Friday, May 21, 2021

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

What is the meaning of "Misplaced Childhood"?

Posted: 21 May 2021 10:11 AM PDT

I came across a music album by that name while listening to a song called "Kayliegh" by Marillion. I find term "Misplaced Childhood" quite intriguing.

What does it mean exactly? I tried to look it up on google and most of the search results point to the same music album that caused me to begin the search in the first place.

What constitutes as an onomatopoeia? [closed]

Posted: 21 May 2021 09:42 AM PDT

I apologize if this question may seem trivial, but I'm quite perplexed as to what qualifies as an onomatopoeia. Does it simply include written sounds, or does it also include the description of sounds? Here is a quote for reference:

"From somewhere near by came scuffling, kicking sounds, sounds of shoes and flesh scraping dirt and roots."

Is a single-word quote capitalized? Does it require a comma to precede it? [closed]

Posted: 21 May 2021 09:45 AM PDT

Note: I'm not referring to scare quotes. The sample sentence is this:

I added a GIF of Meryl Streep mouthing "whoa" followed by the waving-hand emoji.

It's not really someone speaking, so I'm not sure the same capitalization and preceding comma would apply. Does it require quotes at all?

Alternative to using multiple quotation marks in a sentence for easier reading?

Posted: 21 May 2021 08:49 AM PDT

A character is going through file names on a computer. Short works usually go in quotes instead of being italicized, but is there a way to make this read less clunkily?

I went to his folder labeled "School Stuff." I opened it and clicked on "Homework." There was "Holodomor," "The American Revolution," "Book Report," and "Huckleberry Finn."

Do these phrases require hyphens? "mock-cried" vs "mock cried" [duplicate]

Posted: 21 May 2021 07:50 AM PDT

Should the following sentences be hyphenated?

I mock cried into his shoulder.

vs.

I mock-cried into his shoulder.

He smiled at me with his old man charm.

vs.

He smiled at me with his old man-charm.

What is the meaning of this quote from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"? [closed]

Posted: 21 May 2021 08:29 AM PDT

what is the meaning of the quote below said by Tuco in the movie the good the bad the ugly? Blondie : You may run the risks, my friend, but I do the cutting. We cut down my percentage - uh, cigar? - liable to interfere with my aim.

Tuco : But if you miss you had better miss very well. Whoever double-crosses me and leaves me alive, he understands nothing about Tuco. Nothing!

[Chuckles, bites cigar]

internal contradiction about Talmud meaning [closed]

Posted: 21 May 2021 06:33 AM PDT

... the young man who set out to study the Talmud, not because he had the slightest interest in God but because he was curious about its internal contradictions. -The Big Short by Michael Lewis-

What would be the meaning of "internal contradictions" in this sentence?

Prepositional phrase as an adverb of manner [closed]

Posted: 21 May 2021 03:21 AM PDT

I have this sentence from a vocabulary book "The 1000 most common SAT words" <He adhered to the dictates of his religion without question.>

The question is whether the prepositional phrase acting as the adverb of manner should have preposition + article + singular countable noun structure because the head noun in a noun phrase question is a singular countable noun. So the sentence would write <He adhered to the dictates of his religion without a question.>

Am I right?

What is the grammar on Your honor/My lord? [duplicate]

Posted: 21 May 2021 03:57 AM PDT

Your honor, My lord, Your highness, My lady all refer to another person. What are the rules behind that?

The striked-out questions are answered by Why is it "your Majesty", but "my Lord"? . Thank you guys!

Why do we use "Your" while sometimes use "My"?

First, let's say, Tom is my friend. I would say "My friend, would you like a coffee?" It would be weird if I say "Your friend, would you like a coffee?"

Why don't we use "Your friend" like "Your honor"?

Second, I feel it looks like Apposition if I interpret "Your honor" as "You, honor". Why do we use the possessive form?

Third, say I'm a loser. I would like to coin an honorable form for other people to call me. Which is more correct, "Your loser" or "My loser"?

I'm particularly interested in the usage in the United States if there's any difference.

Is omitting an article within a title is actually correct? [duplicate]

Posted: 21 May 2021 01:25 AM PDT

When I was in an English class, I was assigned to write a summary of one theory in a group and after finishing it, I tried to make a title of it but I wondered if there should be an article before 'summary' because often I see some sentences without articles. I didn't add an article anyways... But is that actually correct?

How is the word 'possible' used in this sentence?

Posted: 21 May 2021 08:50 AM PDT

"My job is important because it makes the best use of nature possible."

I'm not sure how the word 'possible' is used in this sentence. I've looked up the dictionaries and thought of possible usages. First, I guess it could be a way used after adjectives to emphasize that something is the best, worst, and so on as the sentence "It was the best possible surprise anyone could have given me." Otherwise, it could be used to modify the word 'nature' as post-modification. It's quite confusing. I would appreciate if someone answers this question. Thank you.

Gun terminology: is cylinder or chamber correct in this sentence?

Posted: 21 May 2021 07:05 AM PDT

We looked at each other like we had each just rolled a chamber in Russian roulette and now had the guns in our mouths.

If the chambers are what's inside of the actual cylinder, which is what you spin, would "like we had each just rolled a cylinder" be more accurate?

How do I combine these sentences? [closed]

Posted: 21 May 2021 01:19 AM PDT

This is the kind of drama that I wanted to avoid.

Because of this drama I decided to not be in a relationship.

How do I combine these into a single sentence?

Are any of these correct? Is there a better way to say it?

  1. This is the kind of drama that I wanted to avoid when I decided not to be in a relationship?

  2. This kind of drama is why I decided not to be in a relationship.

What is the precise meaning of "bottom scroll"?

Posted: 21 May 2021 08:11 AM PDT

This is an extract from the book "The Boy From the Woods" by Harlan Coben.

Hester quickly craned her neck toward Matthew and tried, through the haze of the studio spotlights, to meet his eye. She was a frequent legal expert on cable news, and two nights a week, "famed defense attorney" Hester Crimstein had her own segment on this very network called Crimstein on Crime, though her name was not pronounced Crime-Rhymes-with-Prime-Stine, but rather Krim-Rhymes-with-Prim-Steen, but the alliteration was still considered "television friendly" and the title looked good on the bottom scroll, so the network ran with it.>

I can't understand the meaning of "bottom scroll". Is it something like a running line which appears at the bottom of the screen on TV in news? But what leads me astray is the word "scroll". Or does "bottom scroll" denote a small space somewhere at the bottom of the TV screen, where the title of the TV segment, which is currently being host, appears?

Should I use singular or plural here? [closed]

Posted: 21 May 2021 05:02 AM PDT

Which is correct and why?:

I like to adopt abandoned things. This, and the fact that my wife works for an animal charity, appear to be why I have six dogs.

I like to adopt abandoned things. This, and the fact that my wife works for an animal charity, appears to be why I have six dogs.

I'm not sure because I could talk of both factors as a single set, or a single mereological object, or, alternatively, I could be talking of both factors as two things.

usage of 'resume' [closed]

Posted: 21 May 2021 03:55 AM PDT

Some workers did some research on a certain topic quite a time ago. But the results were not very promising, so work on this line of investigation was abandoned ... for a long time.

However, recently we found that that there is an elegant way forward, and the results are very good.

Accordingly, I have in my paper:

In this paper, we resume research on ....

Is the word 'resume' used correctly here?

abbreviations for "standard deviation" when used as an informal unit

Posted: 21 May 2021 10:14 AM PDT

I am looking for some advice for abbreviating "standard deviation" when it is used in an informal sense as a mathematical unit, especially with regard to financial usage. This often crops up when the unit of measure is measured in another quantity.

I note a previous question 1 seemed to be asking for capitalisation advice, presumably within normal text.

An example would be, "the typical bid-offer spread of Heating Degree Day futures is 0.7 [Standard Deviations]"

Standard sources (Greenbook.org or the APA style guide) favour or "sd" or "Std. Dev.". The first looks to have the right typographical features but just doesn't feel sufficiently well used to be a standard (at least in this application). The second has the drawback of punctuation within a unit, which looks undesirable. It could be further reduced to "stddev" but the double d looks not quite right. I have seen others use the Excel function name, with capitalisation, "STDEV" but this looks too accommodating to Excel users. Perhaps the most satisfactory would be the simple lowercase Greek letter, sigma, which I think would be likely understood by most relevant readers. However, this limits the text being readily electronically copied.

I would be grateful for any opinions on the subject.

Is there a single word for "Parts of Speech"?

Posted: 21 May 2021 01:04 AM PDT

Is there a word that refers to the different forms of a word, or a word's following four parts of speech—verb, adverb, noun, adjective?

For example:

confuse verb
confusedly adverb
confusion noun
confused, confusing, & confusable adjective

What word should be inserted if I wanted to say:
"I'm looking for all the [forms/parts of speech] of confuse."
or
"I want to use a [form/part of speech] of startle that is not in the dictionary; bestartlement, for example."

I think the answer to my question might be here Word form dictionary/system/tool, but I couldn't understand the descriptions of Inflection and Conjugation well enough to be certain that either is the word I am looking for.

EDIT:
After reading through the links on declensions and derivational morphology provided by Benjamin Harman and John Lawler respectively, I agree with Lawler that declensions are not what I am talking about. I think I want to refer to the set of any given content word's semantically associated parts of speech, i.e. all the various derivational morpheme altered forms of a given content word (and sometimes to just one of a content word's corresponding forms in a different lexical category).
All these terms are new to me, so I apologize if I used any of them incorrectly.

Should Sporadic usage of Definite Article be placed in the middle of cataphoric usage and zero article usage?

Posted: 21 May 2021 06:03 AM PDT

I read from A Comprehensive Grammar of English Language (Quirk, 1985) that sporadic usage of definite article "the" indicates about about location but not a specific one, but an institutionalized one. "We call this the sporadic use of the, because reference is made to an institution which may be observed recurrently at various places and times". When someone says "My sister goes to the theatre every month", with situational usage, we said that his/her sister goes to a particular theatre. But with this new sporadic usage, we can't ask which theatre his/her sister is going to because it will be inappropriate Quirk says in his book.

But now I read another part of the book, "We have already mentioned (cf. 5.33) the use of the in noun phrases with 'sporadic' definite reference, as in the radio, the theatre. In other cases, however, the sporadic use has become so institutionalized that the article is not used." This says that when the same word is used without article (zero article), it becomes quasi-locative (not indicating places, but something abstract). For example:

Be in prison = becoming a prisoner
Walk in the prison = casual visitor walking in the prison

About "Walk in the prison", the book says that the definite usage in this sentence uses cataphoric usage but "Be in prison" is in zero article usage because it is so institutionalized.

Now we got disconnected idea about sporadic usage. Sporadic usage is different from Cataphoric usage, but when it becomes so institutionalized, Zero article is incomparable to cataphoric usage, which now doesn't include the sporadic usage. So, should sporadic usage be placed in the middle of zero article usage and cataphoric usage, or in "very institutionalized" usage of zero, we can attach "the" to reduce its institutional meaning to become close to locative meaning?

(About dangling modifiers) How to correct this sentence

Posted: 21 May 2021 09:07 AM PDT

Eating the hot dog, mustard dropped onto my blouse.

My correction: (by locating the implied subject)

  1. With me eating the hot dog, mustard dropped onto my blouse.
  2. I eating the hot dog, mustard dropped onto my blouse.

Are these two sentences grammatically correct? I know they sound very strange and non-native.

Ps: The second sentence was wrong and I corrected it.

When and where did "clam" come to mean a missed note in a musical performance?

Posted: 21 May 2021 10:14 AM PDT

Someone just asked me in chat what a missed note in music is called. Without hesitation, I replied, "A clam." It's what I've always heard in academic and professional settings since forever.

Only now, having to explain its usage and origin, I went looking and found only informal origins and folk-etymology explanations. One such was the notion that it is derived from the expression "to clam up," meaning to fall silent (see Etymonline, which attests it as American from 1916 while noting that the word clam itself has been used as an interjection meaning 'clam up' since the 14th century). But there are problems with that. For one thing, a "clam" note is one that is played instead of the actually written or appropriate note. In other words, it sounds ... something that is the opposite of silence.

Here's another attempt at explaining the origin:

The origin of using the word "clam" to describe a missed note is rooted in
the theatre TTBOMK. As I understand it, actors would describe an untimely entrance or forgotten line as "making a clam." Certainly, if that was the case, horn players in the pit would have readily taken up the use of the word and spread it around the musical community.

The "TTBOMK" gives it away as folk etymology, and the argument that follows is what I will charitably call less than rigorous.

Still, it does demonstrate that I'm not the only one who's ever heard the term. And really, almost everywhere I've ever played music the term has come up (though not about my playing—honest!). It's also not the only term used for a missed note (one I especially loved was "approximatura," which played nicely off the musical term appogiatura, but that's a story for another day).

And The Word Detective says:

The likening of a closed mouth, or the human mouth in general, to the bivalve sort of "clam" may underlie the use of "clam" to mean a missed or flubbed note, especially if the term originated in connection with wind instruments. This usage dates back to at least the early 1950s and since then has been applied to an error in any sort of musical or theatrical performance ("Bing Crosby … always said, 'Leave the clams in, let 'em know I'm human,'" New York Times, 1991). Perhaps the "error" sense of the term lies in the failure of one's "clam," or mouth, to perform correctly.

... which is anything but definitive. Other possibilities listed in the piece are softened by statements like "it seems entirely logical that ..."

So can anybody provide an actual origin story for use of this term in this context?

An expression, idiom, or phrase meaning "I lied" or "they are lying" or "to tell a lie", etc? [closed]

Posted: 21 May 2021 09:58 AM PDT

Looking for an expression, idiom, or phrase that would indicate a lie is being told, or was told, etc.

I will not be using this phrase as part of a sentence, so I can't give an example. I just wanted a phrase that would convey this meaning. Some examples of what I am looking for include "to spin yarn" and "what a tangled web we weave". Thanks.

The comparison using a single "not"

Posted: 21 May 2021 02:04 AM PDT

Today I'd like to present my question about the passablity of what I'll post below.

Just as I talked with my american friends(I am Japanese) on discord, a certain person said to me;

Are romantic relationships more abnormal than not for Japanese in their 20s?

The context is to mock Japanese low birthrate and low marriage rate. Anyway, I got a bit confused because by him using a single "not", I couldn't tell what he really meant. With "not", we can associate the sentence with two senses or more; "not romantic relationship" or "not abnormal". According to the speaker, it means the latter. Thus I think that "more/less X than not" means "more/less X than not X". The idiom, "More often than not", "More likely than not" can be interpreted through this structure. Do you think this structure has common passablity?; That is, can I adapt this as I please, like "more brilliant than not", "more famous than not", "more easy than not". I think this structure can be better off if it is used in question sentences.

Any thought?

Appositives in the sentence

Posted: 21 May 2021 03:00 AM PDT

Where is the appositive in this sentence?

Each bottle had its own tight seal cork and wire.

where to put the possessive "s" with an appositive parenthetical

Posted: 21 May 2021 08:20 AM PDT

Say I have a gym instructor called Anne and it's her birthday. I want to convey that to someone who doesn't know who Anne is in one sentence.

In speech, I would probably say, "it is Anne, my gym instructor's, birthday." But, in writing, that seems wrong; it puts the possessive "s" in the subclause only.

So what is the correct way to write a sentence like this? "It is Anne's, my gym instructor's, birthday"? "It is Anne's, my gym instructor, birthday"? Something else?

Is there a name for a place that sells nuts?

Posted: 21 May 2021 06:35 AM PDT

Is there a name for a store that mainly sells nuts and seeds? Like this one:

Nut shop

On the earhole again

Posted: 21 May 2021 07:25 AM PDT

In several episodes of Steptoe & Son, the phrase "On the earhole" is used. In one scene the vicar knocks on the door asking for donations to the church. Old man Steptoe shouts (he drops his aitches) "Is he on the ear'ole again?". It appears to mean the same as "on the scrounge" but can anyone explain the origin please?

From Livorno to Leghorn and back again

Posted: 21 May 2021 07:44 AM PDT

  • Can anyone tell me why the Tuscan city of Livorno used to be called Leghorn in English?

An increasing number of British writers, artists, philosophers, and travelers visited the area and developed the unique historical ties between the two communities. The British referred to the city as Leghorn.

Wikipedia

I believe nowadays English brochures, foreign travellers etc. call the city by its traditional Italian name. So did the name Leghorn simply fell in popularity or disuse as suggested by Google Ngram? Did the Livornese hold a petition or protested?! (I've been living in Italy for over thirty years, and I don't recall ever hearing them complain.)

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  • What term is commonly used when an anglicized city's name reverts back to the original?

What does the semicolon in the dictionary definition of a word mean?

Posted: 21 May 2021 07:56 AM PDT

Many dictionaries use a semicolon in a meaning for a word. For instance for the word impertinent I have seen:

"outside the bounds of proper speech or behaviour; impudent; insolent; saucy"

Then there is a synonym explanation of connotations for impertinent, impudent, insolent, and saucy.

My question is: Does the semicolon introduce synonyms always? Does it mean that the word following a semicolon SHARES the meaning of the main entry word you are looking up; that is, the sense preceding the first semicolon in the meaning?

I know that insolent cannot be substituted for impertinent, but maybe impertinent can be substituted for insolent with a loss of connotation.

Just what the heck are these guys who write dictionaries trying to convey with the semicolon in the meaning of a word?

"Fillet" or "filet"

Posted: 21 May 2021 10:06 AM PDT

My significant other asked me today whether or not she should use a fillet or filet of steak in a recipe.

What is the difference between fillet and filet, and the history behind these words? Is there a context in which one should be used and the other shouldn't? Filet sounds rather French as in filet mignon.

My own brief experiences with the terms are that fillet is the term for the cut of meat whereas filet would be used for fish. I've also read that one is American English and the other is British English.
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