Tuesday, July 6, 2021

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Opposite of endearment terms - does it exist, and/or have a name?

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 09:31 AM PDT

Does the English language have any way to apply the reverse of endearment or diminution to a word - that is, make it sound big, dangerous, ugly, intense? "Pig" turns into "piggy" or "piglet"; "dog" has "doggie" or (recently) "doggo"... Is there (or was there ever) a reverse mechanism?

"Why join us" or "why to join us"

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 09:24 AM PDT

I am writing a paragraph describing the reasons why potential collaborators should join my company. Should it be entitled "Why join XXXX?" or "Why to join XXXX?"

Thanks!

For places like "St Louis", "Mt Pleasant", and "Ft Myers", what type of words are "St", "Mt", and "Ft"?

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 08:50 AM PDT

Working on an chuck of code to handle translations for converting "St" to "Saint", "Mt" to "Mount" and so forth, and I was curious about what these types of words (in the context of place names) are called, and how they originated as a way to name places?

Can 'An ass that won't quit' connote stubbornness?

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 09:55 AM PDT

I've tracked down a potential folk etymology of "butt that won't quit" from the phrase 'legs that won't quit', but I can't attest that in a dictionary anywhere.

My question comes from my perceived notion it meant 'Won't give up' with the 'ass' being a Synecdoche for the person in question, that is it's not just the ass that won't give up but the whole person. Perhaps the connection of Asses (the animal) being stubborn contributed.

I'm not the only one who thought this. I'm a native speaker though, so I didn't think it was language barrier. Maybe I am a naive speaker though.

The main reason I am asking is that I am wanting to use this in a novel to imply somebody who won't give up no matter what (I'm not after alternatives though), and wanted something punny like:

They had an ass that wouldn't quit. In fact <the main character> suspected it had take up a second job, and worked in a soup kitchen on weekends.

But that doesn't connote their stubbornness if this is an uncommon interpretation of the phrase.

Does this meaning work for that phrase at all, and if so how common is it?

different article usages in one sentence [closed]

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 07:04 AM PDT

In the following sentence I read in an article, it says

"Technology offers more enticements to stray while the culture and the law offer fewer penalties for doing so."

In this sentence, while there is no "the" in front of "technology," the other two nouns "culture" and "law" comes with "the." My understanding was if the sentence has a parallel structure (A while A') then it is better to make things match (the technology, the culture, the law). Is this usage grammatical?

I would greatly appreciate any help! Articles always giving me a hard time..

definite article "the" [migrated]

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 06:07 AM PDT

"More of us think marriage should provide "the" full buffet of satisfaction"

This is a sentence I came across while reading Time magazine. Here is the use of "the" correct? Would it be wrong to use "a" instead? If using "the" is the correct way, could anyone please elaborate on why...?

I would greatly appreciate any help. Thanks

What is the one word for time of day? [duplicate]

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 05:06 AM PDT

Is there any single word that collectively the following words?

  • Morning
  • Afternoon
  • Evening
  • Night

'Time of day' is total of 3 words. Is there any single word for that?

Usage of compound adjectives with past participles [migrated]

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 07:16 AM PDT

I often see native English speakers using compound adjectives with past participles to describe traits of animals in books and journal articles. For example:

1.1: Reptiles are cold-blooded creatures.

1.2: Reptiles are creatures with cold blood.

2.1: I saw a small-billed bird.

2.2: I saw a bird with a small bill.

3.1: This bird delivers a five-noted song.

3.2: This bird delivers a song with five notes.

I'd like to know whether this usage of compound adjectives is idiomatic. Or is it just a way to shorten sentences due to space restrictions of texts such as those of books and journal articles? And is there any difference in meaning in the above examples? When one form is preferred over the other?

What's the word for someone who knows what you need in advance?

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 07:25 AM PDT

An adjective that describes someone who knows what you need in advance and do for you.
It is more than flexible and adaptable.

For example,
My father used to watch news on a phone after he had dinner. So my mom knows that and she charged his phone in case there will be no batteries when he needs them.

In this time, how can I describe my mom?

Can we use two different tenses with "before", "after" etc? [closed]

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 04:10 AM PDT

I have realized the world after she left.

Or

I realized the world after she left.

(I have realized right now. She left me a long time ago).
Which one is correct? Can we use present + after/before+past..?

"prepare" vs "do" [closed]

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 04:55 AM PDT

This is probably not the typical question for "prepare" and I can't seem to find any resources that will clearly demonstrate or explain the difference. I can only explain the problem through example sentences. A lot of my students in SEA are using "prepare" ALL the time when they could (should?) have just used another verb. For example: "I have prepared two tips for you." (in a PPT on teaching tips) "I have prepared some coffee for us." (as in, they bought coffee and brought it with them) "I will prepare the copies for you." (when you need to get copies made)

These are just a few examples and as you can see, they are not always completely wrong, but they just sound weird. The coffee example is perhaps the easiest to explain, but a lot of times I get stuck explaining this one. If "prepare" means to do something beforehand, then students think they can use it for any activity they did before whatever event they're talking about now and yet that's not true. Or there are better ways of saying it.

"Double" as adjective: is it attributive-only, never predicative?

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 03:23 AM PDT

Is this sentence correct:

The semantics of ... is double.

There is an opionion "double" cannot be an adjective in such position, and a related compound must be used:

  • The semantics of ... is double-edged. (or double-fledged, double-fold, etc.)

But I have found a counterexample written by a literary critic:

  • Melville's achievement was double: he brought myth into ...

So may "double" as an adjective be used predicatively?

How to add coding language details in Resume/Linkedin [closed]

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 02:18 AM PDT

I have to add details to my resume and linkedin. I am unsure of how to put this line below

• Create data feeds with Python that log data from publicly available sources for further review and analysis

As python is a language, should it be with or in? Is the form of english fine and efficient?

Is there a more British way to talk about tackling problems? [closed]

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 01:17 AM PDT

I can see that the Cambridge Dictionary is at least aware of the use of tackle meaning "come to grips with a problem" and I can see that the Sunday Times has used it on occasion. It still seems so connected to football that it shouldn't be the most idiomatic way for a Brit to express the idea.

Is there any better or more common way to express this idea in British English? or do Brits just use the exact same phrasing but whilst imagining rugby or field hockey instead?

A more informal or slang alternative to "couple"?

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 08:44 AM PDT

I am trying to use a noun to refer to youths in a relationship (boyfriend girlfriend), but even though technically it is correct, "couple" to me just sounds a bit too serious and old fashioned. It's more common for this age group to refer to themselves as "going out" or just "together". It's similar to the difference between "partner/significant other" and "boyfriend/girlfriend" where one is used more often depending on the age of the two.

Any suggestions on what to use? Below is an example sentence:

Example

They walked into the restaurant and saw a few other couples around their age.

Opposite of preparation / is there a word for winding down after an event?

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 09:37 AM PDT

Idea

I am wondering, if I prepare before an event by getting into my running clothes and we call this "preparation".
Is there a word for then getting out of my running clothes after the event?

Elaboration

Trying to elaborate on my thoughts, consider this:

Preparation What I am looking for
Prepare Postpare (?)

Example

Another example:

  • I would say I prepare for some event by driving there (when talking about tasks).
  • What do I say for driving back home if I also consider this a task I need to complete?

Related question

There seems to be someone who had a similar thought, here.
However, this question has a completely different focus / discusses IT specifically and the answer do not answer my question at all.

Let me know your availability

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 08:52 AM PDT

When someone suggests making a video call someday and you reply it is a good idea (even unsure he/she is just being polite) and he/she says let me know your availability, does he/she want to know the specific time range or can you just say "Will do"?

Where does Cloth-Head come from?

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 07:52 AM PDT

I've just come across the pejorative term Cloth Head, and beyond pure speculation here on WordReference.com Language Forums that it's related to the term clot head.

The more familiar term is cloth-head, meaning dum-dum, dingbat, nitwit (etc. etc.). There is also a word clot, of the same meaning. I have never seen the spelling clothead before; it's either clothhead with one of the h's omitted, or it's a new combination of clot and some insult in -head, including but not limited to clothhead. So it could be pronounced either way.

But 'Cloth Head' seems to outweigh all other formulations in these Google ngrams, however that doesn't negate when cloth head is not used pejoratively. So although that seems to be the original term, I then searched on 'clot(h)headed variants. The google ngram is here.

Clothheaded still prevails, making me think that is the original, but I cannot find an original use that gives an etymology.

How can I keep away from latinate? [closed]

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 03:02 AM PDT

Are there resources to help me keep away from latinate when I write? Preferably, they would let me trade latinate words for older, better words.

A thesaurus might help (or better, a good dictionary with information on etymology, combined with a thesaurus---which is the combination I used to find that "keep away" could replace "avoid"), but there are problems with the dictionary+thesaurus approach. The dictionary will give me the origin of a word, but no non-Latinate alternatives, while a thesaurus will give me many alternatives, but won't give the etymological information I need to tell whether a word is latinate or not. A writer like me who seeks to occasionally (but quickly) replace Latinate words with non-Latinate words is then forced into an iterative search that can be time-consuming.

But what makes me think that writers should replace Latinate with "older, better words," and what makes them better, asks a user. The idea that avoiding Latinate can improve writing is fairly widespread, and I offer three sources to support this claim. More sources can easily be found. The first source is, of course, Ernest Hemingway. Note his (partial) avoidance of Latinate in the following quote:

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.

But I suspect that the user finds Hemingway distasteful, which is fair enough. As an alternative then, take the minor classic Economical Writing by Deirdre (formerly Donald) McCloskey. McCloskey advises against the use of "five-dollar words to support a pose of The Scientist or The Scholar." She explains,

"Anglo-Saxon words [...] have often acquired a homely concreteness through long use that more recent and more scholarly coinages from Latin or Greek have not [...].

But then, McCloskey is an economist, and the user most assuredly will not take advice on usage from economists (not with a B.A. in English and 20 years of book-tending under her belt). Perhaps a passage from a higher authority and with more historical flair will bring the said user around. The passage comes from Style: Toward Clarity and Grace by Joseph Williams. Deep breath, I quote at length (the final paragraph delivers the punch):

After the Norman Conquest, those responsible for institu­tional, scholarly, and religious affairs wrote in Latin and later Norman French. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth cen­turies, increasing numbers of writers began using English again for matters of state, commercial, and social life. But since the na­tive vocabulary for these matters had long since disappeared (or had never come into being), English writers were able to write about them in the only vocabulary available, in words borrowed from Latin, but particularly from French. [...]

Conspiring with that influence on our vocabulary was a sec­ond one, the Renaissance. In the sixteenth century, as England was increasingly influenced by classical writers, scholars began translating into English large numbers of Greek and Latin texts. [...]

As a consequence of these two influences, our vocabulary is the most varied of any modern European language. [...] But this flexibility has come with a price. Since the language of political, cultural, scientific, and economic affairs is based largely on Romance words, those of us who aspire to participate have had to learn a vocabulary separate from that which we learned through the first five or ten years of our lives. Just as we have to spend a good deal of time in school learning the idiosyncrasies of our spelling system and of "good" grammar, so must we spend time learning words not rooted in our daily experience. [...]

And of course once we learn these words, who among us can resist using them when we want to sound learned and authoritative? Writers began to surrender to that temptation well before the middle of the sixteenth century, but it was about then that many English writers became so enamored with an erudite vocabulary that they began deliberately to lard their prose with exotic Latinisms, a kind of writing that came to be known as the "inkhorn" style and was mocked as pretentious and incomprehensible by those critics for whom English had become a special passion. This impulse toward an elevated diction has proved quite durable; it accounts for the difference today between "The adolescents who had effectuated forcible entry into the domicile were apprehended" and "We caught the kids who broke into the house."

I hope these quotes help to explain my interest in avoiding Latinate

To be clear though, I don't seek to avoid all Latinate. I am no extremist. But in some cases, in my scientific writing (I am an economist, as you may have guessed), I find that non-Latinate words can bring more clarity to the reader.

I'm looking for useful tips especially for dedicated resources (not general dictionaries and thesauruses) that will allow me to quickly exchange Latinate for non-Latinate. I hope the post-police will let this question through now, so that Canned Man, John Lawler, myself and others can have a productive discussion on this interesting topic.

I know about this, but it's too short. A bodily book I can buy and hold would be best.

Is this "writing advice (off-topic)"?

No, this is "word choice and usage" and therefore "welcomed here", at least according to the help page.

Am I requesting a list?

What I am actually after are dedicated resources (rather than general dictionaries and thesauruses), as well as tips and methods that will help writers of the English language improve their usage by avoiding Latinate. ("Usage", after all, does appear in the title of this stack, i.e. "English Language & Usage".)

What is a continued sequel movie and non continued sequel movie called?

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 04:00 AM PDT

What is a Non-continued sequel movie vs Continued sequel called?

1.) What i mean by non-continued sequel is that the theme, name of the movie is quite the same, some additional characters may be added, some original character may be deleted. But IMPORTANTLY the lead characters (atleast 2) are different and surely different cast and storyline will not be continual to the original story (one reason is (2 lead) characters are changed).

Example: Movie like (1.) Speed (1994) (2.) Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)

2.) What i mean by continued sequel is that the theme, name of the movie is the same, some additional characters may be added, some original character may be deleted. But IMPORTANTLY the lead characters (atleast 2) are same and same cast and storyline will be continual or may be different but continual to the original.

Example: Movie like (1.) Spider-Man (2002) (2.) Spider-Man 2 (2004) (3.) Spider-Man 3 (2007)

A word for extreme feeling sorry for someone?

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 09:04 AM PDT

I'm looking for a word that describes making a passionate expression of how sorry you feel for someone.

A bit like "sanctimonious" means making a big show of how moral you are.

Or "outrage" is a passionate display of anger or disapproval.

I'm looking for similar to express compassion or pity in an exaggerated or passionate way.

For example: "as a display of his [extreme compassion] Bob wept when discussing the plight of the victims"

Is there a gender neutral equivalent of “manspreading”?

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 07:43 AM PDT

Who knew that the term manspreading is considered deeply sexist? I didn't

A nameless user proposed to delete the term from an answer of mine. His explanation was "remove misandry". I had written

[someone] who spreads their legs and invades your space (AKA manspreading)

The comment got me thinking. At first, I was quite flabbergasted and speechless. Agreed, the term is not complimentary, but I had considered it mainly to be a humorous term that was basically stating a truth. Men often do sit with their legs apart. It can show swagger, confidence, and suggest dominance. It can be due to their height, the taller the man, the more difficult it is for him to close his legs when seated in public transport.

That's what I thought

But according to one spinal neurosurgeon, John Sutcliffe, the reason is two-fold

"The overall width of the pelvis is relatively greater in females and the angle of the femoral neck is more acute. These factors could play a role in making a position of sitting with the knees close together less comfortable in men," he told The Independent.

and

"I suspect most men would suggest the reason for adopting the more spread posture in sitting would be the avoidance of testicular compression from the thigh muscles. The pelvic rotation goes some way to improve compression in both aspects," Sutcliffe continued.

The Independent

I suppose that makes sense. The phenomenon is dictated by physiological differences that are inherent in men and women's bodies.

I turned to Wikipedia. It confirmed the user's standpoint, and why he suggested its removal

Both this posture and the use of the neologism "manspreading" have occasioned some internet criticism and debates in the US, UK, Turkey, and Canada. The public debate began when an anti-manspreading campaign started on the social media website Tumblr in 2013; the term appeared a year later. OxfordDictionaries.com added the word "manspreading" in August 2015. Use of the term has been criticized as "a caricature of feminism" and the practice has been juxtaposed with examples of women taking up excessive space in public spaces with bags.

Further on, it supplies a female equivalent of the term

The criticism and campaigns against manspreading have been counter-criticized for not addressing similar behavior by women, such as taking up adjacent seats with bags, or "she-bagging".

So much controversy over a non-vulgar term, living in Italy I had no idea about the heated debate this term has sparked. So to make some sort of amends, I edited my answer and now it reads

[someone] who spreads their legs and/or invades your space (AKA "manspreading" or "she-bagging")

But it's not a perfect fit. And she-bagging doesn't work if you're talking about an airplane seat, does it?

  • What would be a gender-neutral equivalent of manspreading. A term that would not offend men, but could be applied to both sexes?

Looking for a word to describe the sound of the morning as hundreds of birds begin singing before sunrise?

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 07:19 AM PDT

This time of year hundreds of birds come to the mountains. Before the sunrise they begin to awaken, as they do, they begin to sing their various songs. All together they sound like a boisterous cacophony, but soon you hear their individual sounds and it becomes a symphony of beauty and awe.

I suppose there is no one word to describe such a beautiful scene and I'll have to write a paragraph to describe this most inspiring of God's creative wonders.

trend for / in / of?

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 05:01 AM PDT

world food and oil prices

Hi guys,

Pls kindly refer to the diagram shown above.

Which prep is ok in the sentence: The trends for / in / of both commodities are very similar.

I have looked up my Oxford dictionary and I found only 'in' might be appropriate. However, I saw a prestigious teacher use 'for' instead. Thus, I am a bit confused.

Thanks a lot!

What is it called when something appears so obvious, no one expects it?

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 07:00 AM PDT

I honestly can not think of any examples that cannot be countered. Perhaps something like if a person brought a weapon out in the open to an airport - no one actually thinks it would be a weapon because that would be so ridiculous, no one would do that.

Or a student bringing alcohol in a vodka bottle to school, but having the vodka bottle out. No one would suspect it to actually be vodka, they simply assume its to be a joke.

"there doesn't seem" vs. "there don't seem"

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 08:38 AM PDT

As an example, consider the two sentences:

There don't seem to be any doctors here.

and

There doesn't seem to be any doctors here.

To my ear, the first sounds great, and the second is painfully awkward.

So which is correct, grammatically? I've found lots of disagreement on this around the Web, with various sources citing different ways of treating the word "any" (as singular, always, or as either depending on to what it refers). No consensus, however, could I locate.

What does “a couple” mean to you, and what does “a few” mean to you? [closed]

Posted: 06 Jul 2021 08:00 AM PDT

What is the proper way to use the terms "a couple" or "a few"?

How should one use these words to avoid confusion? How do people use these words in practice.

It was striking to hear that "a couple" meant two (2) to someone. My reaction was, "how/why do you make a short word longer by adding an extra syllable to just say 'two?'"
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