Saturday, May 1, 2021

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

What does it mean "to go for the green"?

Posted: 01 May 2021 10:24 AM PDT

In the song Tainted Past by Armored Saint it's sung:

Each and every day I rise
From the ashes I've left behind
To start anew push through
If you go for the green
You'll soon see what I mean

None of the idiom dictionaries mentions the phrase and I didn't really found any examples which don't relate to golf on the Internet. What does it mean in this context?

When is 'and' not a conjunction or a Boolean operator?

Posted: 01 May 2021 10:14 AM PDT

In the dictionary 'and' is a conjunction. In capital letters 'AND' is a noun as a Boolean operator. Below is an example of a request to a sign creator for a sign of symbols for Fish & Chips.

Please give me symbols for: fish, 'fish' and and, '&' and chips, 'chips'.

In that example the word 'and' can be said to appear four times in a row. That first use of 'and' in the example sentence was as a conjunction why was it not a conjunction for the other three uses of the word 'and'? Other users commented about 'and' as something other than a conjunction. What is 'and' other than a conjunction?

Is it correct to say "through bus" in the context "direct bus from one place to another"

Posted: 01 May 2021 09:42 AM PDT

I live 12km away of my work. I don't have a car. I commute to my work by bus. But there is no one direct bus from my home to the work place. I need to take one bus, go to a station, get out and take another one.

Is it correct to say that there is no through bus instead of no direct bus to my work in the context above?

Is it usual for native speakers?

What is the one word for this feeling?

Posted: 01 May 2021 09:00 AM PDT

What is one word for the feeling that goes like, 'I am pretty sure that is not the case and highly likely to be so but I still have doubt as to 'what if'.' Eg: I have a ---- as to whether I locked my door/left my gas on/take my admit card for exam.

(A sort of fear that is not based in reality.)

(A non-technical word is what I am searching for.)

the quality of having technical expertise is called?

Posted: 01 May 2021 08:51 AM PDT

What is the quality of having technical expertise? I tried to use the word "knowledge" but not correct.

I searched over the net and found that

Technical skills, also known as hard skills, are qualities acquired by using and gaining expertise in performing physical or digital tasks.

and definition of hard skills as per investopedia is

Hard skills are learned abilities acquired and enhanced through practice, repetition, and education. Hard skills are important because they increase employee productivity and efficiency and subsequently improve employee satisfaction.

Is it right to say the quality of having technical expertise is hard skills? or any better terminology?

Context: I was referring to a story of an technical expert, where the complete shut down of a company (for example complete Electricity or machinery shut down)happened and nobody can fix and they asked for external help. the expert fixed the issue by doing a simple task ( say changing just fuse) and charged heavily and when asked why he charged he mentioned to fix it $1 and to know what to fix it $99

Think of a quality which a successful person possesses.

  1. creativity
  2. resilience
  3. knowledge - Here knowledge is not the quality of a successful person as per my teacher. But having technical expertise makes a person successful. I want to have the term for this third quality.

Is ‘very much’ ambiguous

Posted: 01 May 2021 07:19 AM PDT

'Very much' can mean:

  1. a large amount 'much' of many 'much''s (if 'very' is omitted, it can mean a little much)
  2. amount of 'very' and amount of 'much' are the same (emphasis) ('very' can be omitted without affecting the meaning of 'much')

Using a name with a possessive apostrophe as antecedent

Posted: 01 May 2021 06:44 AM PDT

Recently, a geopolitical article was published in a well-known British financial newspaper. There was a particular sentence, which, after being conveniently paraphrased so as not to infringe any copyright, said something like this:

  • Despite Angela's worries, her administration continues to push for the construction of the pipeline.

This sentence was in the fifth paragraph. From the headline to the above-written sentence, Angela was not mentioned.

My questions are:

Is "Angela's" a correct and unmistakable antecedent to "her"?

Does the use of a possessive apostrophe invalidate the name as an antecedent?

Thank you all for your help.

Participle phrases and Inversion

Posted: 01 May 2021 09:43 AM PDT

In enwiki.org, this example is provided for showing inversion after a Participle phrases:

Lurking in the corner stood a chicken with an ax, ready to take on the farmer in a fight to the death.

In another pamphlet I found these examples for demonstrating the same topic:

  1. (Having been) annoyed by his students was our teacher Mr. Matters.
  2. Walking around the trees was my friend Alice who is Asian.

Are these sentences grammatical? Isn't it the case that these examples are causing dangling modifiers?

Can the phrase 'certain level' imply 'not so much in quantity'?

Posted: 01 May 2021 05:17 AM PDT

I'm a high school student learning English in South Korea. In my exams, there was a question asking to choose the phrase that best fitted the following blank.

This is evident in the changing approaches towards expert knowledge, from full trust in the skills of the expert to a reserved trust, which ____________.
(See the full passage below)

There were two choices I was having a hard time choosing between. One of them was "makes people need a certain level of trust with experts" and the other was "puts too much a burden of judgment on the individuals".

I chose "makes people need a certain level of trust with experts", believing that the word 'certain' implied 'not so much in quantity and the phrase itself could be used to emphasize the change from full to reserved trust. Also, I thought it was illogical to say "too much", given there were no further mentions about the individuals.

But the answer was not the one I chose and my teacher told me that the word 'certain' should just be interpreted as 'some specific quantity. I am not really satisfied with his reasoning and was wondering if anyone can tell me how my understanding of the phrase is not appropriate.

Full passage:

As scientific knowledge has substantially expanded, our approach to knowledge may have changed: the earlier naive beliefs in undeniable truths have given way to the contextualization of knowledge, dramatically expressed as the end of grand narratives. This is evident in the changing approaches towards expert knowledge, from full trust in the skills of the expert to a reserved trust, which ___________. A major shift from 'science' to 'research' is identified in the production of scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge allows us to develop new technologies, solve practical problems, and make informed decisions — both individually and collectively. According to this shift, knowledge becomes less final and more open to change. Science was associated with 'certainty, coldness, aloofness, objectivity, distance, and necessity', but research was, in contrast, 'uncertain; open-ended; immersed in many lowly problems of money, instruments, and know-how'.

Can you say more than four 'and' words in a row? [duplicate]

Posted: 01 May 2021 07:05 AM PDT

If I was describing to a shop sign image creator a Fish and Chip shop sign by its individual symbols, I might say to the shop sign image creator:

Please can I have the symbols for: fish, 'fish' and and, '&' and chips, 'chips'?

That conversational sentence contains four 'and' words in a row albeit by using the word 'and' instead of 'ampersand' to say the symbol '&'. Can more than four 'and' words in a row exist in a conversational sentence?

What do you call this part of old windows? [duplicate]

Posted: 01 May 2021 03:26 AM PDT

Image of an old-school window

What is the hinged wood covering on old windows called? Is there a proper name for it?

What rules make these comparative clauses grammatical?

Posted: 01 May 2021 05:04 AM PDT

  1. We invited more people than came.
  2. Fred reads more books than Susan reads.

These than-clauses which appear in a grammar book seems weird to me. Are they grammatically acceptable? What about the substitutions as below?

a. We invited more people than they came.

b. Fred reads more books than Susan does.

Is there a term for nicknames which are inserted between first and last names?

Posted: 01 May 2021 02:28 AM PDT

Examples:

  • Mike "no-stop" Granger
  • Jimmy "the wrench" Parsons

Is there a specific term that describes either of the following?

  • the nickname that comes between the first and last name
  • the format itself

What the meaning of 'sad beauty'?

Posted: 01 May 2021 10:39 AM PDT

I'm just reading a story, whose title is 'Sad Beauty'. This is translated in our language as 'beauty of sadness'. The story is that an unhealthy woman gets sick and finally passes away. Actually this is a SAD story, but I think the translation is wrong and 'sad beauty' has any meaning like slang, such as 'pity' or 'sad princess'.
If somebody knows the meaning of this, please let me know.

I saw the following sentence (the old poem about a thousand years ago), so I decide to ask this question.

Kokoronaki mi ni mo aware wa shirarekeri shigi tatsu sawa no aki no yugure
(Even one who claims to no longer have a heart feels this sad beauty: snipes flying up from a marsh on an evening in autumn).

Meaning of "I trust the journey was uneventful"

Posted: 01 May 2021 03:38 AM PDT

What is the meaning of "I trust the journey was uneventful"

Source of info: https://youtu.be/nHmPFpRMkNw?t=83

I checked the meaning of uneventful journey and found below..

If you describe a period of time as uneventful, you mean that nothing interesting, exciting, or important happened during it.

but, I thought was asking him that hopefully it was a great journey without any problems...can you tell what exactly is the meaning here in this context?

What's the counter to "negate?"

Posted: 01 May 2021 09:57 AM PDT

"Negate" is sometimes used--perhaps less professionally--to mean something along the lines of "take the opposite." There is other usage that means something more like "deny" or "downplay." That feels related, but it's not quite the same as taking the opposite. In logic, for instance, to negate a proposition means to take the opposite, which is adding a "not" in front of the proposition. Obviously, what is considered "opposite" is contextual, and here it means adding a "not," but it is sometimes used to mean "adding a negative sign" instead (as in programming).

And in broader English, it often means roughly, "to deny or downplay," but I'm not interested in the antonym for that (which is "confirm" or "support," etc.)

I'm looking for the opposite of that first idea, "to oppositify." Whether that's literally flipping a negative back to a positive, or doing some other operation that achieves this. There are many such operations and they are very much dependent on the context. But they are very common I find as a pattern in life.

I first googled "unnegate." There is a slim bit of precedent for its use. But it's ugly. Its spelling looks bad with the double 'n's and the double negation. And it's not very 'Englishy.' And that second negation is so weak. 'Un-'. It doesn't feel good enough a word; but is, for now, the closest I have found. I'm wondering if we can synthesize a better one somehow. Because I find it to be a very common idea and I never have a word for it.

For the curious programmer nerds, the specific context was actually writing comments for code in a programming language for which negative indices in a sequenced data structure (like an array, etc. ) are interpreted as offsets from the back in higher level code, but I need to implement that behaviour in library code. I wanted to say something like that a line of code was "unnegating the index if necessary," i.e. computing the "real" positive index from the idiomatic negative one. The operation that does this is not taking the absolute value. But rather, interpreting a negative index as being a one-based array offset that looks backwards through memory starting with the last element. -1 means last element, -2 second to last element, etc. Normally, arrays are zero-based. But for convenience, many higher level calls will accept negative indices idiomatically and since -0 is just 0, they have to start at -1 instead, so (negative) one-based, not zero-based. So it's not as simple as taking the absolute value. In fact, the correct math here is: realIndex = negativeIndex + end + 1, where end is one past the last element, as is normal in programming.

But I have found myself wishing for this word in general English usage for a very long time. I'm not interested in a mathy or overly technical word here. I really want something like "unnegate". Think about "Unbreak My Heart," or "unfuck this situation." I'm going for that kind of feel, but more abstract/general than all those.

EDIT: Perhaps rectify is the right word.

(Dang. I studied EE too. I'm dumb. Kthxbye.)

Word for the sound of a box cutter retracting: open and close [closed]

Posted: 01 May 2021 03:45 AM PDT

The sound of an exacto (box cutter) knife retracting in and out. Open and close. Sound effect.

Is there an English word that describes mentioning something just for the sake of mentioning it but it's completely impractical?

Posted: 01 May 2021 03:25 AM PDT

Is there an English word that describes mentioning something just for the sake of mentioning it but it's completely impractical?

Like let's say I say, "we should probably take a more holistic approach, I think it'll give us a lot of new ideas." Except that holistic approach would take 10 more years so we just never end up doing it, and we know we'd never do it, but I mentioned it anyway just for "shoulda" purposes. I think I mention it because maybe we should consider some details from a more holistic approach, but not the entire thing.

Perhaps in simpler terms, mentioning something someone "should do" but knowingly that they would never actually do it to it's fullest extent, but should at least consider?

I hope my explanation makes sense, thanks in advance.

What is a person called who is playing an (online) game for another person as a paid service?

Posted: 01 May 2021 03:38 AM PDT

Alice pays Bob to play using an online game account that Alice owns, so that Alice's account could level up or get stronger without Alice needing to play the game (grinding it).

What is Bob called?

What does 'underwritten" mean in the following sentence?

Posted: 01 May 2021 04:03 AM PDT

I am asking about the meaning of 'underwritten' in the following sentence? The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise for its visual effects and action sequences, but with criticism towards its underwritten human characters.

Thanks in advance.

What is the idiom or expression used to say that "what someone has done is nothing special"?

Posted: 01 May 2021 08:09 AM PDT

Something like praising someone ironically when they have messed up or they don't derserve it.

usage of when and tense in a conditional sentence?

Posted: 01 May 2021 06:28 AM PDT

There are two conditional sentences which one is more correct grammatically?

  1. When I come home, my children will be playing.
  2. When I come home, my children would be playing.

In the first sentence the when clause verb is in simple present, and the main clause in future continuous. the situation is real that the children will be playing when I reach home.

In the second sentence the when clause verb is in simple present but the main clause verb in past continuous. But how the second sentence also sounds correct?

Nominative and accusative (I and me)

Posted: 01 May 2021 06:01 AM PDT

I have noticed increasing confusion with the use of the nominative and accusative forms for the first person singular. Why has this come about? I can only assume that it might be the result of childish talk from my young childhood in the fifties coming home and saying "Me and my friend went...", with the correction of our parents "Don't say me, say I", and that this stuck with some of those children who then went on to be teachers. As if "me" was a universally bad word. More recently it has been linked to the phrases "X and I" and "X and me", as if saying "X and me" is somehow offensive. So we have extremely well-educated professionals who seem to be unable to use the word "me" if it is preceded by another entity. So we hear "he said to Fred and I", for example. But what if Fred wasn't there? "he said to I"? Just imagine the sentence without the other entity. (Fred and) I will go, he said to (Fred and) me.

Using "though" at the end of a sentence

Posted: 01 May 2021 07:02 AM PDT

Why is it that when we use "though" at the end of a sentence, a comma is needed? For example, take the sentence "Good punctuation helps, though." Why is it incorrect to say "Good punctuation helps though"? I've been told the former is correct and, intuitively, it feels correct, but can anyone elaborate on the reasoning behind this? Thanks!

Word for purpose-built construct

Posted: 01 May 2021 05:06 AM PDT

I am looking for a noun that means "thing built for a specific purpose" or "construct that was made with reason, rather than chance" or "entity which was designed", assuming such word exists.

The extremely specific purpose is for a new role playing group introduction, for every player to read. I am including a sentence for each character, trying to be specific enough so the player knows it's them, and vague enough so the other players are still mostly in the dark.

The sentence I'm working with is: "Alone in the darkness, a tireless {entity} hones his craft, and waits."

In this case the character is a D&D 5e Warforged, so they're a humanoid and for all intents and purposes a conscious being with free will etc (for whatever that matters to the word choice). I could go more specific and use "soldier" or "sentinel", but I'm hoping there's a way to make it a bit more vague while still adding some information.

(Also this is my first question on English stackexchange, if this is a better fit for Writing let me know.)

Undergo vs Suffer an accident

Posted: 01 May 2021 10:30 AM PDT

I was doing a CAE Practice Test on Use of English (It is a multiple choice exercise) when I came across the following example:

Her life was cut tragically short. She ______ a horrific accident at the National Air Show in Ohio in the USA, when her plane crashed through the roof of a building

In the gap you need to choose between underwent and suffered.

Both of these collocate with accident according to ludwig.guru: 1) suffered, 2. underwent

However, the answer key suggests suffered as the only possibility.

Why can't the latter work as well?

Can we say "fulfill oneself"? [closed]

Posted: 01 May 2021 07:50 AM PDT

Is it a correct way to say in English: "to fulfill oneself" or would there be a better way to express it in a few words? Thanks!

What is the difference between need and necessity?

Posted: 01 May 2021 02:52 AM PDT

I was asked what the difference between need and necessity was by a non native speaker. It was in the context of the name of an article to do with global warming, i.e "The need/necessity for....". I was completely stumped and googling it only produced speculative answers.

In my mind a necessity is an absolute requirement, for example food and water is a necessity for survival. I would have said that a need is a requirement but maybe not an absolute one. For example, there is a need for an umbrella when walking outside in the rain.

Could you please give a definitive answer, if there is one?

EDIT - Attempting to address Edwin Ashworth's need for signs of research.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines need and necessity as follows

Need - Necessity, requirement.

Necessity - Constraint or determination by some external force; an instance of this.

In Fleischer's 1804 book "English Synonymous Or the Difference Between Words Esteemed Synonymous in the English Language: Useful to All who Would Either Write and Speak with Propriety and Elegance", need and necessity are given by

Need and necessity relates less to the situation of life than the other three words [in the context of poverty, indigence and want]; but more to the relief we expect or the remedy we seek, with this difference between the two that need seems less pressing than necessity.

although this is both contextual and dated. I am struggling to find other reliable sources, hence my post on this website.

What are those non-glass/non-transparent window called? just wooden doors for windows?

Posted: 01 May 2021 05:00 AM PDT

Do you guys know what those windows (like the ones on medieval castles) are called? They are non-glass, non-transparent, wooden-doors pretty much; in other words, there are wooden doors on the opening of the wall... I've been looking around for awhile, but can't find the word.

The picture is here Thanks for taking the time to assist.
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