021 04:47 AM PDT I'd like to know if "what" could convey the meaning of "what role" in the sentence below as "what role others expect from us" is mentioned.
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| A subordinate clause beginning with "if" Posted: 14 Apr 2021 05:49 AM PDT Should this sentence have a comma: "It was dark, if you recall." It's a dependent clause so it should not need one, but it doesn't sound right without it.  |
| Term for when someone falsely accuses you of doing to them what they are actually doing to you Posted: 14 Apr 2021 05:52 AM PDT UPDATE: (2018-02-08) Pot-Calling-The-Kettle-Black (PCKB) reconsideration and another example: The Wikipedia article on PCKB indicates something interesting. It says that originally, the term was Spanish (c. 17th Century) and most often used to indicate hypocrisy, because in those days, BOTH the pot and the kettle were made of a black cast iron, which I why I did not accept it from those who suggested it as an answer. However, the plot thickens ... I don't know if I never researched Wikipedia, if I missed the part I'm about to quote, or if it was added after I originally posted this, but essentially, Wikipedia goes on to say that PCKB has since the 1800's come to mean what I'm talking about (emphasis mine).
Have two possible meanings simultaneously is very tricky to deal with, because if you say PCKB to someone, some will think it is the meaning of hypocrisy, and others will think it is projection. However, both cases fail to convey the deliberate and devious manipulation that I'm talking about. Another example of this scenario is the all-too-common occurrence of a female, usually a wife or girlfriend, calling the cops on the man in the relationship for abuse, after she was the one and only that was doing any abusing. Therefore, for the most part I am abandoning my search for a term to describe this, because all the answers I received were great but none of them hit the target. This leads me believe that maybe no such word exists.Thus, I shall have to coin one myself. UPDATE: (2017-11-23) [Thanksgiving in the USA] I learned of another example just recently that may help sum this concept up in an easily understandable way: You are minding your own business then somebody punches you and yells "He hit me!" ORIGINAL: Is there a term for when someone falsely accuses you of doing to them what they are in actuality doing to you? When I was a child, my younger brother would punch me and then would tell my mom I punched him (which was in no way true). I know some would call this lying, but I'm looking for a more specific term. I suspect there may be something to do with logical, rhetoric, politics, or debate, but I'm not cognizant of the term if it exists. Perhaps something like the term "ad hominem"? Any help is appreciated!  |
| What did Terry Pratchett mean by "avec"? Posted: 14 Apr 2021 09:21 AM PDT Terry Pratchett used in his disc world novels the word "avec" as a common food ingredient for french (in his books named "quirmian" or "Quirm" for the country) food. Excerpt from "Snuff" by Terry Pratchett:
I suspect that it means "garlic", deriving from an ellipsis on the french wording "avec ail" - "with garlic". Is this correct? Thanks in advance & GNU Terry Pratchett :-) Edit: Of course I'm aware that "avec" is the french word for "with", but that knowledge alone didn't help me here ;-)  |
| Posted: 14 Apr 2021 05:02 AM PDT I've been learning English in my company. There were 2 different, not related to each other exercises. In one we had to rephrase the following sentence using Present Perfect:
In the 2nd excercise we had a list of events. The last two are:
Using this information we had to make a sentence in Present Perfect out of words
and since/for/from...to. Since the prompts clearly point out to the last of entries and we have no info on what happened to "him" further, I supposed that only 'since' could have been used here. Most of us gave the following answers:
and
Our teacher said that considering information given in tasks, the 2) answer is correct, but the 1) answer isn't. The proper answer to the 1) is:
To me they have the same meaning and both are suitable. Both cases seems to be related, so I asked what's the difference between 2 answers and why it's wrong to say "I have had" in 1) as we did in 2) example. He said the reason lies in the fact that in 1st case there is "this", more specific, and in 2nd case we have "a", which indicates something general. Therefore, there is no way we can use "have had" in 1) The lesson ended and he told us to investigate this as our homework. I've spent a great deal of time considering this and searching through the web, but still have had no answer. He is a native speaker, British, wearing a bow-tie, speaking with that funny British accent, scrupulous and addicted to proper grammar. It's rather odd not to believe him. But it still bothers me, is he right? Does the presence of this/a has so much impact on usage of have had?  |
| What is a 17th-century affectionate term for "Mother"? Posted: 14 Apr 2021 09:32 AM PDT I'm writing a ghost story, and (in an admittedly well-worn trope) a child ghost is looking for its mother; however, how would a 17th-century child affectionately refer to its mother? In short, what would the 17th-century version of "Mummy" be? The child would be British; middle-class (or its equivalent then); moderately educated; and home-schooled, the Bible being the main text book.  |
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